Thursday, August 23, 2018

2.6.2.a. GODS AND DECOR


ART ASSOCIATES NOBLES WITH THE 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 Finance Minister's mansion (toward 1600)  

The Hotel de Sully, on the 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.
Esau's Hunt, museum publication



    • At Condé en Brie in Champagne a god carries off a woman. It alludes to the owner* making a married woman his mistress as Louis XIV had done with Madame de Montespan, and imitates a statue at Versailles.

*The Marquis de la Faye, private secretary to Louis XIV

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 it gave 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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