SUPERMEN: THE DECOR OF CHATEAUX AND CHURCHES

THAT OF CHATEAUX EVOKES OWNERS' PRIVATE LIVES AS IF THEY WERE GODS THEMSELVES, AND LINKS THEM WITH KINGS

Take mantelpieces, the most prestigious sites of glacial halls:

• At Écouen* on the northern frontier Jacob sins, leaves, returns and is forgiven, like the owner** who offends Diane de Poitiers, leaves the court and eventually reconciles with the king.

*The Renaissance Museum 

**The Constable of Montmorency (1493-1567) 

Esau's Hunt / zoom 

Old Testament figures play the same role as the gods, but are clothed.

 

• 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, 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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That of churches, whose sponsors were the nobles of the upper clergy, gave the poor the bodies of gods. Compare... 

End 11th century / zoom

End 16th century / zoom

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The most important secular decor 

to use mythology and allegory

is Rubens's celebration of queen Marie de Medici

for her palace.

The 24 life-size paintings are now at the Louvre.

They are where this visit begins.

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Next,
A queen's apotheosis