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The Triumph of the
City
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The High Renaissance
&
Mannerism
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(Renaissance
Art Map)
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School of Fontainebleau
Antoine
Caron
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Fontainebleau school
[Fr. Ecole de Fontainebleau].
Term that encompasses work in a wide variety of media,
including painting, sculpture, stuccowork and printmaking,
produced from the 1530s to the first decade of the 17th
century in France. It evokes an unreal and poetic world of
elegant, elongated figures, often in mythological settings,
as well as incorporating rich, intricate ornamentation with
a characteristic type of strapwork. The phrase was first
used by Adam von Bartsch in Le Peintre-graveur (21
vols, Vienna, 1803–21), referring to a group of etchings and
engravings, some of which were undoubtedly made at
Fontainebleau in France. More generally, it designates
the art made to decorate the château of Fontainebleau, built
from 1528 by Francis I and his successors, and by extension
it covers all works that reflect the art of Fontainebleau. With the re-evaluation of
MANNERISM in the 20th century, the popularity of the
Fontainebleau school has increased hugely. There has also
been an accompanying increase in the difficulty of defining
the term precisely.
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Antoine
Caron(b
Beauvais, 1521; d Paris, 1599).
French painter and draughtsman. He started his career modestly in his
native city, then a relatively important artistic centre, where he
painted some religious pictures (e.g. the Resurrection; Beauvais,
Mus. Dept. Oise) and designed cartoons for stained-glass windows; both
demonstrate his innate taste for decorative work. Caron was later active
in the workshops at Fontainebleau, and his name appears in the royal
accounts of Henry II between 1540 and 1550. He later became court
painter to Catherine de’ Medici, the Queen Regent (1560–63). Besides
Jean Cousin the younger, he was the only French artist from this period
with a recognizable artistic personality and was an important witness to
the activities of the Valois court during the reigns of Charles IX (reg
1560–74) and Henry III (reg 1574–89) and the violent Wars of
Religion (1562–98) between Catholics and Huguenots. Like his royal
patrons, Caron was an ardent Roman Catholic; he was connected with the
Catholic League and a friend of its poet and pamphleteer, Louis
d’Orléans.
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 An Allegory Of
The Triumph Of Summer
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Antoine Caron
Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sybil
c. 1580
Faith in the magic of festivals
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Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl
1575-80
Oil on canvas, 125 x 170 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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A bizarre architectural landscape on the banks of the Seme
provides the setting for an opulent festival hosted by Henry III of
France. Antoine Caron (1521-1599) renders the event, centred around the
staging of a mystery play, in a manner which is both artificial and
assiduously attentive to detail. The painting (125 x 170cm) is in the
Louvre, Pans.
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Amidst the storm of civil war, and notwithstanding its chronic
shortage of funds, the French court stages a festival. Several events
arc shown simultaneously in progress in the extensive grounds of the
Tuilencs by the Seine, a setting alienated here by antique columns and
circular temples. In the background on the left two knights in full
armour joust in a tiltyard, while a barge, carrying a large number of
musicians and singers, draws near to the nverbank.
However, the majority of figures in the painting are shown watching a
play performed on an estrade, acted by persons in Roman costume. It is
probably the "Mystery of the Incarnation and Birth of Our Saviour and
Redeemer Jesus Christ". In a key scene of the play the Roman Emperor
Augustus - here seen kneeling in a purple gown and laurel wreath, while
three of his soldiers look on - meets the wise Sybil of Tibur. He asks
her to predict the fate of the Empire, whereupon she points at the sky,
where the Virgin Mary and Infant appear in a nimbus. Christ is thus
presented to the pagans as successor to the Roman emperor and Eord of
the Universe.
The mystery play, first performed in Rouen in 1474, was revived in Paris
in 1580, for its mixture of antiquity and Christian piety was much in
keeping with contemporary taste. Anything Roman or Greek was likely to
appeal during the late Renaissance, and the work's religious slant
undoubtedly satisfied the Catholic party dominating court and capital.
But the real star of a court festival was always the sovereign himself,
whose intention was to demonstrate his own power and the glory of his
house. It was this, more than anything else, that Antoine Caron had been
commissioned to paint, by order of the Queen Mother, Catherine de'
Medici.
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A powerful Florentine, larger than life
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 Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl
(detail)
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Though the sovereign was the centre of attraction at a courtly
festival, the larger-than-life figure at the centre of Caron's painting
is a woman, the Florentine Catherine de' Medici. Though by 1580 she had
lost the regency, she was still one of the dominant personalities at the
French court. Her position as queen and mother had helped her determine
the course of French politics for two decades.
According to her own testimony, her sole motive in wresting power in
1559, following the death of her husband at a tournament, was to defend
her children's inheritance. Her seven children were "the most important
thing in the world"; with her love of family she was, in effect, a real
"Italian mamma". Officially, her sons Francis II (1559-1560) and Charles
IX (1560-1574) wore the crown, but both were tubercular and neurotic,
one dying at 16, the other at 24. Catherine attended to their affairs of
state, and was rarely squeamish in the methods which she employed. She
had few qualms about murdering her opponents when interests of state or
the progress of the Valois dynasty demanded it, and she shared much of
the responsibility for the deaths of thousands of Huguenots killed at
the St. Bartholomew Massacre of 1572. But it was also thanks to her that
there was a French state left to speak of when her third son, Henry III,
ascended the throne in 1574.
France had been torn asunder by the Reformation: while the Huguenots
fought for religious freedom, another militant faction attempted to wipe
out heresy in the name of the Catholic majority. Catherine herself was
inclined to be tolerant, and she was tireless in her efforts to
arbitrate be-teen the two parties. She extracted countless compromises,
made them sign peace treaties, but civil war usually broke out before
their signatures had dried on the paper. Thus France sank into anarchy
and poverty.
If a pamphlet written in 1573 is to be believed, it was Catherine
herself who was responsible for all this misery: after all, disaster was
all that could be expected from the government of a woman, nay, a
foreigner, the "daughter of an Italian grocer".
By 1580 Catherine had lost her political power, for her third son, Henry
III, was less inclined to heed her advice than that of his proteges.
Though firm in other matters, Catherine had nonetheless condoned his
behaviour, for she idolized this son more than any other, and was prone
to illusions about his abilites. However, once forced into negotiations
with the warring factions, even he made use of Catherine's diplomatic
skills. She had learned how to lead, how to use the passions and
interests of others to her own benefit. In so doing, she enlisted the
persuasive powers of some 300 alluring maids of honour. Known as the
Queen Mother's "flying squad", they succeeded more than once in taming
rebel leaders who were susceptible to feminine charms. In Caron's
painting, however, the three ladies sitting at the feet of Catherine,
who is not shown in mourning for once, are merely caressing their
lapdogs.
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The king's favourites compete
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 Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl
(detail)
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To further her political aims Catherine de' Medici not only enlisted
the charms of her ladies-in-waiting, but was equally skilful in her use
of festivals. The purpose of these, however, was not only to display the
pomp and power of the ruling house. From her father-in-law, Francis I,
she had learned that "two things are necessary in order to live in peace
with the French ... One must keep them happy, and set them some sort of
exercise to keep them occupied ..." The latter, as Catherine went on to
tell her son, "prevents them from engaging in more dangerous
activities".
In order to prevent quarrelsome sectarian leaders from inciting their
followers to further bloodshed, the Queen Mother kept them as busy as
possible with feasts, court balls and masquerades; she even organized
snowball-fights between Catholic and Protestant nobles.
Tournaments were often the climax of such festivals, the risk and danger
of martial displays providing their combatants with ample opportunity to
work off surplus energy and aggression. Henry Ill's favourites, sporting
young men disparagingly referred to as mignons (catamites), were
particularly avid participants. It is in their company that Henry III,
the last of the Valois dynasty, is seen following the |oust from an
elegant stand. In 1580 Henry was only 28 years of age, the victim, like
his brothers, of tuberculosis. Like them, too, he failed to provide his
country with an heir. Pendulating between scenes of wild debauchery and
the pious observance of his spiritual exercises, he felt most at home in
women's clothes in the company of his foppish entourage. A detail from
the world of fashion, the black beret with the white feather, confirms
that Caron's painting dates from c. 1580.
In the hope of lending prestige to an otherwise unpopular monarch who
commanded little public respect, the festival had recourse to all kinds
of symbols and allegorical motifs. Comparisons as flattering as they
were undeserved were drawn between the king and antique greats such as
Caesar Augustus, or even gods.
Theologians, philosophers and humanists concocted the ideological
flavour of the festival programme, selecting suitable images and
deciding even minor details, so that even the confectionery served as a
dessert was designed in such a way as to illustrate a mythological
theme. In 1581, they had the sorceress Circe, together with a retinue of
monsters and sea-deities, dancing on her enchanted island to the music
of ten orchestras. During the fireworks that concluded the spectacle,
Jupiter, the father of the gods, and Minerva, the goddess of wisdom,
descended to earth and, kneeling before Henry III, paid homage to "the
authority, wisdom and eloquence of the great king". According to the
report of one contemporary, the gods then went on to proclaim that the
King owed these virtues to "the wise advice of the Queen, his mother".
The event is supposed to have swallowed up 400,000 thalers and been seen
by some 10,000 spectators at a single showing.
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A genuine palace in an artificial setting
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 Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl
(detail)
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Translation of the festival theme into practice occupied whole teams
of artists for months at a time, and these were always the best
available. On 15th September 1573, for example, when the future king
Henry III celebrated his "joyous and triumphal entry" to the city of
Paris, the decoration of the capital and direction of festivities were
entrusted to the poet Jean Dorat, the sculptor Germain Pilon and the
painter Antoine Caron.
The festival team would usually include an architect; indeed he usually
led it. Ever since the Italians had rediscovered Classical antiquity and
embellished their towns with Renaissance palaces, building had ranked as
"the queen of the arts". Building fever broke out in France, too, with
the palaces at Fontainebleau and on the Loire emulating Italian design.
It went without saying that a court festival required a Roman setting,
even if the latter was constructed of wood, plaster and painted canvas.
Architecture also dominates Caron's painting; the natural world is
practically absent. Whether erected to grace a particular festival or
merely the artist's invention, his Classical edifices are laden with
symbolic significance and flattering allusions to the monarch. The
circular temple, designed after the Roman "tempietto" of the Renaissance
architect Bramante, proclaims the king's fame. The obelisk next to it
was a monument to his everlasting glory. The shield between two
overladen, spiral columns on the pedestal in the foreground praises the
"Pietas Augusti", the piety of the Emperor. To Caron's contemporaries,
columns were symbols of power and grandeur.
Several triumphal arches have been adapted to provide elegant stands for
spectators. Two of the arches are decorated with horses; the festival
grounds were situated near the royal stables.
At the centre of the pseudo-antique townscape stands the real,
newly-built town palace of the Queen Mother, who was obsessed with
building. She had officially inaugurated it - with a festival of course
- in 1573. It was built on the site of a former tilery ("Tuilerie")
outside the old town walls, by which it was joined to another new royal
residence, the Louvre. On the right is the Seine and Paris itself.
The Tuileries building with its twin gables appears in so many of
Antoine Caron's paintings that it could almost be described as his
trademark. Caron learned his craft at Fontamebleau, the primary centre
of Renaissance art in France, and, following the death of his Italian
master, climbed to the position of "valet and painter to the Queen
Mother". Forgotten for two hundred years, Caron has regained his renown
as one of the leading artists of the School of Fontainebleau.
With their strange blend of the real and ideal, their utterly
disproportionate, elongated figures set against the starkly contrasting
accuracy of Caron's architectonic perspectives, the ten paintings
ascribed to the artist today are at once captivating and disconcerting;
they epitomize the bizarre, dreamlike artificiality of School of
Fontainebleau mannerism.
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Breasts that spout pure oil
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 Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sibyl
(detail)
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In the "Mystery of the Incarnation and Birth of Our Saviour and
Redeemer Jesus Christ" mention is made of a well. The Sybil has hardly
had time to show the Emperor the future ruler of the world in the
heavens, when her black ser-vant Sadeth, shown sitting at her feet,
reports that another of her prophecies has come true. As she predicted,
a Roman well had begun to provide pure oil instead of water - "like a
beam of golden sunlight". Caron - a breast fetishist like most painters
associated with the School of Fontainebleau - shows oil spouting from
the breasts of a figure standing on the well, who, naked, with a shining
mirror balanced on her head, may symbolize (prophetic) Truth.
Various other statues can be seen in Caron's painting, several of which
- particularly those that fit the category of the "ideal mother" or
"wise woman", images with which she liked to be identified - probably
resemble Catherine de' Medici. Among the latter were the Sybils, the ten
legendary prophetesses of the ancient world. Their name means "god's
decree", and their arcane books were consulted by the Roman senate at
times of crisis. Next to her bed, the Queen Mother kept the medieval
imitation of a book of this kind, a collection of obscure proverbs,
together with a calendar and several engravings with architectural
motifs. People all over Europe from Pans to Prague were reading the "Sybilline
Books", as well as works by Nostradamus and Regiomontanus, hoping for
knowledge of the future, or advice on how to get on in the present.
There seems to have been a powerful need for this at the time, a sense
of uncanny powers at work, invisible forces conspiring to trap
unwitting, helpless victims. To discover their fate, people consulted
not only ancient books, but the stars.
One of Antoine Caron's paintings shows Astronomers Studying an Eclipse.
However, the observatory which Catherine de' Medici had built next to
her town palace is more likely to have been frequented by astrologers
than astronomers. It was not without reason that the edifice was
referred to as a "horoscopic column".
Astrologers, magicians and necromancers were naturally consulted when
the plans were laid for a festival. People sought recourse to the
supernatural not merely as a means of fathoming the occult forces that
determined reality; they also hoped to harness such forces to their own
ends, to influence events and effect political change. At its most
destructive, this might involve casting spells on their enemies; in more
positive terms, it meant organizing a triumphant festival. Choosing the
right day of the year, or selecting suitable artwork, whether from the
realms of music, painting or architecture, were tasks whose magical
dimension was self-evident.
Thus the Queen Mother and many of her contemporaries were convinced that
a link existed between the performance of the tragedy Sophonisbe at
court in 1556 and the death of Henry II and outbreak of sectarian
troubles soon afterwards. Thenceforth, Catherine prohibited the staging
of dramatical works with unhappy endings, instead putting her trust -
more or less in vain - in the benificent magic of harmonious festivals.
Perhaps there was more to Caron's picture than a record of the event for
posterity; it is possible that the picture itself was intended as a
magical charm.
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