THE ART OF THE NOBILITY ASSSOCIATES IT WITH GODS OR HEROES OF ANTIQUITY, OR FIGURES OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
A superiority obtained by birth alone, and that was the opposite of the money-oriented challengers' ideal.
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The images linked nobles with their spiritual or political overlords:
- The mansion of the Minister of Finance (toward 1600)
The Hotel de Sully, on the first trade route (rue Saint-Antoine) and next to the first royal place (place des Vosges).
- In provincial chateaux mantelpieces, the most prestigious sites of glacial halls:
- At Écouen* north of Paris, Jacob sins, leaves, returns and is forgiven, like the owner** who offends Diane de Poitiers, leaves the court and eventually reconciles with the king.
*Now the Renaissance Museum
Esau's hunt, museum publication
- At Condé en Brie in Champagne a god carries off a woman. The work alludes to the owner* making a married woman his mistress as Louis XIV had done with Madame de Montespan, and imitates the statue below, on the grounds of Versailles.
*The Marquis de la Faye, private secretary to Louis XIV
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Claude Abron   Château de Condé - Aymeri de Rochefort; Pluto carries off Prosperine by François Girardon, toward 1690, Versailles / zoom |
That mistress, the marquise de Montespan — the one suspected of black masses — chose the story of Helen of Troy as decor for her chateau.
-- Athénaïs, the real queen of France by Lisa Hilton, 2002
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The clergy could not accept a pagan decor, but could give the humble the appearance of gods. Here, 11th-and 16th-century views of the shepherds at Christ's birth:
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The most important decor
is Rubens's celebration of queen Marie de Medici
for her palace.
The 24 life-size paintings are now at the Louvre.
The first modern biography
uses allegory and mythology to tell her story.
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