Paris Day 6 - the Louvre (Still in the Richelieu Wing)

King Charles VII

I started off in the Richlieu wing thinking about portaits, so the theme of portraits continued.  I spent some time with a pair of portrtaits painted by Jean Fouquet around 1450.  It was interesting spending a bit of time with Charles VII, reflecting on his worries about his own legitimacy, having needed Joan of Arc for support.  

Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins

Fun getting up close too with his Chancellor (?), whose name is Ursin, and thus has a family crest with bears in the background.   If I understood, these two portraits would have been placed in the same space as the "Crucifiction of the Parlement of Paris" (in the last post).  These guys are not posed totally from the side like with King Jean the Good, but are still in a flat staged looking space.  

And then 100 or so years later (around 1550?), Clouet is painting portraits of the King.  Here are two portraits here of King François.  They are quite luminescent.  In the first, he is in Royal garb.  In the second, he is dressed up like John the Baptist.   Not sure which outfit is more fantastical here, but the face is clearly him in both.  I also found myself thinking back to the 1980s, and how we added shoulderpads to nearly every outfit.  I wonder if they had a similar style vibe at the time, or if he really had that broad-shouldered musculature?

Kings aside, there was a great collection of portraits by Clouet from the time.  They had a quite 'modern' feel to me, in a way that was a bit 'photographic' rather than stylized.

Jean Cousin le père - Eva Prima Pandora

And then off to see Mannerism emerging, and the School of Fontainbleau.  I don't think I had really thought much before of Mannerism as a school, so it was interesting to think about the move away from people looking 'natural', towards shapes that are clearly out of shape (ie note the S shape in the woman here, and the ways her limbs are unnaturally long compared to the torso). 

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So too here.  Lovely S shape with Venus.   Also, it kind of was reminiscent of all the folks I saw in the museum (myself included) taking 'selfies'.   Venus doing a selfie?  :-)

And then back to the bloody stuff again, with a large painting titled, "The Massacres of the Triumvirate".  This was another one with tons of detail.

Caron - The Massacres of the Triumvirate

The audio track noted the displacement in the painting (ie. the violence portrayed as something done by the ancient romans?), but the painting was more likely a displaced meditation on the extreme violence of the catholic/protestant wars of religion in France. 

  

detail

I did note that the Roman 'armour' painted here seemed less like armour, and more like a 'colouring' overtop of bodies that felt a bit more 'naked' (thinking here about the skill in rendering muscle... it would be tricky to make armour with such lovely attention to detail)

Lots of attention to detail here, including heads lined up in a row.   I did wonder if the artist had specific people in mind in doing the heads, or was just practicing their skills in general.

detail

detail

I also noted this little detail... a soldier stuffing his hand into the chest cavity of one decapitated person? Uh...not sure what he is looking for in there... and the blood pumping out of the other body was reminiscent again of the early Martyrdom of St. Denis painting.

And then of course there was this beauty.  Super flashback to travelling in Europe for the first time ever with Bonnie Wyora back in 1985. I had just finished my undergrad, and Bonnie had one year of school under her belt.  We were mostly living with Wyona and Greg in Brussels, but started off travelling around on a Eurorail pass (sleeping on the train at night, and hopping off in a new city in the morning).

We had our first visit to the Louvre.  We tagged along behind another tour group, trying to absorb what we could.  This painting was a big of a surprise to us two young-uns from Alberta, whose museum going experience at the time was limited to the Glenbow Museum (which is undoubtedly fantastic, but not known for its european painting collection).  Since we were trying to make sense of the guide's explanation in French, there was much we did not understand.  But we were ready to learn!  :-)

I will say, this painting was way more memorable to me at the time than was the Mona Lisa.  It was so fun to stand in front of it again, getting close to 40 years later, weaving together those experiences, thinking of the thousands and thousands of folks who will have had their own experiences of this painting. 

The Tax Collectors

 So... my feet carried me forward away from the French, further north to Dutch and Flemish painting.  I spent time with Rysmerswaele's "The Tax Collectors" (1535).  There are so many beautiful details in the painting.

the wife's gaze (and skin)

The wife's hands flipping pages in "the Book of Hours"

a bag of pearls

reflections in a small mirror

the tax collectors hands (veins and skin)

a pile of coins

And then, another Beligian painting, this time Joachim Patinir's "St. Jerome in the Desert".   

While St. Jerome is the ostensible subject, he occupies so little of the painting.  Mostly we get this lovely landscape, mountains, clouds, and sea.  

So many great little details scattered throughout the piece!

little mountain goat up in the hills

cathedral and town in shadow of mountains

a windmill down by the water

There is another painting of St Jerome in the same area, this one is Willem Key, "Saint Jerome Meditating on the Bible.  It is in about the same period (mid 1500s), but has such a very different vibe, a bit more like those portaits from earlier (sort of theatrically staged). While the Jerome in the other piece seems almost tangential (or a bit cartoonish.... sort of "where's Waldo"), this one has a really evocative face... it really draws you in.  Such different takes on St. Jerome.

St. Jerome in a contemplative mode?

(to be continued:  https://larchhaven.blogspot.com/2024/08/paris-day-6-louvre-and-it-just-keeps.html)