Michelangelo Merisi – The Artistic Adventure of Mankind

From the reign of Louis XIII, and after a prolonged period of stagnation, French painting included in its resurgence aspects that would hardly had found acceptance in the sculpture of the time. And this was because sculpture was obediently submissive to the guidelines of the pompously laudable art that, by royal initiative, emanated from the Academy.

Nevertheless, some of the French painting in the 17th century remained, in effect, completely oblivious to those unifying slogans, in an atmosphere of joyful artistic freedom, where the coercion of the state had little impact. Just as Abraham Bosse’s engravings freely evoke scenes of the ordinary life of the Parisian bourgeois during the reign of Louis XIII, perhaps the most authentically valuable part of the pictorial creation of the time preferred as well subjects that included ordinary citizens or the intimacy of a peasant family.

**Musical Society**, copper engraving, by Abraham Bosse, ca. 1635 (*Bibliothèque Nationale*, Paris, France). The genre scenes engraved by Abraham Bosse brought to us a source of documentation on the 17th-century life and manners of contemporary French bourgeoise. This engraving, though portraying a meeting of a musical group during a rehearsal, served Bosse to represent the sense of Hearing from a series he engraved on the Five Senses.

Frontispiece of **Leviathan**, etching, by Abraham Bosse, 1651 (copy at the Library of Congress, Washington DC., United States of America). The Leviathan, a book written by English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651, can be understood as a justification of the absolute State, as well as a theoretical proposition of the social contract, stablishing a doctrine of modern law as the basis of legitimate societies and governments. The name of the book derives from the biblical Leviathan, a sea serpent, seen as the embodiment of chaos. The frontispiece of the book, by Abraham Bosse with input from Hobbes himself, is divided in two main parts. In the upper half, a giant-crowned figure is seen emerging from the landscape, clutching a sword and a crosier, beneath a quote from the Book of Job: “*Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei. Iob. 41 . 24*” (“There is no power on earth to be compared to him. Job 41 . 24”), thus linking the figure to the monster (Leviathan) of the Book. The torso and arms of the figure of the giant are composed of over 300 individual persons, in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The lower half is a triptych. The central part contains the title on an ornate curtain. The two sides are divided in different registers illustrating the contents of the book. The first represents the sword and crosier carried by the giant figure, that is earthly power on the left and the powers of the church on the right. The following registers reflect similar power-pairs: castle to church, crown to miter, cannon to excommunication, weapons to logic, and the battlefield to the religious courts. The fact that the giant holds the symbols of both sides, as well as the tryptic below, reflects the union of secular, and spiritual in the sovereign.

But the religious fervor that was so passionately felt in France at the time, and that disturbed so many noble and great souls after the period of the religious wars of the Reformation, offered other subject-matters to contemporary painting, which became frank and austere. This was visible not only in the works by artists who painted in Paris (many of whom were forced to enter the Academy, despite their natural temperament), but also by those who resided in “provinces”. Such was the case of Nicolas Tournier (1590 -1639), who, using a Caravaggesque chiaroscuro in a sober way, knew how to give the sacred scene of Christ descended from the cross (ca. 1632 or 1635) a treatment at the same time emotional and deeply human.

**Christ descended from the cross**, oil on canvas, by Nicolas Tournier, between 1632 and 1635, 238 x 183 cm (*Musée des Augustins*, Toulouse, France). Tournier was the only French painter to employ a dramatic force equal to that of Caravaggio. He favored simple pyramidal compositions with dramatic lighting which seem to be inspired by Caravaggio’s last compositions painted in Sicily. Tournier’s stature can be judged by this intense painting alone, where he dispensed with the inhibitions and decorative preoccupations found in almost all other Caravaggesque painters.

Thus, just as we noted when discussing architecture, French painting of the Grand Siècle also went through a first stage of vacillation, between baroqueism and the “classical” tendencies derived from the anti-baroque spirit we have alluded before. This first stage in the evolution of the French painting of the 17^th century was represented, above all, by Georges de La Tour, the first still life painters, Jacques Callot, the Le Nain brothers and Simon Vouet. They were followed by the great painters of French classicism of the 17th century: Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champaigne. Finally, our attention will turn to the representatives of French academicism from the time of Louis XIV: Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, and Hyacinthe Rigaud.

Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) was born and lived his entire life in an eccentric province: the Duchy of Lorraine (an independent state on the north-eastern border of France), then incessantly disputed by French and Austrians. Esteemed in his time, this brilliant artist was forgotten for almost three centuries, until he was “rediscovered” in the 20th century. George de La Tour painted mainly religious and some genre scenes, and he frequently used the artificial light of a lamp or a candle to illuminate his scenes in which he seems to tell us that the most humble people, in dark places and hours, come to reveal to us absolute truth and beauty.

His Saint Joseph the Carpenter (ca. 1638-1645), The Dream of Saint Joseph (between 1640-1645), Magdalene at a Mirror (ca. 1635-1640) and Magdalene with the Smoking Flame (ca. 1640-1645), Adoration of the Shepherds (ca. 1644) and The Newborn Child (ca. 1648) present us variations on a similar theme with characters imbued with an admirable religious sense, immersed in a night broken by a strong light that reduces all the nuances to red and white.

**Joseph the Carpenter**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, 1642, 130 x 100 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris, France). This painting is one of several tenebrist paintings by La Tour. In all these works, a single, strong light source is a central element, surrounded by cast shadows. The painting depicts a young Jesus with his earthly father Saint Joseph. Joseph, arched over the top of the canvas, drills a piece of wood with an auger, whose shape reflects the shape of the Cross, as does the way of the wood is arrayed on the floor, pointing at the figure of seated child Christ, as a foreshadow of the crucifixion. The young Christ raises his left hand, as if in benediction, with the candlelight shining through his flesh as an allegorical reference to Christ as the “Light of the World.” The mood transmitted by this canvas is projected by the minute observation of the effects of light in certain areas, especially that of the translucency of the Christ’s hand silhouetted against the candle, revealing even the dirt in his fingernails. In his religious canvases, de La Tour tells the Bible story in the simplest of terms, using only items essential for identifying the subject, in this case the different objects associated with a carpenter’s shop. Thus, the painting can be taken as a genre scene without the need of religious overtones, rivaling Velázquez’s Waterseller of Seville.

**The Dream of Saint Joseph**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1628–1645, 93 x × 81 cm (*Musée d’Arts de Nantes*, Nantes, France). Two characters almost completely occupy the scene. An old man with a thick, gray beard has fallen asleep with an open book in his lap. We can infer he was reading since he holds some pages between his fingers. He wears a long dress and a kind of red belt at chest height. In front of him, a boy or girl stands dressed in a long, finely decorated robe. With one hand he/she is about to touch the old man while making a gesture with the other. In the center of the canvas there is a table with a candlestick and scissors. The flame of the candle, which is the only source of natural light, is almost completely hidden by the infant’s outstretched arm. The traditional interpretation of this painting is that it is a Dream of Joseph, even though Joseph is normally shown as a carpenter. The figure of the “angel” performs a graceful and mysterious gesture, reminiscent of an Annunciation, probably announcing Joseph about the virginal conception of Jesus. The mannerism is visible in the twisting of the young figure’s fingers and in the caprice of shielding most of the candle flame. In de La Tour’s paintings there is an exquisite stillness that permeates throughout his canvases.

**Magdalene at a Mirror**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, 1635-1640, 113 x 93 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC., United States of America). This painting is one of several by de La Tour representing a candlelit Mary Magdalene, which are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), in the *Musée du Louvre* (Paris), in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), and in the National Gallery of Art (Washington). All of de La Tour’s Magdalenes are against the iconographical type favored by most of his contemporaries, who portrayed her as a voluptuous and scantily clothed woman inside a cave or grotto, with her eyes looking at the heavens, and lush curly blond hair flowing over her shoulders. By contrast, de La Tour’s Magdalenes are seated at a table in an austere interior, all represented in profile with dark, straight hair. **Magdalene at a Mirror** is the darkest of de La Tour’s four Magdalenes. She is represented modestly dressed, in profile, her elbow resting on a table, and with her contemplative face on her right hand. With her left hand she touches a skull placed on some books, both reflected in a mirror turned towards the viewer. Magdalene and the skull are both illuminated by the flame of a candle placed behind the skull. The tip of the flame, barely visible, slightly bents as if moved by the exhalation of Mary’s breath. The light from the candle creates a chiaroscuro effect, with Magdalene’s brightly lit features contrasting with the darkness of the rest of the composition. The *vanitas*, represented by the skull and the book, are both metaphors for the brevity and fragility of life.

**Magdalene with the Smoking Flame**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1640, 128 x 94 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris, France). As well as his other versions of the Magdalene (see picture before), de La Tour here portrays Mary Magdalene with a skull (this time on her lap) and a brightly lit candle on the table next to her. With her hand under her chin, Magdalene seems to ponder at the lit candle. Also, like in the other versions of the same theme, there are two books placed on the small table, as well as a cross and a rope. The rope looks similar to the rope that is tied around Magdalene’s waist. Her shoulders are bare and her skirt only reaches to her knees leaving her legs bare.

**Adoration of the Shepherds**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1644, 107 x 131 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). Though the Adoration of the Shepherds is one of the most frequently painted iconographies in western art, de La Tour’s is unique in its realistic treatment of the scene. Illuminated by the strong light emanating from the candle held by Saint Joseph, we see a tight group of characters that includes two shepherds, a woman, Mary and Joseph, all around the marvelously painted figure of Baby Jesus. A lamb chews a twig from the leaves forming Jesus’ crib. We see no donkey or ox, as it’s traditional in this scene. The shepherds are dress in contemporary clothing, while the figure of the Virgin is strongly highlighted by her red dress. Joseph, in shades, carries the light, a traditional symbol of truth.

**The Newborn Child**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1645-1648, 76 x 91 cm (*Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes*, Rennes, France). This canvas is considered de La Tour’s best painting. At first sight it could seem rather simple, but only close inspection reveals its complexity. The technique is almost pointilliste (see detail in picture below): the intense red of the mother’s dress is achieved by minute dots of color of varying hue, and the same is true of the lilac garment of the servant (or St. Anne, if the subject is the Christ Child). The whole painting is thus the product of an intensely concentrated effort. The collar of the mother’s dress is elaborately decorated, and the profiles are painted with an exceptional delicacy of line. A total calm pervades the picture, in which the faces have been described as almost Buddha-like in their serenity. The painting is sometimes thought to represent the Madonna and Child (with the woman on the left being St. Anne) but turned into a genre scene. The lighting of the scene, as usual of de La Tour’s ‘nocturnal’ paintings, comes from a candle, the flame of which is hidden by the hand of the woman on the left. De La Tour’s palette is discreet, without brutal contrasts, and is limited to red, brown and white shades whose intensity varies depending on the lighting.

**The Newborn Child** (detail), oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1645-1648 (*Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes*, Rennes, France).

Other times, when he depicted daytime scenes, de La Tour played with bright and vibrant colors (The Fortune Teller, 1630; The Card Sharp with the Ace of Diamonds, ca. 1636). De La Tour’s comfortable and bourgeois life thanks to his marriage to a woman from a minor noble family was totally opposite to the adventurous and fantastic biography of Caravaggio, whom de La Tour probably knew via the Dutch Caravaggisti. Without being a direct disciple of Caravaggio, this artist from Lorraine took advantage of the Italian master’s fundamental discovery: that light creates the shape of bodies by giving them mass and color. In 1638, La Tour received the title of “Painter to the King” (of France), though he had also worked for the Dukes of Lorraine, but the local bourgeoisie provided his main market. He and his family died in 1652 during an epidemic in the provincial town of Lunéville, where they lived. Georges de La Tour is, without a doubt, one of the greatest artists of his century.

**The Fortune Teller**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1630, 101.9 × 123.5 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States of America). The composition, with the figures close together, seems to have been influenced by a theatrical scene, though the topic was made popular by Caravaggio and depicted throughout Europe in the 17th century. A young man of some wealth is having his fortune told by the old woman at right; she takes the coin from his hand. The women around him seem to be gypsies, and are depicted as thieves. As the young man is engaged in the fortune-telling, the woman at the extreme left is subtly stealing the coin purse from his pocket, while her companion in profile has her right hand ready and open to receive the loot. The pale-faced girl on the boy’s left is also cutting a medal worn by the boy from its chain.

**The Card Sharp with the Ace of Diamonds**, oil on canvas, by Georges de La Tour, ca. 1636–1638, 106 × 146 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). The theme of the cardsharp was popularized by Caravaggio at the end of the 16th century. In fact, this painting can be seen as a ‘chic’ version of Caravaggio’s gambling paintings, which were morally more sinister. The canvas represents four characters at half-length, around a table covered with a green-yellow tablecloth. We witness how the well-to-do young man on the right is being fleeced of his money by the other players, who both appear to be complicit in the scheme. The card sharp on the left is actually in the process of retrieving the ace of diamonds from behind his back. The characters are depicted against a dark background, which makes it impossible to identify the place where the scene is taking place. Seated are a young man on the right and a woman in the center, and standing a man on the left. A woman servant stands while serving a glass of wine to the woman in the center. The scene is lit by an out-of-frame source, coming from the left. The harsh, cold light cuts out the silhouettes while creating striking contrast effects. This painting is one of two versions of the same composition by de La Tour. The other version, known as *The Card Sharp with the Ace of Clubs* shows several variations in color, clothing, and accessories, it is housed in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

An analogous spiritual tension, and the same influence of Caravaggio, is perceived in the first painters of French still lifes, such as Lubin Baugin (ca. 1612-1663), see his fantastic Still Life with Chessboard (1630). Its rigorous simplicity is opposed to the lavish style of the still lifes that Louis XIV’s artists later painted.

**Still life with Chessboard**, also known as **The Five Senses**, oil on wood, by Lubin Baugin, 1630, 55 x 73 cm, (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). In this painting the arrangement of objects seems rather simple and economic compared with the Dutch still-lifes painted at the time. Here we see how Baugin’s paintings are dominated by aesthetic elements that reflect moral issues. The symbolism of the objects depicted allude to the other name of this painting (**The Five Senses**): a dark mirror representing sight, a bunch of carnations in a vase represent smell, the bread and wine do so for taste, the chessboard in a closed box alludes to touch, and finally the vermilion mandolin leads us to hearing. Another possible explanation for this still life could be as the set of playing cards, the tied-up purse and music were regarded as morally corrupt, here placed in opposition to the eucharistic symbols of bread and wine. In the corner of a room with stone walls lies a rustic wooden table. On this table are arranged, from left to right, an open Italian-style music booklet, over it rests an upturned mandore (a type of lute), we also see a conical crystal glass, three-quarters filled with red wine, a bread, an oblong pearl, a green leather purse with tight strings, a pack of playing cards revealing the jack of clubs, a folded chessboard box, on which rests a spherical vase with carnations with a reflection of a window, and a metal octagonal mirror hanged by a hook on the wall and perpendicular to the surface of the painting. It has been pointed out that the painting’s off-balance perspective produces a “topographical alienation” reminiscent of the metaphysical art of the 20th century artist Giorgio de Chirico. The light source seems to be located to the left of the table.

Jacques Callot (ca. 1592-1635) was another native of the Duchy of Lorraine, a printmaker and draftsman contemporary of de La Tour, but who traveled, studied in Florence and Rome, and almost caricatured in his engravings the hectic world in which he lived. His production includes more than 1,400 etchings that chronicled the life of his period, representing beggars, clowns, drunkards, soldiers, as well as court life. His prints were distributed widely through Europe; Rembrandt was a keen collector of them, and one of his followers, Abraham Bosse (whom we mentioned before) spread Callot’s innovations all over Europe with the first published manual of etching (“On the Manner of Etching with Acid and with a Burin, and of Dark-Manner Engraving“, published in 1645), which was translated into Dutch, English, German and Italian. He was important for the development of the old master print, and with his exceptional technique, he advanced etching by implementing important technical and stylistic advances.

His impressive series of etchings include 18 prints titled Les Grandes Misères de la guerre (‘The Miseries of War’, published in 1633), a work that has been called the first “anti-war statement” in European art. These etchings can also be considered as an early prototypical French comic strip, since each illustration is accompanied by a descriptive text. Each etching includes panoramic views with many small figures, featuring gradation from light to dark, a technique typical of Callot’s etchings. These prints show soldiers pillaging and burning their way through towns, country and convents, before being variously arrested and executed by their superiors, lynched by peasants, or surviving to live as crippled beggars. At the end, the generals are rewarded by their monarch. Though the work doesn’t depict a specific campaign during the Thirty Years’ War; it is tied to the actions of the army sent by Cardinal Richelieu in 1633 to occupy Callot’s native Lorraine before annexing it to France. The series begins with a florid title page, followed by an enrollment parade and a battle scene (plates 1–3). Plates 4–8 show bands of the victorious soldiers successively attacking a farm, convent, and coach, and burning a village. In plates 9–14 they are rounded up and subjected to various methods of public torture and execution. Plate 15 shows crippled soldiers in a grand neo-classical hospital, Plate 16 unemployed soldiers dying in the street, and Plate 17 the peasants taking revenge on a group they have captured, killing them. Plate 18 shows an enthroned king distributing rewards to the victorious generals. The series is regarded among the most powerful artistic statements of the inhumanity of war. The series prefigures Francisco de Goya’s macabre bitterness in his Los Desastres de la Guerra (‘The Disasters of War’, 1810-1820) almost two centuries later.

**The Miseries of war (**Les Grandes Misères de la guerre**): Scene No. 11, The Hanging**, etching, print on paper, by Jacques Callot, between 1632 and 1633, 8.1 x 18.6 cm platemark (print at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia). In this scene of the famous series of etchings by Callot, the bandits are hanged. To the right, in the foreground, there’s a priest giving absolution to a man about to join the row of hanged men in the center of the composition. The tree from which they hang is isolated in the middle of a wide circle of soldiers, reduced by distance to minute scale.

**The Miseries of war (**Les Grandes Misères de la guerre**): Scene No. 17**: **The peasants revenge**, etching, print on paper, by Jacques Callot, between 1632 and 1633, 8.1 x 18.6 cm platemark (print at the *Rijksmuseum*, Amsterdam).

The Le Nain brothers —Antoine (ca. 1600–1648), Louis (ca. 1603–1648) and Mathieu (1607–1677)— were born in northern France, in or near Laon, almost on the border with Flanders. Although they moved to Paris, they never lost contact with their native country, which provided them with its rural and realistic themes: its humble and tired peasants who rest after their daily tasks are accompanied by their children and wives who care for them. Both, the themes and style of painting had no precedents in France as it had happened in Holland. This style would be continued later by Jean Siméon Chardin in the 18th century and Jean-François Millet in the 19^th. The best artist of the three le Nain brothers was Louis (ca. 1603–1648), to which we owe three exciting paintings: the dramatic The Peasant Meal and Peasant Family in an Interior (both ca. 1642), and the lyrical landscape entitled The Wagon (1641). Le Nain brothers also cultivated religious themes (The Pilgrims of Emmaus, 1645) and even mythological themes (Bacchus and Ariadne, ca. 1635). But probably no one would remember them as extraordinary artists if it were not for their poor peasants, who accept without protest their hard condition, in the gray atmosphere of northern France.

**The Peasant Meal**, oil on canvas, by Le Nain brothers, 1642, 97 x 122 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). In this painting and the one below, Louis le Nain’s palette of cold tones gives these classical compositions a transcendent gravity. In both, the characters, humbly dressed, share a frugal meal with the decorum of those attending an important ceremony. The calm and clarity of Le Nain’s painting amply justifies the fact that it has been said that he is a painter who introduced the sense of the human dignity of simple people into the genre scene.

**Peasant Family in an Interior**, oil on canvas, by Le Nain brothers, ca. 1642, 113 x 159 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). A first look at this painting conveys to us a note of profound intimacy and warmth of spirit, like the atmosphere of a domestic festivity. The painting depicts three generations of a peasant family relaxing by the fireside and around a table. The harmony of greys and browns is parallel to the spirit of austerity typical of French painting during the reign of Louis XIII. Unlike Flemish paintings on the same subject, who made their scenes of rustic life a depiction of unleash sensual instincts, Louis Le Nain saw in the peasant soul a profound gravity, even solemnity, where the hard realities of peasant life bring along their own dignity.

**The Wagon**, also known as Return from Haymaking, oil on canvas, by Le Nain brothers, 1641, 56 x 72 cm
(*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). Louis le Nain was the introducer of peasant themes to French painting. Only about 15 paintings survive by the three Le Nain brothers, of whom Louis was certainly the most interesting. In his work he doesn’t ridicule or satirize peasant life, as certain of his contemporaries did, but rather he instilled in it the sense of human dignity. Painter of Louis XIII, he distinguished himself by the exaltation of simple sentiment, translated into a sober and poetic color, in bucolic scenes of frozen stasis.

**The Pilgrims of** Emmaus, oil on canvas, by Le Nain Brothers, 1645, 75 x 92 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris).

**Bacchus and Ariadne**, oil on canvas, by Le Nain brothers, ca. 1635, 102 x 152 cm (*Musée des Beaux-Arts*, Orléans, France). Though known as painters of peasant scenes, Le Nain brothers also executed some secular compositions, such as **Bacchus and Ariadne**, painted in their full, solid style. Young Bacchus is catch at the precise moment when he discovers Ariadne on the island of Naxos, after (according to legend) she was abandoned by the Greek hero Theseus.

Simon Vouet (1590-1649) is the oldest of the painters of this group in which the Baroque influence is still important. In 1611 he was attached to an embassy heading to Istanbul. On the return trip he passed through Rome, and he found it so much to his liking that he resided there for 15 years. He was a natural academic, who absorbed what he saw and studied, and showed it in his painting: Caravaggio‘s dramatic lighting; Italian Mannerism; Paolo Veronese‘s color and foreshortened perspective; and the art of Carracci, Guercino, and Guido Reni. His reputation grew rapidly, he married a Roman woman, and he probably would have ended his life in Italy if Louis XIII had not made him return to his country to serve as First Painter to the King. In 1627 he settled in Paris and set up a workshop with a large number of assistants to attend to the abundant commissions that began to fall upon him: decorations for Richelieu in the Palais Cardinal, for Chancellor Séguier in his Hôtel in Paris, for Anne of Austria at Fontainebleau, for the Louvre and Luxembourg Palaces, etc. Vouet became immensely influential in introducing the Italian Baroque style of painting to France. His large workshop in Paris produced a whole school of French painters for the following generation. His most influential pupil was Charles le Brun, who organized all the interior decorative painting at Versailles and dictated the official style at the court of Louis XIV, but who jealously excluded Vouet from the Académie Royale in 1648. Even André Le Nôtre, the garden designer of Versailles, was a student of Vouet. Most of Vouet’s frescoes have disappeared, but abundant oil paintings remain to give us an impression of his style: Vouet selected from Caravaggio and Roman academic art, especially the Carracci, those elements that would please the French court that was at the time directing artistic development towards a more “classical” oriented art.