x.vi. CLASSIC ART AS A SOCIAL WEAPON

 

IT CAN CARRY A MESSAGE THAT ALL UNDERSTAND

After a painting of the Fontainebleau school (toward 1550)

Diane de Poitiers, member of the top nobility and favorite of Henri II, as Diana, goddess of the hunt.

• Nobles, gods and heroes : Figures from Antiquity represent nobles

• Supermen: the décor of châteaux and churches 

• A queen's apotheosis: start of Rubens's series for Marie de Médicis.

• A plea for peace and a threat of revolt: a painting of the series

• An arc that heralds three centuries of calamity: the Saint-Denis gate

• The violent imagery of the victor on horseback

• Heroes on white horses

• The first great work of defiance: The Raft of the Medusa

• A goddess becomes a plebeian revolutionary: Liberty guides the people

• Freedom's great painting, fervent but ambiguous: same

• The goddess's descendants 

• Faceless poor and bourgeois heroes: the Revolution of 1830

• The City Museum's sole proletarian seen full face (please scroll down)

• Ballet, an art of the French court 

• Millionaires and ballerinas: the Opéra

• A ceiling decorated by an orgy: the Opéra

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Next,

 Outskirts, cauldrons of the arts