Saturday, March 4, 2017

French Baroque

Jean-Baptiste Corneille
Angel appearing to St Roch
ca. 1685
wash drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"At the beginning of the modern era, in Ignatius's century, one fact seems to begin to modify the exercise of the imagination: a reordering of the hierarchy of the five senses.  In the Middle Ages, historians tell us, the most refined sense, the perceptive sense par excellence, the one that established the richest contact with the world, was hearing: sight came in only third place, after touch.  Then we have a reversal: the eye becomes the prime organ of perception (Baroque, art of the thing seen, attests to it).  This change is of great religious importance.  The primacy of hearing, still very prevalent in the sixteenth century, was theologically guaranteed: the Church bases its authority on the word, faith is hearing: auditum verbi Dei, id est fidem; the ear, the ear alone, Luther said, is the Christian organ.  Thus a risk of a contradiction arises between the new perception, led by sight, and the ancient faith based on hearing."  

 from Sade, Fourier, Loyola by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Miller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976)

Eustache Le Sueur
Archangel Raphael departing from Tobit's family
ca. 1645-47
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Eustache Le Sueur
Head of a Youth
ca. 1645
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Eustache Le Sueur
Presentation of the Virgin
ca. 1641
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Claude Vignon
European Sibyl
ca. 1635
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

François Boitard
Apollo and Nymphs
ca. 1690-1715
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Sébastien Bourdon
Venus and Aeneas
ca. 1658-62
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Sébastien Bourdon
Death of Dido
ca. 1637-40
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

François de Nomé
Architectural Capriccio
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
private collection

Jacques Callot
Battle of Cavalrymen
ca. 1618
wash drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jacques Callot
Entrance of M. de Couvonge et M. de Chalabre
(court ballet)
ca. 1627
wash drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jacques Callot
Soldier with shield and sword
ca. 1617
wash drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Gilles-Marie Oppenordt
Design for Fountain with Dolphin and Dragon
before 1741
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jacques Blanchard
St Cecilia
before 1638
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

workshop of Simon Vouet
Venus and Adonis
ca. 1638
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Venus and Adonis as bracelet slide (after Simon Vouet)
17th century
enamel on gold
British Museum