Medievalism & Romanticism in France (2): Painting & the Gothic Style.
The deeds and adventures of heroes from the middle-ages permeate the literature of the early nineteenth-century, most conspicuously in the novels of Scott. In France, the Gothic sensibility is present in writers like Chateaubriand with his celebration of the Catholic religion, Genius of Christianity, not to mention his novels and memoirs where one deduces he prefers women to wear veils, lurk in cemeteries and possess the kind of sorrowful blanched face seen in many Gothic situations. Chateaubriand’s aesthetic view of the French Revolution as a transitional movement in style that bears a resemblance to the fusion of classic and Gothic art found in the time of Louis XII, sounds suspiciously like Lenoir’s own manipulation of art history in the Museé des Monuments. But Chateaubriand’s is more of a metaphor drawing on art history; the Florentine classical style is full of optimism, hope for the future; the Gothic, sweetly moribund taste evoking the sombre reality of the violence of everyday life in the French Revolution with death forever at one’s side. And then in the next generation of the romantics there is Victor Hugo with his tales set in medieval Paris, especially Notre-Dame, the most famous cathedral in Paris. Cathedrals themselves became encyclopaedic symbols of the middle- ages in France. As for the painters, the middle-ages provided inspiration for scenes full of atmosphere and religious mystery as well as medieval battles and the history of the French kings. The latter were known as paintings in the “troubadour style” named after French medieval minstrels whose poetry transmitted French history through its songs.
A group of artists in David’s workshop, Révoil, Fleury-Richard, Granet and others assiduously studied the monuments in Lenoir’s museum which inspired them to inaugurate this blend of genre and history painting.[1] Francois Fleury-Richard painted such subjects from French history as Francois I as a child presented to Louis XII; but he was also proficient in the other Gothic branch which represented monks and clerics in cavernous, dim interiors to enhance the sense of mystery. These genres betray interest in Gothic architecture, especially religious buildings. A more famous pupil, François Granet- the subject of one of Ingres’s finest romantic portraits- did one of the best of these monkish scenes of Capuchins which was mistaken by one official for a work by Ingres, much to Delacroix’s amusement.[2] As well as being thoroughly versed in the literature of romanticism Delacroix himself was interested in Gothic architecture. Not only did he tour ecclesiastical buildings in Northern Europe, but he also planned to write an essay on the Gothic, which sadly never came to fruition. To his advantage, one of his cousins owned the medieval abbey of Valmont which may have served as a backdrop to some gloomy interiors in Delacroix’s paintings, like the 1831 Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid, based on a scene from the Anglican priest Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, a Gothic shocker published in 1820.[3]
[1] E. J. Delecluze, David, son École et son temps, (Didier 1855, Editions Macula, Paris, 1983), 244. Delecluze calls this « genre anecdotique ».
[2] Delacroix, Journal, 14th Feb, 1849.
[3] Paul Joannides, “Delacroix and Modern Literature” in the Cambridge Guide to Delacroix (Cambridge, 2001), 134; Nina Athanassoglou- Kallmeyer, “Eugene Delacroix and Popular Culture”, p. 56, in the same volume.
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