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The Louvre – paintings where Man (or nobles) mingle with the gods

An initiation to build on
Part of Rubens's ebullient series on the life of Queen Marie de Medici – as she wanted it told.

 

A view of human dignity meant for nobles, that deeply influenced art history.

 

 

The visit lasts about one hour, which leaves time to explore other parts of the  museum. 

 

 

 

 

  • The museum devotes an entire room...

 

to these 24 life-size paintings in which Rubens presents the life of Marie de Médicis, from her point of view. Created for her palace, now the Senate, the series is one of the most exuberant works of propaganda ever imagined, as well as a major example of the art by which nobles emphasized their belief that they were fundamentally different from ordinary men.

 

Taken up by bourgeois who revered nobles, this way of picturing men and women remained essential to French art until the end of the 19th century. The original reason for portraying deities has been forgotten, but their presence on so many 19th-century buildings makes them part of daily life in Paris.

 

This visit explores "art for nobles", through which images of gods and heroes reinforced the sense of being part of an elite. 

 

 

  • Codes for initiates: every detail bears a message (riddles nobles take up in decorating their châteaux) 
Nudity, clothing of the gods
    Future Duchess of Savoy and queens of Spain and England

     

    • Like the private lives of gods of mythology, those of royals were subjects for art. Immediate preoccupations were often implicit. In this series, every detail is politically charged. These babes had grown up... 
    King and brother, turbulent when the painting was made

     

    • Art as weapon: The way these tots are shown states that Marie may revolt (again), against her son (Louis XIII). The paintings contributed to her final disgrace and exile (in 1631).

       

       
       

      • The series is a plea for peace...

       

      and when Marie lost power, France lurched into the Thirty Years' War (in 1635).

      We show engravings through which Jacques Callot described the ravages of troops in Lorraine a decade later.

      Most aristocrats' art glorified war. These are among the first works to oppose it.

         

         

        • On "Dupe's Day" (November 12, 1630), Marie lost her temper and her power. We explain how that error changed the destiny of Europe and how France remembers it...

         

         

         

         

        "The horrors of war" (detail), by Jacques Callot
        Famed illustrator, children's history, 1901
        Sold-out play, 2008

           

           

          • Next – how nobles' mythology was used to glorify ordinary people...  

           

           

          "The Raft of the Medusa", by Géricault, 1819; "Liberty leading the people", by Delacroix, 1830

           

          Géricault and Delacroix used the epic vision for another purpose.

           

           
          • ...and still encourages a dignified conception of Man 

           

           

          The Spirit of Liberty, on the site of what was once the Bastille prison
          Paris's Statue of Liberty

           

           

          • We illustrate the visit with works of art or photos, some of which are shown here 

           

           

          • Prelude and continuation  

           

          This visit can precede that of the Opéra, whose Grand Foyer expresses this art's last major expression. As well, it can introduce the French art that sprouted after about 1850, when a middle class confident in its victory over the nobility accepted idealisation of another kind.


           

              • Costs: please CLICK

              ° Louvre entry fee.


               

              Credits : illustration / Michel Loiret in T. Cahu, "Richelieu", 1901 (for the interest of his drawings, please CLICK ); Louvre / Julien Debure ; other photos / Claude Abron

               

               

              Unexpected Paris guided tours