Version française
 

Nobles mingle with the gods - decoding epic art

Keys to a central aspect of European painting

•Tourism that questions   •Theme-tour

•Violence with brakes   •The Da Vinci Code tour

     

     

    • The Louvre devotes an entire room...

     

    to some of the most exuberant self-advertising ever produced. Rubens' 24 immense paintings (1624-1626) on Queen Marie de Medici's life - as she wanted it told - commissioned for her palace, are unique in art history. They are superb revelations of aristocrats' view of themselves and use a coded language that sets insiders apart. The innumerable works created in the same spirit follow similar principles.

     

     

    • The main key

     

    Aristocrats thought of themselves as fundamentally different from the common man, and so were shown as gods or heros (in this series middle-class people appear only once, to fill up space). Marie and Henri IV are presented semi-nude - nudity is the clothing of gods.

     

     

    • Other keys, which nobles take up for their châteaux
    "The consummation of the marriage", 8th in series
    The future queens of Savoy, Lorraine and England

    •As was true for gods, royals' private lives were subjects for art. The message was often political and in this series every detail is politically charged. These babes, for example, had grown up... 

    Louis XIII and his brother

    •Art as weapon: Here Marie implied that she might revolt (again). King Louis XIII viewed the paintings and walked out in fury. They contributed to Marie's final disgrace and exile from France (in 1631).

       

       

       

      • The paintings are 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.

         

         

         

        • We can continue with two great 19th-century painters  

         

         

         

         

        "The horrors of war" (detail), by Jacques Callot
        "Liberty leading the people", by Delacroix; "The Raft of the Medusa", by Géricault

        ...who use nobles' epic vision to portray the heroism of the common man.

         

        NB: This visit is an excellent prelude to that of the Opéra, whose Grand Foyer presents a magnificent

        example of epic art - and is its last great expression.

         

        *      *      *

        Louvre / Julien Debure

         •Top of page

         •Art history