Troubadour style

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
René d'Anjou and Palamède de Forbin
, c. 1827, a typically inconsequential anecdotal scene, in this case commissioned by a descendant of Forbin, whose features conveniently were recorded on a relief.

Taking its name from medieval

Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de Berry. In architecture the style was an exuberant French equivalent to the Gothic Revival of the Germanic and Anglophone countries. The style related to contemporary developments in French literature, and music, but the term is usually restricted to painting and architecture.[2]

History

Henri III of France

The rediscovery of medieval civilization was one of the intellectual curiosities of the beginning of the 19th century, with much input from the

Ancien Régime
and its institutions, rites (the coronation ceremony dated back to the 16th century) and the medieval churches in which family ceremonies occurred.

Even while exhuming the remains of the kings and putting on the market a multitude of objects, works of art and elements of medieval architecture, the revolutionaries brought them back to life, it could be said. The

Société Centrale des Architectes
and make Troubador-style architecture possible.

Jean-Baptiste Goyet, Héloïse et Abailard, oil on copper, 1829.

The resurgence of Christian feeling and in Christianity in the arts, with the publication in 1800 of Le Génie du Christianisme ('the Genius of Christianity'), played a major role in favour of edifying painting, sculpture and literature, often inspired by religion.

Artists and writers rejected the neo-antique rationalism of the French Revolution and turned towards a perceived glorious Christian past. The progress of the history and archaeology in the course of the 18th century began to bear fruit, at first, in painting. Paradoxically these painters of the past were unaware of the primitives of French painting, finding it too academic and not sufficiently filled with anecdote.

Napoleon himself did not disdain this artistic current: he took as his emblem the golden beehive on the grave of the

Bonaparte visiting the plague-victims of Jaffa by Antoine-Jean Gros was read as a modern re-envisgaing of the thaumaturgical kings[by whom?
]).

Literature

Public interest in the Middle Ages in literature first manifested itself in France and above all England. In France, this came with the adaptation and publication from 1778 of ancient chivalric romances by the

Waverley Novels of Walter Scott were hugely popular across Europe, and a major influence on both painting and French novelists such as Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo
.

Painting

Pierre-Henri Révoil and Michel Philibert Genod
, 1845

In painting, the troubadour style was represented by

academic painting. The transition can be seen in the work of Paul Delaroche
.

Saint-Petersburg

Arguably the first troubadour painting was presented at the

Fleury-Richard, Valentine of Milan weeping for the death of her husband,[5] a subject which had come to the artist during a visit to the "musée des monuments français", a museum of French medieval monuments. A tomb from this museum was included in the painting as that of the wife. Thanks to its moving subject matter, the painting was an enormous success – seeing it, David
cried "This resembles nothing anyone else has done, it's a new effect of colour; the figure is charming and full of expression, and this green curtain thrown across this window renders the illusion complete". Compositions lit from the back of the scene, with the foreground in semi-darkness, became rather a trademark of the early years of the style.

Fragonard's painting of François Premier reçu chevalier par Bayard (Francis I knighted by Bayard, Salon of 1819) has to be read not as a rediscovery of a medieval past, but as a memory of a recent monarchic tradition.[citation needed]

Examples

  • Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret, Aretino in the studio of Tintoretto, Salon of 1822.
  • Madame Cheradame, née Bertaud, The Education of Saint Louis.
  • Michel Martin Drölling, The Last Communion of Marie-Antoinette, Paris, Conciergerie.
  • Louis Ducis, Le Tasse reading a passage from his poem Jerusalem Delivered to Princess Éléonore d’Este, formerly in the collection of the Empress Joséphine. Arenenberg, Musée Napoléonien.
  • Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, Don Juan, Zerlina and Lady Elvira, Clermont-Ferrand, Musée des Beaux-arts.
  • Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, The time approaches.
  • Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard, François Premier armé chevalier par Bayard (Francis I knighted by Bayard), Meaux, Musée Bossuet.
  • Baron François Gérard, The Recognition of the Duke of Anjou as King of Spain, Château de Chambord.
  • Hortense de Beauharnais, The Knight's Departure c.1812, Château de Compiègne, originally at the château de Pierrefonds.
  • Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Francesco da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, frame designed by Claude-Aimé Chenavard, (1789–1838), Angers, musée des Beaux-arts.
  • Jean-Baptiste Isabey, A couple descending the staircase of the tourelle at the château d’Harcourt, Salon de 1827.
  • Alexandre Menjaud, Francis I and "la Belle Ferronnière", 1810.
  • Saint Germain l'Auxerrois
    , copy at Toulouse, musée de la Médecine.
  • Pierre Révoil,
    • René d’Anjou passing the night at the château of Palamède de Forbin, commissioned by the comte de Forbin, a descendant of René d’Anjou.
    • The Tourney, 1812, Lyon, musée des Beaux-arts;
    • The convalescence of Bayard, 1817, Paris, musée du Louvre;
  • Empress Joséphine
    . Inherited from Hortense de Beauharnais.
  • Louis Rubio
    , The unlucky Loves of Francesca da Rimini, 1832.
  • Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie, The Tragic Love of Francesca da Rimini, 1812.

Reaction

Reaction to this genre, as to the Pre-Raphaelites in England, has been mixed. It can be seen as overly sentimental or unrealistically nostalgic, treating its subjects in a way "later associated with Hollywood costume dramas."[6] To its proponents, the archaic details were regarded as a rallying cry for a new, localized nationalism, purged of classical (or neo-classical) and Roman influence.[7] The small size of many of the canvases was considered a reference to Northern, primitive painting, devoid of Italian influence.[8] To others, the small canvas sizes represent the artworks' insignificance and lack of vigor. All the brass, gilding, carving and inlaid historical detail of the headboards of the world could not redeem such objects as anything other than interior decoration.[9]

Architecture

Chateau de Beauregard, Calvados, 1864

A fashion for medieval architecture may be seen throughout 19th century Europe, originating in England, and a blooming of the

1848 French Revolution,[10]
it continued (or re-emerged) in architecture, the decorative arts, literature and theatre.

Troubador buildings

Decorative arts

Main article: Gothic Revival decorative arts
Museum of Decorative Arts
, Paris

Besides fine arts and architecture, the style also manifested in furniture, metalworks, ceramics and other decorative arts during the 19th century. In France, it was the first reaction against the hegemony of

Louis-Philippe period (1830-1848), Gothic Revival motifs start to appear in France, together with revivals of the Renaissance and of Rococo. During these two periods, the vogue for medieval things led craftsmen to adopt Gothic decorative motifs in their work, such as bell turrets, lancet arches, trefoils, Gothic tracery and rose windows
.

Troubador objects

Notes

  1. ^ Havard, Henri, La Hollande pittoresque, Vol. 2 of Les frontières menacées: Voyage dans les provinces de Frise, Groningue, Drenthe, Overyssel, Gueldre et Limbourg, 1876, Plon, google books
  2. ^ Palmer
  3. ^ Palmer
  4. ^ Palmer
  5. ^ Palmer
  6. ISBN 978-0-19-860476-1
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0-8108-7473-2
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0-312-22975-7
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-517-58396-8
    .
  10. ^ Palmer

References

  • Palmer, Allison Lee, Historical Dictionary of Romantic Art and Architecture, pp. 219–220, 2011, Scarecrow Press,
    ISBN 0810874733, 780810874732, google books

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Troubadour style.
  • Aux sources de l'ethnologie française, l'
    Benedictines of Saint-Maur
    .

Painting

  • Exhibition catalogue, Le Style Troubadour, Bourg-en-Bresse, musée de Brou 1971.
  • Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, La Peinture Troubadour, deux artistes lyonnais, Pierre Révoil (1776–1842), Fleury Richard (1777–1852),
    Arthéna
    , Paris, 1980.
  • Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, "Tableaux Troubadour", Revue du Louvre, n° 5/6, 1983, pages 411–413.
  • François Pupil, Le Style Troubadour ou la nostalgie du bon vieux temps, Nancy, Presses. Universitaires de Nancy, 1985.
  • Guy Stair Sainty (editor), Romance and Chivalry: History and Literature Reflected in Early Nineteenth-Century French Painting, Stair Sainty Mathiesen Gallery, New York, 1996.
  • Maïté Bouyssy (editor), "Puissances du gothique", Sociétés & Représentations, n° 20, décembre 2005, edited by Bertrand Tillier.

Literature

Architecture

  • Guy Massin-Le Goff, Châteaux néo-gothiques en Anjou, Edition Nicolas Chaudun, Paris, 2007.

Fashion

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