II.5. NOBLES, GODS AND HEROES

MENU: 2.5. Nobles gods & heroes 

TOWARD 1500, EXPLORERS' DISCOVERIES LEAD TO NEW SOURCES OF INCOME AND SO TO A BOOM THAT UNDERMINES THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 

Nascent capitalists gain the means to challenge the ruling class of nobles, hereditary landowners who draw their wealth from peasant labor and define themselves as warriors.

          Discoveries in 1502 / zoom 

The earliest known map of the Age of Discovery

There were numerous ways of enforcing a social order said to be wished by God. They also developed a philosophy and arts that set them above ordinary humanity, with which the penny-pinching, humdrum but rising moneyed interests could not (yet) compete. 

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In brief

• The primacy of hereditary rank 

• Everything aids the overclass 

• Heroes of glamorized war

• Allegory, a reaction of nobles to rising capitalists

• The Church omits pagan decor...

• Detour: History — anecdotes or the economy?

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2.5.1.

The primacy of hereditary rank

II.5.1. THE PRIMACY OF HEREDITARY RANK

"UPSTART! YOUR ANCESTORS WERE MERE MEDICI BANKERS, WHILE MINE WERE NINTH-CENTURY FEUDAL LORDS!"

Cried Madame de Montespan,* Louis XIV's most famous favorite, in a quarrel with the king. He would feel humble before her.                                                                              

*She who was accused of poisonings and black masses. 

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan, workshop of Pierre Mignard, undated, zoom

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A century later, Louis XV's daughters were officially called "Madame Première, Madame Seconde, Madame Troisième and Madame Quatrième,*" terms that referred to their rank by birth.

*Madame First, Second, Third, Fourth.

When the king began the day with coffee in the apartment of the eldest, she would "ring the bell to avert Madame Victoire of the king's visit. Madame Victoire would ring Madame Sophie...

who, in turn, would ring Madame Louise. The princesses' apartments were vast. Madame Louise lodged in the most distant. That last daughter of the king was deformed and very small; to join the meeting the poor princess had to rush through a great number of rooms, and much as she would try, often she could do no more than embrace her father as he left for the hunt." 

--Memoirs of Madame Campan, First Chambermaid of Marie-Antoinette, 

original publication 1822, this edition 1988, pp. 22-23.

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2.5.2. 

Everything aids the overclass

II.5.2. EVERYTHING AIDS THE OVERCLASS

AN INSULT AMONG THE HUMBLE: "YOUR FATHER WAS A VALET!

-- Voltaire, Le Siècle [Century] de Louis XIV

Psychologists and anthropologists say that every aspect of life reinforces primal societies and cults. The same is true generally: For us, please click.

For Old Regime France, Alexis de Toqueville's wrote that nobles' superiority was so rooted as to be "invisible."

-- L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, 1856  

Add that they:

• Led a hierarchy thought willed by God. 

• Could alone claim valor in battle, the quintessential value.

• Held the main positions in the State, the Church and especially the army. 

• Were exempt from most taxes.

• Controlled sales taxes and tolls, by inheritance or royal grants. 

• Monopolized hunting big animals, fought duels only between themselves, might alone purchase the most luxurious wares (which explains the site of the garment center: Please click).

• Had identifying liveries for servants, a coat of arms, a reserved pew at church and often a name whose prefix "de" indicated nobility (it is still considered a joli nom, "pretty name").

• Were ceremoniously decapitated and buried if condemned of crime, while bodies of ignominiously hanged commoners remained on the gallows until they decomposed.

  Executions of a noble (zoom) and a commoner (zoom).

• Owned gibbets. The gibbets themselves showed rank by the number of beams from which to hang the condemned (two to eight, the king having nine). Corpse of the highest-born (commoner) victims hung from the top.

• Commanded galley rowers from luxurious platforms.

• Might lead popular revolts because of their prestige and because they were trained to fight. Royals legitimized rebellions by heading them.

• Were magnified in the arts by mythology and allegory, as the next page shows.  

The French word for "bad" — villain — originally meant "peasant," and we still say "noble" and "ignoble."

Enriched commoners might use their revenues to purchase a title, acquire land to which a title was attached or assured descendants' nobility by marrying their daughters to impoverished lords seeking dowries. Those practices slowed capitalism's rise.

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The valet Figaro's famous question to his noble master,

"What have you done for all that wealth? 

You took the trouble to be born! Whereas I..."

 shows that at the end of the 18th century

 that belief was changing.

-- Le Marriage de Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais, 1778

So was the economy.   

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2.5.3.

Heroes of glamorized war

2.5.3. HEROES OF GLAMORIZED WAR

NOBLES' ELDEST SONS INHERIT THE LAND, TITLE AND FORTUNE, SECOND SONS ENTER THE CHURCH. DAUGHTERS REINFORCE THE CLAN BY USEFUL MARRIAGES OR JOIN A CONVENT.

The only honorable occupation for junior sons is war, where heroic deeds they can bring royal favor. 

• They wear armor in their portraits or are shown in a martial way to emphasize their stories:

Portrait of a Knight in Armor, 16th century (proposed for sale); Portrait of a Young General by Van Dyck, 1624 / zoom: Charles III, duke of Bourbon ( commissioned by Louis-Philippe from a copy, 1834) / zoom

Batons indicate command and curtains underscore grandeur.

 For the story of Marie-Louise de Montpensier, please click.

Mort [Death] du Connetable de Bourbon, print, 1527 / zoom

The Duke of Bourbon (portrait above) joins Spain and betrays the king. He is killed scaling a wall in the sack of Rome (in 1527).

        Design of the Funeral Monument to Henri II de Montmorency in Moulins by Michel Anguier, 17th century / zoom

He is beheaded for rebelling against Richelieu (in 1632).

Even in a painting that has nothing to do with fighting, the artist includes an idealized soldier in Roman military garb: please read on.

Saint Peter Preaches, Saint-Merri church in Paris, toward 1600 / zoom

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Nobles' ethic of honor and loyalty are irrelevant to commerce, and they lose their privileges should they engage in it. In any case, with inflation reducing the value of peasant dues, most lack the capital to do so. At a time when inflation reduces the value of peasant dues, "holding one's rank" often means debt. Revenues from misalliances with wealthy brides from the middle class, from contacts at court or kickbacks for using their own for others, through straw men or from slave-based estates in the West Indies... 

But most can only fight.

They back aggressive foreign policies

and 3000 join the American rebels.

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2.5.4.

Allegory, nobles' response to rising capitalists 

II.5.4. ALLEGORY, NOBLES' RESPONSE TO RISING CAPITALISTS

MENU: 2.5.3. Allegory: nobles vs. new captalists

ALLEGORIES LINK NOBLES TO FIGURES OF ANTIQUITY, FOR AN ESSENCE THAT UPSTARTS CANNOT MATCH

Diane de Poitiers, a member of the top nobility and royal favorite, shows her importance through nudity, clothing of the gods. 

(Toward 1550)

            Diane de Poitiers as Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, anonymous / zoom

Biblical figures are clothed, but have the bodies and faces of gods.

The Reconciliation of Jacob and Ésaü by Arnould De Vuez toward 1678, Baulme Fine Arts

Royals identify with those personnages: 

Philip of France in Costume of Antiquity by Jean Nocret, toward 1650 / zoom; Maurice Leloir in Le Roy-Soleil by T. Cahu, 1931

Using the gods for primacy and power

• Real-life stories and political messages

• Rubens's decor for a queen

• A plea for peace and a threat of revolt

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Real-life stories and political messages

REAL-LIFE STORIES AND POLITICAL MESSAGES

ALLEGORIES NARRATE THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PRINCES AND NOBLES, AS MYTHOLOGY AND THE HEBREW BIBLE TELL THOSE OF HEROES OF ANTIQUITY 

Works express a coded message:  

Le Bain de Diane by Francois Clouet, court painter, toward 1565 / zoom with analysis.

The three goddesses were real rivals, Catherine de Medici (with the black cloth as the widow of Henri II), Diane de Poitiers, Henri's favorite (her colors, black and white) and Marie de Guise (Scottish, as shown by the thistle, queen after Henri's death and member of the hostile, Catholic Guise clan). The satyres are Guise leaders. The horseman is a hunter with his dog, who will kill them.  

The painting was commissioned by a Protestant nobleman at the court against Catholic rivals, a few years before the massacre of Protestants by Catholics. 

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The style characterizes mansions and chateaux: 

• The mansion of the Minister of Finance (toward 1630):

  Zoom

The Hôtel de Sully, in front of the first royal place (place des Vosges). 

             

• Mantels, the most prestigious sites of glacial chateaux:

• At Écouen* 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, north of Paris.

**The Constable of Montmorency (1493-1567). 

La chasse d'Esau, 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 (before he knew of her visits to the witch) and imitates a Versailles statue.

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

Claude Abron

Château de Condé - Aymeri de Rochefort; Pluto enlève Prosperine by François Girardon, toward 1690, Versailles / zoom

Madame de Montespan

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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Rubens's decor for a queen

II.5.5. THE CHURCH OMITS PAGAN DECOR...

BUT USES ANTIQUITY IN ANOTHER WAY

Compare these paintings of the 11th-and 16th-centuries:

• Medieval shepherds wear laborers' clothes and seem to be ordinary men.

Manuscript, 14th-15th centuries, zoom

Book of hours of Etienne Chevalier, toward 1460 / zoom

     By Robert Campan, toward 1420 / zoom

• Their descendants have the bodies of gods and may wear antique draperies. 

By Pellegrino Tibaldi, 1548 / zoom

By Perin del Vaga, 1534 / zoom

  

The gold of sacrality yields to a Roman arc. 

 

By Luigi Benfatto, end 16th century / zoom 

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 2.5.6.

Detour: History, anecdotes or the economy?