Saturday, August 5, 2017

Painted Scenes and Portraits from the 1680s

René-Antoine Houasse
Allegorical figures of Royal Magnificence, Immortality, and Progress in the Fine Arts
1683
oil on plaster ceiling
Château de Versailles

René-Antoine Houasse
Antony and Cleopatra
1680
oil on plaster ceiling
Château de Versailles

René-Antoine Houasse
Vessel of Louis XIV
1683
oil on plaster coving (trompe-l'oeil)
Château de Versailles

Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers
Is reason to the soul; and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky, 
Not light us here, so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day. 
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows reason at religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

.     .     .

One thought content the good to be enjoyed:
This, every little accident destroyed;
The wiser madmen did for virtue toil:
A thorny or at best a barren soil;
In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep,
But found their line too short, the well too deep,
And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep. 
Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,
Without a centre where to fix the soul:
In this wild maze their vain endeavours end.
How can the less the greater comprehend,
Or finite reason reach infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than he. 

– from Religio Laici (1682) by John Dryden

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Time destroying Beauty
before 1681
oil on canvas
Prado, Madrid

Charles de La Fosse
Presentation of the Virgin
1682
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of Charles Le Brun
1683-86
oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris

Giovanni Battista Gaulli
Three Marys at the Sepulchre
1684-85
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Michiel van Musscher
Self-portrait
1685
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Gregorio Lazzarini
Portrait of Antonio or Vittore Correr
1685
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Olivier van Deuren
Young Astronomer
ca. 1685
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Gregorio de Ferrari
Summer
1687-88
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Rosso, Genoa

Domenico Piola
Autumn
1687-88
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Rosso, Genoa

Pierre Mignard
 St John the Baptist
1688
oil on canvas
Prado, Madrid

Charles Le Brun
Adoration of the Shepherds
1689
oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris