Le banquet des affamés (Folio) (French Edition)

Before entering the atelier of Le Bas, he had received lessons from Gueret and from Louis Watteau, a professor at the Academy of Lille, who lost his post for having dared to introduce drawing from the nude. The faithful interpreter of four of the designs of Moreau in " Le Monument du costume " " N'ayez pas peur, ma bonne amie," " Les Delices de la maternite," " L'Accord parfait," and " Le Souper fin" , Helman also engraved " Le Roman dangereux," after Lavreince — a pretty print eminently characteristic of the eighteenth century. Like most of the artists of his day, Helman accorded a favourable welcome to the doctrines of the Revolution, though never reaching that pitch of frenzied exaltation to which some of his contemporaries attained.

At this period of his life he engraved certain of the designs of Watteau of Lille the son of his old professor. This Watteau, whose work in no way resembles that of his great namesake, has left some curious pictures of revolutionary days in his own city, notably " Lille pendant le bombardement," engraved by Masquelier.

Before the Revolution, Watteau of Lille had been a painter of panels, fans, and Sedan chairs. His pictures, a good number of which hang in the museum of his native city, are by no means devoid of interest. But as a book illustrator he did not shine, his illustrations for the Decameron frangais and the large edition of Les CEuvres de Metastases lacking imagination and accuracy of line. Jacques Gabriel de St-Aubin, brother of the designer of " Le Bal pare " and " Le Concert," executed some valuable engravings in quite another style.

Amongst these are the "Spectacle des Tuileries ," " Le Char- latan," and six engravings representing a fire at the " Foire de St-Germain," which are both scarce and of great interest, never failing to command a large price when they come into the market. This is a conspicuous instance of his power of rendering light and shade, the effect being pro- duced by the very simplest means.

Of Charles Germain de St-Aubin, the elder of the brothers, not much need here be said, his " Papillonneries humaines," a series of fanciful little studies of exceeding rarity, being unlikely to fall across the path of any English collector. Like Moreau, Augustin de St-Aubin was ruined by the social upheaval of , and reduced almost to starvation. He attempted to gain a living in classical and historical portraiture of a purely conventional kind.

A pathetic letter, one of the last he ever wrote, shows to what a pitch of poverty he had come ; for in it, after detailing his ill-health and other troubles, he entreats that he may be spared the 26 FRENCH PRINTS supreme humiliation of being obliged to affix short descriptions beneath a series of the Kings of France from Pharamond to Napoleon, for the execution of which he had obtained an order. The St-Aubin of , the year of his death, ill, miserable, and impecunious, was altogether a different creature from the light- hearted lover of " Comptez sur mes serments.

The effect which the great convulsion of produced in the world of art was almost without exception of a disastrous nature. For the most part style itself was transformed. The extraordinary change which came over artists and engravers after the collapse of the ancien regime is particularly exemplified in the case of Queverdo, who before designed prints such as " La Jouissancc," " Le Repos," " Le Coucher " and " Le Lever de la mariee " these two last of course being quite distinct from the prints of the same name after Baudouin and Dugoure , " Le dangereux Modele," and " Les Accords du mariage," the engravers of which were Dambrun, Patas, Romanet and others.

In addition to these he himself designed and engraved an allegorical composition entitled " Louis XVI. A prolific designer of vignettes, Queverdo particularly excelled in the illustration of the little almanacks which have now become so valuable and rare. An especially curious ex- ample of this side of his work is " Le nouveau Calendrier de la Republique fran9aise pour la deuxieme annee.

The chief engraver of the designs of Queverdo was Dambrun, who did a great deal of work in connection with the almanacks mentioned above. His name, however, is more generally remembered on account of the pretty engraving called " La Partie de Wisch," designed by Moreau, which he contributed to " Le Monument du costume. Much of the charm of these is in certain cases derived from the beautiful ornamentation of the interiors, the details of which are often copied by the decorators of the present day.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the somewhat solemn art of the time of Louis XIV. The nobles lavished their resources on every form of luxury, whilst all the arts of pleasure were employed to glorify the fleeting and frivolous liaisons which society delighted in calling love.

The day of Boucher and Fragonard had come — painters in close sympathy with the amorous fancies of a somewhat voluptuous epoch, which revelled in an atmosphere of refined pleasure and elegant sensuality. Prettiness was its essential characteristic, and dominated every- thing — dress, furniture, architecture, pictures, prints, as well as manners and customs. Pretti- ness indeed was the very soul of that age. The original painting from which this beautiful print was engraved is in Paris, in the possession of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a replica known as " The Swing " being one of the treasures of the Wallace Collec- tion.

In the latter the hat of the little ladv on the swing is devoid of plumes. The subject was the idea of the Baron de St- Julien, who in the first instance sent for Doyen, a painter of religious subjects, and told him that he desired a picture of his mistress being swung in a swing, whilst he himself should be represented in rapturous contemplation. Doyen, however, declared such a composition to be out of his line ; nevertheless he suggested that little Loves catching the lady's shoes would be a graceful addition, and added that Fragonard was the very man to carry out such a pretty idea.

De Launay has left many admirable render- ings of the work of Baudouin and Lavreince. With him we may still wander in its beautiful salons, and even into those chambres a coucher, where many a dainty marquise was wont to hold court. Love plays a considerable part in his compo- sitions, but with him the little god is always restrained, always a grand seigneur suiting himself to the best society.

Besides his masterpieces amongst which, as has been said, " Les Hasards heureux de I'escarpolette" takes the first place , De Launay executed a number of other prints, which are for the most part charming. He was particularly skilful in his handling of groups, and his graver appears to have possessed the peculiar faculty of being in close sympathy with the subject which it portrayed. For renderings of large portraits his aptitude seems to have been small, little vignettes for book illustrations being more suited to his especial gifts.

Some of these indeed are veritable gems. An expert in the command of light, De Launay was also a singularly even engraver, and one always displaying conscientiousness of treat- ment combined with great facility of execution. For him difficulties did not exist, as may be realised from an examination of his treatment ot many a scene which, at first sight having the appearance of simplicity itself, is really the result of careful and masterly execution. Of another nature is the work of the two Cochins, father and son, which has many affinities to the compositions popular in a pre- ceding age.

The " Ceremonie du manage du Dauphin " and the "Decoration de la salle de spectacle" are sufficient proof of his talents in this direction. Cochin was a man whose industry was un- bounded, and the number of portraits he designed was very large. At one time or other, indeed, almost every one of importance in the France of his day posed before this artist. As a designer and engraver of ball tickets and other similar trifles, Cochin was absolutely unrivalled.

It may be added that two different sorts of tickets were issued — one for the Porte et gradins a droite, which is very fine, and another for the Porte et gradins a gauche, which is much inferior. The great historical engravings, such as were executed by the Cochins, appeal more specially to the student and historian than to the admirer of Pestampe galante, who seeks rather for prints epitomising the existence of that pleasure-loving France which perished so utterly in the ghastly days of the " Terror.

Baudouin's art, if at times less restrained than that of Lavreince, is always pretty, and frequently full of refined FRENCH PRINTS 33 beauty, whilst his graceful figures betoken great faculties of observation, and are, for the most part, animated with genuine life. Baudouin was a hard worker — work and plea- sure killed him, for he died, as a contemporary critic says," epuise par le travail et le plaisir. A writer of some talent, he wrote dissertations upon subjects such as UEtat des arts chez les Grecs and De F influence des climats, des mceurs, et des gouvernements sur P architecture.

It is not by these, however, that his memory still lives, but rather by his exquisite rendering of such designs as " La Toilette " and " L'Enleve- ment nocturne. The engraving is rendered the more attractive by the delightful border or frame, the work of Cochin. This was published in , and was dedicated to the engraver's friend Basan. As an engraver of vignettes for Le Parnasse des dames and hes Fables de Dorat, and other books, Ponce did a great deal of excellent work.

Like most artists of that day, he appears to have hailed the coming of the Revolution, being gazetted Chef de Bataillon of the Garde Nationale, and writing several political pamphlets of an advanced character. Neverthe- less, on the return of the Bourbons, Ponce, who had been engraver to the Comte d'Artois, was once more established in his old post. Living on for some years, he died as late as Another engraver who was a favourite inter- preter of the work of Baudouin was Jean Baptiste Simonet, whose three most celebrated prints are " Le Coucher de la mariee," " Le Modele honnete," and " La Soiree des Tuileries.

Diderot in particular pretended to be scandalised at the selection and treatment of such a subject. Nevertheless this pretty composition is entirely inoffensive, the engraving being rightly con- sidered one of the glories of the French eighteenth-century school. Begun by Moreau le jeune, who etched the plate, Simonet finished it with great discretion and delicacy of touch — Moreau himself being so pleased with the result that from that date he gave Simonet many more plates to engrave. Amongst a number of other engravers who, foreigners by birth, became Frenchmen from choice, Jean Georges Wille Wille the elder occupies a prominent place in the history of French eighteenth-century engraving.

Born at Konigsberg, in the territory of Hesse-Darmstadt, his natural aptitude for art led to his being sent as a youth into a gunsmith's shop, there to engrave the mounts which decorated the firearms of the day. Determined to try his luck in Paris, he arrived in that capital with another young engraver, Schmidt, whom he chanced to meet upon his way.

The meeting in question was an extremely fortunate one for Wille, as it later on procured him an introduction to Rigaud, after which his prosperity soon became assured. The fashionable world took him into favour, and it became a rule for all patrons of the arts to call upon Wille during their sojourn in Paris.

He was in constant communication with people of taste all over the civilised world ; the English engravers, Woollctt, Vivares, Ryland, and Smith were his friends, whilst Byrne was his pupil.

In Alderman Boydell with his daughter and niece came to call upon him, whilst aristocratic amateurs, belonging to all nations, were constant visitors at his house. He was also in close touch with all the chief art dealers, and was perpetually engaged in negotiations connected with their business.

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On the other hand, the old engraver took the trouble to go and view the corpse of him whom he terms the unfortunate and unhappy Marat and whose assassination he deplored. An ardent and enlightened collector, he was a constant attendant at sales. The catalogue of his own sale, which took place at the Hotel de Bullion, is, it may be added, of considerable rarity. To the end of his life, however, Wille retained his collection of coins and medals, to which he continued to add even during the days of the Revolution, a social convulsion which seems in no way to have affected the old man's comfort or prosperity.

It is to be regretted that Wille, though pos- sessed of considerable talent, should have repro- duced so much second-class work, a number of prints by him after Dietrich of Dresden and others, including the younger Wille, being of very moderate interest. One of his best pro- ductions is " Le Concert de famille," after Schalken, though " Les Musiciens ambulants," after Dietrich, is generally considered his master- piece.

Both of these prints are of considerable value, especially in the proof states, which are extremely difficult to obtain. The most spirited portrait, however, engraved by Wille is that of the Marechal de Saxe, after Rigaud — a superb piece of work which, together with the " Prince de Galles," after Tocque, is entirely free from the somewhat metallic appearance which occasionally mars this engraver's productions.

In connection with Wille it should be re- marked that his pupils as a rule manifested a tendency towards the reproduction of large portraits and pictures, whereas those of Le Bas seem to have shown a decided preference for the vignette. Wille exercised a great influence over his pupils, many of whom became excellent engravers. Bervic, whose real name was Balvay, did not yield to the cult of the estampe galante which prevailed towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Adhering to the classical tradition of a more serious age, he took immense pains in the engraving of his work, and although he lived to the age of sixty-six, he completed only sixteen plates, not infrequently devoting several years to one alone. The portrait of Louis XVI. It is said to be about the best of French royal portraits, and is in considerable request with collectors. During the Revolution, Bervic, warned that the authorities were about to pay him a visit with a view to destroying the plate of this portrait, broke it up himself, but many years later the pieces, which had been preserved, were put to- gether and a new set of impressions were struck.

These, however, are not equal to the original prints, and bear traces of the reparation to which the plate was subjected. Of the two great amateurs, Mariette and the Comte de Caylus, this is not the place to speak, the work of both these distinguished patrons of art not coming within the scope of this book. Mariette, as a print collector and as an historian of engraving, has been aptly termed " le premier des amateurs Fran9ais. Artists, publishers, and engravers feasted and supped together, whilst most of them flung away the sums earned by the exercise of their talents without the slightest hesitation or restraint.

For them the spirit of economy did not exist ; children as regards money, a full purse served but to gratify the caprice of the moment. Ever ready to give or to lend, and careless of the morrow, they trusted in a future which brought to the majority but poverty and woe. Ill-luck, indeed, seems to have dogged the steps of the originators of colour-engraving in particular. A conspicuous instance of this was Jean Baptiste Le Prince, inventor of the process known as la gravure au lavis. Born at Metz in , Le Prince, after taking lessons in painting in his native city, resolved to make his way to Paris, there to study under some great painter of the day.

The young artist, extravagant and pressed for money, married, when only eighteen, a woman of forty, whose fortune he at once set to work to spend. The inevitable crisis soon occurred, and Le Prince, leaving his wife, went to Italy, where he did a certain amount of work. Soon, however, he was back in Paris ; but again, harassed by creditors, he set out for Russia, his brothers being already at Moscow, where they followed a musical career.

Going by sea from Holland, the ship on which he had sailed was plundered by English pirates, but Le Prince, who played the fiddle well, became so popular owing to his musical gifts, that the corsairs allowed him to retain his baggage. After spending five busy years in Russia, Le Prince returned once more to Paris, where, in , his " Bapteme Russe" gained him admission into the Academy. Three years later, after a number of experiments, he originated the process of la gravure au lavis, which produced facsimiles of extraordinary merit.

These, for the most part, depicted scenes which he had sketched whilst in Russia. Le Prince died when forty-seven years old, worn out, it is said, by dissipation and worry. Never- theless he had been a hard worker, and at one time and another made a good deal of money, though this never prevented his affairs being perpetually embarrassed. Before long the new method was public property, many engravers adopting and improv- ing the process with excellent results. Amongst these was Francois Janinet, who applied colour instead of the wash which had been brushed over the varnished and etched plate by Le Prince, and set up the claim of being the only engraver who had discovered the secret of this sort of reproduction.

The first essay of Janinet in this direction is " L'Operateur," a little round coloured print representing a mountebank. Two of the best of these are "La Comparaison " and "L'Aveu difficile" — veritable triumphs of the colour-engraver's art. Another masterpiece is " L'Indiscretion " see Frontispiece. Besides being an engraver, Janinet aspired to fame as an aeronaut, constructing with the Abbe Miolan a large balloon, which, however, entirely failed to justify the confidence of its makers. In July the two inventors announced that an ascent would take place from the garden of the Luxembourg, and a huge crowd assembled to witness the triumph of the artistic aeronaut.

Everything went wrong, however, and instead of soaring to the skies, the balloon caught fire, and Janinet and his friends were obliged to fly for their lives. The fury of the crowd on this occasion appears to have frightened the engraver so much that he totally abandoned ballooning, for we hear no more of any further efforts of his in this direction.

Though Janinet was not, as he claimed to be, the only engraver who had discovered the art of producing colour-prints, he undoubtedly did invent a process which in his hands gave results possessing considerable charm — his portrait of Marie Antoinette, for instance, is a masterpiece. With the outbreak of the Revolution, this engraver, like the majority of his contemporaries, lost his talent, the compositions executed by him becoming cold, laboured, and devoid of artistic merit. Nevertheless Janinet was not, like Debucourt, a thorough student and recorder of manners or costume, but succeeded more by the prettiness of his compositions than by any accurate power of observation.

His command of colour is particularly shown in " La Toilette de Venus" , in which he has marvellously rendered the opalescent tones and the pearl-like rosiness of tint so dear to the painter Boucher. Another chef-d ceuvre of colour- printing is the portrait of Mademoiselle Bertin, the modiste of Marie Antoinette. Janinet is most successful when dealing with subjects after Lavreince, whose peculiar form of art was specially suited and adapted for repro- duction in engravings in colour.

Deficient in power when rendering full and strong hues, Lavreince was a complete master of delicate tones. Faint blues and violets, roses and feathers, all of which were well within his scope, were faithfully shown by Janinet, who brought colour- engraving very near to perfection. For the production of prints such as " L'ln- discretion," " La Comparaison," and the like, real artistic feeling was necessary, as well as great manual dexterity. Another beautiful colour-print by this engraver, after Huet, is " Les Sentiments de la nation.

Born in Frankfort in , this engraver, after going to Rome and Amsterdam, came to London, where he hoped to apply his process of colour-printing to the reproduction of pictures. The colour-printing of Le Blond consisted in superposing three plates, red, yellow, and blue, at least one of them being mezzotinted. These were afterwards increased to four or five. The method he employed was very expensive and did not prove at all a commercial success, the inventor dying a poor man at the age of seventy-one.

The experiments of Le Blond, however, were followed up by Jacques Gauthier Dagoty of Marseilles, who, an anatomist by profession, became an engraver in the hope of making a fortune. His method was to employ only the four colours, black, blue, yellow, red. This invention was undoubtedly an important one, but nevertheless, with some few exceptions, Dagoty was not conspicuously successful, his prints being faulty in design, whilst the colouring was too often confused and faint.

A portrait of Madame du Barry, with Zamor her black page, executed in Dagoty's style by his son, Edouard, is, however, a beautiful work of art. Under Boucher's directions, Demarteau produced facsimiles of quite extra- ordinary perfection ; " Une femme couchee sur le ventre," a pendant " Nymph," " Une femme qui dort avec son enfant," and others of a similar nature were exhibited in the Salon of The work of Demarteau has of late years been rising in value, and his pleasing little imitations of pastel now command a certain price, according to the subjects which they portray.

In a great many cases Demarteau dedicated his facsimiles in red chalk to rich financiers who were profitable clients. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a considerable interest was taken in the various processes of colour-engraving, this form of repro- duction being especially adapted for the rendering of the gouaches of Baudouin, Lavreince, and other artists dealing with the lighter sides of life.

Collectors of that day realised that a pleasant diversity was produced by the inclusion of a certain number of coloured prints in their portfolios ; a large quantity of etchings, line engravings, and stipple, tending somewhat to a monotony which needed relief. Nevertheless, too many coloured prints in the same style do not produce a good effect ; it must also not be forgotten that, in some cases, many of those representing shepherdesses and nymphs were not intended for decorative purposes at all, being executed merely as studies for students learning to draw.

This especially applies to the work of Demarteau, whose process of reproduction was frequently devoted to such an aim. Louis Bonnet was another engraver who also copied the crayon designs of Boucher, in the imitation of which he sometimes even surpassed Demarteau.

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He it was who invented what may be termed " Pastel Engraving. In addi- tion to this he was also a dealer, and published in 1 76 1 a catalogue, now of the most extreme rarity. His most characteristic prints are the large heads of women executed by him after Lagrenee or Boucher. These are in imitation of pastels, and very cleverly done. His studies in red chalk, after Boucher, are also excellent ; indeed his process of reproduction might have been invented specially for the imitation of Boucher's designs, which they rendered with far more fidelity than any line engraving could ever do.

It must be added that the prints inscribed " Bonnet direxit " were for the most part produced in his atelier by inferior en- gravers for foreign exportation. Amongst these were a few set in a frame of gold, a somewhat meretricious form of embellishment which has of late years been rather sought after by certain collectors, who have run up heads of women mounted in this way to a considerable price. Towards the close of the eighteenth century in France it was the aspiration of every good engraver, especially when working in colour, to assimilate his style as closely as might be to that of the design which was to be reproduced, breaking away where possible from the ordinary method of merely making a copy, by means of the inven- tion of some new and more satisfactory process.

Here indeed was a true artist, who at his best successfully defied all imitation. Eclipsing Janinet and other rivals, Debucourt by a clever superposition of plates produced a form of colour- print which is totally different from other com- positions executed in anything of the same style. There is a special delicacy and refinement of touch about the engravings of this master which strike a distinctive note.

Never has colour- printing been carried to such perfection as in the best of his work. Born in , of a good middle-class family, Louis Philibert Debucourt does not appear to have ever found that opposition to his adoption of art as a career which is frequently the lot of youths in such a station of life, his father being, above all, a man of free and advanced ideas, who, originally an huissier a cheval at the Chatelet, joined in the revolutionary movement with the greatest enthusiasm. In the year he was procureur fiscal at La Chapelle Saint-Denis ; and a requisition of his still exists, calling upon the Parisian electors to furnish two hundred muskets, wherewith to arm some soldiers under his command.

The youthful Debucourt had always mani- fested a considerable taste for painting, and in due course entered the studio of Vien. Here, however, he did not remain long, being apparently out of sympathy with the school of painting to which the precursor of David belonged. When twenty-six years old, Debucourt married a daughter of the sculptor Mouchy. His wedded La Croisee By Debucourt Second state, after substitution of the children for a young man on the ladder From an Engrawng in the possession of Mr.

Daniell, 32 Cranboum St. Jean Baptiste Debu- court, to his father's great grief, died at the age of twenty, having in his short life shown promise of great artistic aptitude. Jazet, who entered his new relative's studio with a view to learning aquatint. A picture by Debucourt exists of his second wife, which shows her as a woman of about forty, with an exceedingly clever face.

In her hand is a letter, on which is written, " Mon amie. Such was very far from being the case, for in Debucourt was manifested the almost perfect type of the artistic temperament, which, thoroughly careless of the morrow, contemptu- ous of economy and impatient of control, yields easily to many a passing caprice. For prudence, economy, and foresight Debucourt ever enter- tained a deep and profound contempt, deeming apparently that they were considerations quite unworthy of entering into an artist's life.

A man of no very stable convictions, Debucourt threw himself with some ardour into the revolutionary movement, and he who, as De Bucourt, had painted " Humanite et bienfaisance du Roi," produced as Debucourt his correct name, by the way the " Calendrier republicain I'an H. He appears in his political con- victions to have had much in common with the celebrated Vicar of Bray. A staunch royalist under Louis XVI. Later on, however, when Napoleon assumes the dictatorship of France, he cordially acquiesces in the new order of things, publishing " La Paix — a Buonaparte Pacificateur," and, later on, a picture of the great emperor.

The restoration then once more arouses his royalist sentiments, and in due course we find him issuing prints of " Louis XVIII. Compare, for instance, "Les deux Baisers" the original picture, " La feinte Caresse," was exhibited by Debucourt in the Salon of with such a production as " Les Gastronomes affames," which is indeed more akin to an inferior Bartolozzi than to anything else.

A good impression is now very difficult to find, as the print has greatly in- creased in value within the last few years. In 1 88 1 a second state fetched three thousand francs ; but in and third states were sold at auction for two thousand, and seventeen hundred and fifty. At the present time, of course, a far higher figure would be bid. The best work of Debucourt abounds in a grace, a distinction, which is totally lacking once the nineteenth century has fairly launched itself upon its course of years.

In his own particular line Debucourt at first easily distanced all rivals, the lightness of effect which he managed to extract from his copper-plates being perfectly marvellous. Above all he obtained a certain satinity of tone if such an expression may be used which no other artist has ever succeeded in producing. Of the first named there are five, and of the latter four, states. This latter print, curiously enough, had itself been produced as a pendant to " La Noce de village," by Descourtis, after Taunay. Four states exist, of which the fourth has Emprime corrected to Imprime.

In the third state the numbers are shown on the shops , , , , , whilst in the second No. This print is said to abound in portraits, and in some cases personal spite is declared to have been gratified by the artist, notably in the portrait of the dwarf. The pendant to this " Promenade " is " La Promenade du jardin du Palais-Royal," also dated , unsigned, and very generally especially in England attributed to Debucourt. Of this there is a small reduction, which in 1 , at the Miihlbacher sale, fetched two hundred francs ; but since then its value has, of course, increased.

Noattempt is here made at caricature, such as is evident in " La Promenade de la galerie " ; indeed, the whole composition is a poetic and true picture of Parisian society as it existed in the year Beneath the chestnut trees which furnished Camille Des Moulins with his revolutionary cockade, we see the crowd of careless pleasure-seekers, amongst them the Due de Chartres stretched out upon four chairs, ogling the frail beauties who found in those gardens a convenient rendezvous.

Every type of pleasure-loving Parisian is here carefully studied, the grouping of the figures being admir- able. The whole print, so highly characteristic of the epoch, constitutes an artistic record which is, in short, a very poem of elegance. Five states of this engraving exist, of which the first in colours has frequently fetched over francs, whilst even in an example was sold in Paris for francs. The " Promenade de la galerie du Palais " and the " Promenade publique " constitute Debucourt's chief claim to artistic immortality ; for in these two compositions he has bequeathed to us a fascinating picture of the amusing side of the life of his time, when a throng of pleasure-seekers were wont to make their headquarters in the gardens of the Palais- Royal, which to-day, except for an occasional belated tourist, are quite silent and deserted.

Indeed, the Frenchman's work bears many traces of having gathered a good deal of inspiration from the English school. In 1 79 1 Debucourt placed all his talent at the service of the Revolution, and produced " L'Almanach national dedie aux amis de la Constitution," one of the most artistic of the revolutionary publications. In it appears a medallion containing a portrait of Louis XVI. The little groups are designed with much cleverness and spirit, the whole com- position being of course Utopian in the extreme.

A French soldier, enfolding an Englishman in a brotherly embrace, is shown inviting a Turk and an Indian to join the fraternal confederation, whilst aristocracy is pictured in a very unpleasant light. Perhaps the gem of this composition is the revolutionary Press, which is represented by a charming girl selling patriotic papers and broadsheets, whilst she treads underfoot the sheets issued by the enemies of liberty.

With the close of the eighteenth century comes the annihilation of this artist's talent. The " Almanach national " was the last work of Debucourt as a master of gravure-gouache, his subsequent productions being of quite a different quality. Step by step he glides from gaiety into buffoonery, later on to border very closely upon caricature itself, too often, alas! This is a very good print, and every detail is well brought out. For some time before the publication of this composition Debucourt had become little more than the interpreter of the work of his friend Carle Vernet, who, it must be said, was fully conscious of the debt which he owed to his engraver.

The two collaborating together produced a whole series of prints dealing with military costume, etc. Hence- forth he appears to have been perfectly content to sink the undoubted originality and talent which he had so often shown himself to possess. In he left Passy, where he had long resided and where he had contracted his second marriage, and proceeded to take up his residence in the suburbs of Paris, near the Barriere de la Chapelle.

Here for some years he lived a sort of country life after his own heart. He surrounded himself with pets, and his grounds teemed with rabbits, pigeons, and chickens, none of which were ever allowed to meet with that violent death which is their usual lot. In almost perfect freedom they lived out their lives, whilst Nature alone gave them the signal for retreat.

The garden was allowed to run wild, flowers blooming and fruits ripening as the seasons willed, while the children of the neighbourhood were accorded free licence to pluck whatever they might fancy. Jazet, where the old man con- tinued to work almost to the last day of his life, dying under the illusion, most delicately and honourably suggested to him by his relative, that he owed the comfort and comparative luxury with which he was surrounded to his own efforts as a still active artist. His death took place on the 22nd of September It is difficult to determine exactly what place in art should be accorded to Debucourt, for his talent was of an exceedingly uneven character, and much of his later work is quite execrable.

In any case, however, his name will always be remembered by reason of his prints of the Palais- Royal, which are veritable human documents. A French critic, M. Vaucaire, has, indeed, declared that in his opinion " La Promenade publique " alone is worth all the memoirs of its day, for it is the illustration to a book which there is no necessity to read, so fully does its life and colour furnish the material wherewith to reconstitute the epoch which Debucourt pictured.

As an engraver, Debucourt produced an immense number of prints from the designs of others than himself. Notably is this the case in the two beautiful colour-prints which indifferent modern reproductions have rendered generally familiar — " La Foire de village " and " La Noce de village," two of a set of four after Taunay. Descourtis, it may be added, executed but a very small number of engravings — twenty at most, and of these only six are of any particular value. He was a pupil of Janinet, and his style was much the same as that of his master.

His other productions, with the exception of " La Rixe " and " Le Tambourin " which complete the set of four mentioned above , are of little value. It should be added that un- coloured reductions of " La Foire de village " and " La Noce de village " exist. These are in considerable request. They then began to depict scenes connected with history and politics. Morret, who had engraved in colours a good many prints after Augustin de St-Aubin, Borel, Huet, and others, in executed a large colour-print after Swebach-Desfontaines, which deserves considerable attention. In the first state they wear Grenadier fur caps ; in the second, one has a Phrygian bonnet and the other a helmet.

Amongst other prints by Morret a very characteristic one is " L'heureux Pressentiment," which represents Marie Louise playing the piano whilst looking at a picture of Napoleon. Occa- sionally Morret in his post-revolutionary manner becomes grotesque. It may be added that two prints by this engraver, executed before the new order of things had come into being, are exces- sively rare. Though the Revolution was, as has been said, fatal to the prosperity of the great majority of French artists and engravers, some few were affected in a lesser degree, and amongst these was Louis Boilly, who continued to exhibit fine qualities of draughtsmanship and design long after the revolutionary storm had spent its force.

He died indeed as late as , having long out- lived the generation which he had pleased as a designer of sujets de boudoir during the pleasure- loving days of the ancien regime. During the Directoire, Boilly produced a number of compositions, of which a good many were executed by an engraver of no very great talent, named Petit. Prints such as " Defends- moi," " Tu saurais ma pensee," " Ah! On the other hand, certain coloured and uncoloured prints after Boilly have within recent years attained a considerable rise in value.

Amongst these must be mentioned "L'Optique," a coloured print by Cazenave ; " La douce Resistance," gracefully engraved by Tresca, and " Le Prelude de Nina," by Chaponnier, who also executed " L'Amant favorise " and " Le Bouquet cheri " after this artist. Nor must a curious composition by Bonnefoy, after Boilly, be over- looked. This is called "La Marche incroyable," modern impressions of which are quite common, though original ones are equally rare. The tendency of certain prints after Boilly, who was a fine draughtsman, is in some cases rather free.

The licence, indeed, in which he occasionally indulged, once nearly got him into serious trouble with the Comite du Salut Public. By good fortune he was warned in time, and at once set to work on a " Triomphe de Marat" — a composition which, together with some rather high-flown expressions of devotion to republican ideals, ensured his safety.

The work of Boilly is characterised by such a personal accent as to cause its almost immediate recognition by every one having the slightest acquaintance with this painter. The prolific producer of a very large number of small portraits, he perpetuated the features of many persons intimately connected with the Revolu- 62 FRENCH PRINTS tion, whilst in all probability others of almost equal historical importance remain unidentified in certain of his compositions. The young woman standing at a table with a little boy in "L'Optique" reproduced opposite is supposed to be the second wife of Danton.

Mademoiselle Louise Gely had been a great friend of the first Madame Danton, who, almost with her dying breath, expressed a wish that her husband should marry this young girl of sixteen, to whom she knew him to be devoted. The family to which Mademoiselle Gely belonged was by no means sympathetic to such a match.

Imbued with all the traditions and beliefs which Danton sought to destroy, its members would only accord their consent on condition that a religious ceremony should be performed ; a condition to which there was every reason to believe Danton would never consent. Love, however, in him, as in the case of many other great men, easily triumphed over political convictions, and seeking out one of the recalcitrant Catholic priests who lay concealed in different parts of Paris, hoping to escape that death which the law voted by the would-be bridegroom and his associates had prescribed, Danton went through a religious ceremony secretly performed by the Abbe de Keravenan, who had previously heard the confession of this redoubtable pillar of the Convention.

After the death of the great tribune the second Madame Danton reassumed her maiden name and soon married again. Never, it is said, did she make any allusion to her first marriage. In the Musee Carnavalet, it may be added, are several Revolutionary portraits by Boilly of the very highest interest. An engraving of the latter picture by Cazenave exists. A couple of engravers who at the time of the Revolution produced a number of coloured prints dealing with public events were the elder and younger Le Vachez. Their work for the most part can hardly be called artistic.

The scandal of the famous Diamond Necklace, which did so much harm to the reputation of Marie Antoinette, afforded many engravers an opportunity of executing portraits of the principal personages implicated in this unsavoury affair. Chapuy also designed and engraved fourteen plates showing certain of the fashionable coiffures of his day. Two reductions of " L'Aveu difficile " entitled " La Reponse em- barassante," and another of " La Comparaison," as well as certain other prints, are worthy of attention. As Chapuy attempted to follow Janinet, so did Pierre Michel Alix seek to emulate Debucourt by making use of a number of plates, each bearing a different colour.

As an engraver of colour - prints, however, Alix was very far from attaining anything like the success achieved by his more celebrated contemporary. On the other hand this engraver produced a superb portrait of Marie Antoinette after Madame Vigee-Lebrun. This is one of the finest colour prints in existence. Perfectly impartial as regards political change, Alix executed a number of portraits representing various popular favourites.

Around the memory of this Jacobin, who voted for the death of the king whose portrait he himself had engraved, there yet lingers a certain romantic interest by reason of his close connection through his wife with Marceau, that general of whom Byron wrote: Madame Sergent, herself an engraver of talent, and the sister of the gallant soldier in question, so warmly appreciated this tribute as to write to Lord Byron, saying that his lines were to her a crown which would go down to posterity linked with the poet's name.

Secretly in love with a young girl, Marie Marceau Desgraviers, Sergent, who had come from his native city, Chartres, to Paris in order to learn engraving under Augustin de St-Aubin, returned after three years only to find that she whom he admired had become the wife of another, Mademoiselle Marceau having been married to a M. Seventeen years later, on the death of this husband, whose miscon- duct had caused Madame Cernel to seek refuge in a convent, Sergent at last realised the dream of his life, and was able to lead the love of his youth to the altar, afterwards taking her to Paris, where the couple in collaboration executed a number of engravings, for the most part portraits.

With the dawn of the Revolution, Sergent, deserting engraving for politics, became closely associated with the Jacobins and voted for the death of Louis XVI. He has, it may be added, also been accused of having had a share in the atrocities of the " Terror. It is, however, only just to say that he it was who preserved the monuments there from mutilation at the hands of certain ultra-Jacobins whose revolutionary zeal outran their respect for art.

Besides this service to posterity, Sergent is said to have recovered the Regent diamond which had been stolen from the garde meuble. About the year , Sergent, in collabora- tion with his wife, had executed a number of portraits in colour and aquatint. These were published by Blin and Le Vachez. The best print by Sergent alone is the coloured portrait of Marceau, which the engraver himself designed.

Other coloured prints by this engraver deserving of attention are — " Experience de Charles et Robert dans le jardin des Tuileries, i decembre ," and " Descente de I'aerostat dans la prairie de Nesles " these deal with the ballooning mania in very agreeable fashion. After the overthrow of the Terrorists Sergent fled to Bale, where he remained till the publica- tion of a decree of amnesty, upon which he and his wife proceeded to join the brother of the latter.

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In the former Jacobin returned once more to Paris, where he engraved the beautiful coloured print of his gallant brother-in-law, whose premature death all France deplored. Again proscribed by Bonaparte in the year X, Sergent betook himself with his wife to Italy, where he remained until his death. Such slender means of subsistence as the couple were able to procure by the practice of their art were in increased by Louis Philippe, who, mindful of his association with Sergent in former days, granted the old engraver a modest pension.

In spite of a few exceptions this form of art died in France with the old monarchy, after having in certain prints by Debucourt, Janinet, and others, attained to some- thing very close to perfection. With the advent of a more restless era, the desire for finely-executed work became so incon- siderable that engravers devoted themselves to the production of futile and inartistic prints, which, sold at a very moderate price, were calculated to appeal to the passing whim of an uneducated democracy.

The rich and cultivated patrons of art had as an influential class ceased to exist, and with them seemed to disappear the talent of the artists and engravers who had so ably ministered to their pleasures.

Full text of "French prints of the eighteenth century"

Daniell, 32 Craniourn St. Never in the world's history were the mere accessories of existence embellished with such exquisite decoration as then ; never, perhaps, was the human eye better trained in the intricacies of felicitous restraint and almost unerring balance. The level of refined elegance attained by the noblesse — around whom hovered a crowd of artists, sculptors, engravers, and architects, too often, alas!

Most people who could by some means or other afix rd to do so, bought works of art and pictures, and a large number were ever ready to acquire the finest examples of the engraver's skill. In the French prints of the eighteenth century may be read the history of old France, and especially of the careless days when the noblesse, heedless of the coming storm, revelled in a life the chief aim of which would seem to have been careless, if cultivated, pleasure.

Whilst a large proportion of the people of France lived under conditions which entailed great poverty and squalor, all those in a position to sip the cup of facile enjoyment would appear to have indulged their appetite for amusement to the full. The artists and engravers in particular were apt imitators of their patrons as far as luxury and dissipation were concerned, and, as has already been said, the great school of French engraving, which had flourished with such vigour throughout the eighteenth century, practically ceased to exist with the dawning of a more strenuous epoch.

French prints executed after are in most cases worthless, some wicked fairy seeming to have paralysed the artistic talent of the nation, which gradually faded away to but a poor shadow of its former self. The number of French engravers was very large, and collectively they produced a pro- digious amount of prints, a number of which, as is only natural, do not merit serious attention.

French prints, as a rule, have many more states than English ones, and it seems probable that some of the old French printsellers occa- sionally multiplied the number of the states with the deliberate intention of suiting the taste of their clients for something especially scarce. A few impressions of certain prints, with differ- ences of detail, were often struck off merely for this purpose ; the French were, and are, born collectors, and the possession of any artistic rarity has always been much appreciated and coveted across the Channel.

From time to time, unknown states of French prints make their appearance, the term " etat non decrit'' frequently figuring in catalogues of sales. Too much importance should not, how- ever, be attached to this ; for the discerning connoisseur seeks only the best state of any engraving, and is not led away or unduly excited by any " freak impression," his desire being, above all things, to obtain a fine example in the best possible state, which, it may be added, in French prints is not invariably the first.

As a rule but a small number of impressions bearing no title or dedication were struck, with the result that the most attractive French engravings in their early states command a somewhat large price, running into figures far larger than the sums asked for ordinary im- pressions. The mania for proofs is, of course, often merely a collector's weakness, akin to that which prompts the bibliophile to acquire at all cost unique copies of valuable books containing some omission, addition, or misprint, not to be found in the usual copies. At the same time the early states of certain French prints, executed whilst the plates were absolutely fresh, are un- deniably more brilliant and, if the expression is permissible, "crisp" than the engravings pro- duced after a great number of copies had been struck off.

The exercise of a very careful and discriminat- ing selection is therefore highly essential when acquiring a collection, many prints being only really desirable when in the finest and most perfect condition. As a rule English collectors of French prints do not as yet appear to realise the great difference in value between the various states, for the most part buying merely on account of the grace and prettiness of the subject dealt with.

Never- theless this difference is in some cases very con- siderable. In the " Couronnement de Voltaire," for instance, of which there are no less than seven states, it is only the one with the arms, dedication, and address in the Rue St-Jacques which is of any real value. The various states of French prints are often distinguished by differences and alterations.

In the first state the girl in ques- tion holds a fish in her hand, which is suppressed in the less valuable later impressions. A rare state of " Le Carquois epuise " show a pretty variation from the usual design. In this the quiver held by the statue of Cupid is replaced by a bunch of roses. In " Le Chemin de la fortune," by Voyez junior, after Baudouin, the dress of the dancer is open at the neck in the first state, closed in the second. The little boy and girl in " La Croisee " see Plate X.

A very rare state of another print after Lavreince, " L'heureux Moment," by N. La Consolation de l'absence By N. The main difference between English and French engravings is that in the latter more at- tention is paid to detail. Besides this, in a great number of instances the drawing and general proportions of the figures are a good deal more accurate and correct ; indeed many French engravings are quite remarkable by reason of the carefully balanced nature of their composi- tion, the various figures, decorations, and pieces of furniture being arranged so as to produce an harmonious and artistically regular effect.

Frequently, also, the prints are embellished with ornamental borders which are in themselves works of art. Another charm of a certain class of French prints is the light which they cast upon the furniture and general arrangement of rooms in the eighteenth century. We see, as it were, the actual life as it was lived at that day, amidst the sumptuous accessories now so eagerly sought after by collectors.

Many of these French engravings, indeed, are veritable human documents, valuable from an archaeological point of view to the student of life in France previous to the great Revolution. The set of engravings known as " Le Monument du costume," more especially the last twenty- four plates of the series, is a conspicuous instance.

Designed by Moreau le jeune, these magnifi- cent prints illustrate not only the surroundings, but the very aspect and character of their day. No details, however, are glossed over or omitted, careful observation and precision having been pushed to their furthest limits. The art of the eighteenth -century engraver, in short, caught the very physiognomy of France at the most charming, if careless, moment of her existence. The great majority of French engravings most prized by collectors picture scenes of light- hearted domesticity and various forms of pleasure and of love, gracefully reflecting the essential characteristics of the French race, whilst scarcely ever degenerating into that coarseness which is occasionally conspicuous in modern Parisian art.

The process of line engraving, though appar- ently simple, is in reality one of considerable difficulty. Physical Changes In the process of border-crossing during a bridal voyage, it was the change in the bride's clothing and hairstyle that was most noticed by the contemporaries. In the reports of the observers, its description takes up a lot of space. The princesses were aware of the importance given to their clothes and their hairdo by their husband and his court. Elisabeth of Austria, for example, was dressed according to the fashion of the court of her father, the Emperor, when she first met Charles IX in , but she was right away led by the queen-mother to a separate room to change her clothes.

Maximilian I gave order that his wife, upon her arrival in , was to be dressed "alla tedesca". Jadwiga of Poland, when she arrived in Landshut in , was led into a side- chapel of the church to change her clothes. This act evoked such a feeling of estrangement in the bride that she cried all along the wedding ceremony.

Clothes and hairdo of Anne d'Este changed slowly during her voyage. When she left Ferrara in October , she was dressed according to Italian fashion, but when she arrived at the court of France two months later, she was dressed "alla francese". When the princess first met the French court, she was dressed according to Spanish fashion.

Before being introduced to her future husband she had to change, so that she would please the king and appear "aymable", desirable, to him. According to the source that tells us these details, from day to day the princess became more and more beautiful, until she corresponded exactly to the French image of a "real" Queen of France. On the day of her wedding with the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in , Joan of Austria was dressed according to the fashion of her husband's court.

The next day however, her clothes were of a strange mixture. While her body was dressed in Florentine fashion, her head was decorated according to the fashion of the imperial court, where she had grown up. Most noticed by the observers was the bride's strange hairdo upon her arrival in Landshut, her long hair beeing braided in one big plait. Apparently, during the ceremony of the changing of the clothes, the princess had managed to keep her Polish-fashioned hairdo, which, for the wedding, was hidden under some kind of decoration.

The French escorts accompanying Anne d'Este in wrote to her future husband that she did not have anybody to help her dress and adorn herself correctly, and that she urgently needed a French lady in waiting to assist her with her toilet. We have here another good example for the fact that the bride could be perceived as pretty and thus acceptable by her husband's court only if she corresponded to the norms 38 Letter from Erasmo Brasca to Ludovico Sforza, March 15th, , cited by F. Very often therefore, the changing of the clothes was accompanied by a change in the observers' perception of the beauty of the bride.

Jadwiga of Poland was described as a well-shaped young girl who, once dressed according to German fashion, should become a very beautyful woman. Anne de Foix, once wearing the Hungarian crowning gown, became more beautyful than she had already been before: The metamorphosis of Anne d'Este seems to have taken place during her bridal voyage. After her arrival at the court of France, the Italian observers described her as French "visu, verbo et opera".

They reported that she had adapted herself so well to the customs of her new home that one would think she had been raised at this court. In the eyes of the contemporaries, the Ferrarese princess had become a credible French duchess. One of its main characteristics lies in the fact that the princesses almost never returned to the point of their departure. The bridal journey represented thus a rupture with the bride's court of origin, her parents and her hometown. During her voyage, the princess did not only move through space, she also changed the frame of cultural reference.

During this process of change she had to cross a couple of symbolic boundaries which were very carefully staged by the parties in question. Although most of the boundaries crossed by a bride on her voyage were symbolic, the spatial aspect was very important for the families and persons involved, and the two courts paid very much attention to the space occupied by the other party in the process of the symbolic border-crossings.

The handing-over of the princesses had to take place exactly at the border between the territories, and if there was no common frontier, it had to be specially constructed. By sending their daughters all over Europe, the ruling families displayed not only their power to symbolically reduce space but also the networks to which they belonged. Moreover, as the cited sources have shown, the bridal voyage was one of the best means for political representation. It can therefore be considered as a good example for the interaction of space, crossing of boundaries and self- fashioning of the nobilities of early modern Europe.

For Jadwiga of Poland see: Essai d'anthropologie sociale, Paris, A. Hicks, Paris, T. Janvier juin Sur la Maison de la reine voir aussi: En octobre , le conflit entre le roi et les dames espagnoles provoqua finalement un affrontement avec la Comtesse de la Torre qui, semble-t-il, ne dura pas: Sur le plan politique il changea d'attitude: Estado, Francia K L'expulsion des Espagnols les plus proches du Duc de Lerma.

Lettres de Rivera And in many respects George III was determined to signal a break from tradition. This was the first choice of a bride from the Mecklenburg dynasty, repudiating previous Brunswick, Orange or Saxe-Gotha precedents or Hohenzollern links. As well as setting a more moral tone to court life than his grandfather had conveyed, George III also hoped to re-establish clearer royal control over the appointment of ministries.

He wanted a consort with whom he could establish a compatible domestic and family life, which also would be an exemplary Christian family, as befitted a devout king who was Defender of the Faith in an age when libertine behaviour and intellectual free-thinking threatened the theory and practice of Christianity. Charlotte had to behave differently, and concentrate on the social role of a consort.

Furthermore the royal court did not have the monopoly of cultural patronage; as well as aristocratic women, the Bluestocking hostesses were filling the vacuum left by the death of Queen Caroline in , and Britain was also an advanced commercial society—especially in the metropolis. As the ceremonies bidding her farewell in Mecklenburg acknowledged by their symbolism of world empire, she was also moving to a much larger country which had vastly increased its overseas empire in through its victories in the Seven Years War.

He had also built Kensington Palace, west of St. The palace served mainly as a retreat in the fresher air of Kensington village, but courts were held there as well as at St. However the coronation of George III was an occasion for solemn splendour. It was also one concerned to display the king and queen theatrically to their people as they arrived and departed from Westminster Abbey, by means of the new gilded state coach, which facilitated maximum visibility of its passengers, through its innovative use of glass panels.

It was a glamorous exercise in the presentation of royal brilliance. As a Protestant denomination, the Church of England did not include regular processions or feast days. The court worshipped at St. The obsequies of 18th century monarchs were not grand state funerals and were not preceded by a lying in state: The other Christian ceremony was the annual Maundy Thursday ceremony, which usually took place in old Banqueting Hall at Whitehall Palace. The king enacted Christly simplicity before the paupers chosen to have their feet washed; this was nothing like the processions of Episcopal personnel, confraternities and guilds on display in a Catholic diocese at Easter.

The prevailing historiography of the eighteenth century court has been on the decline of the court and the importance of parliamentary politics, though this is now being challenged. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: The king also presided at the closing session. These took place during the parliamentary season, and were a significant venue where the relationship of the crown and the elite could be enacted.

Entry was regulated by the Lord Chamberlain so they were not fully public occasions. Important dates in this court calendar were anniversaries of the Restoration of the monarchy in , and the birthdays of the king, his consort, and his heir. True, there was a growth in the British state administrative apparatus after Hanoverian monarchs still had much socially to offer their grandees and their emulators. The reward of titles, promotion in the peerage, or membership of the three, very prestigious, chivalric Orders of the Garter, Bath and Thistle , was still important. He was alert to questions of status and precedent, and to keeping his promises in strict order.

A title could be a way of rewarding loyalty and local standing even where there was no additionally meritorious achievement in statecraft or arms to recognise. He knew that Irish peers longed for English titles and sometimes deserved them, or that women might qualify to be peeresses in their own right, to keep alive a title. The king, patronage and court sociability As the head of British society, and the apex of patronage, the king was thus an active manager of all kinds of patronage: Offers of peerages or peerage promotions as well as political and ecclesiastical appointments were usually made through the current head of the ministry, to preserve the convention that a king could not be refused.

Anyone quibbling at what was being offered, or on what terms, could therefore discuss it with a leading Contd. Stowe Landscape Gardens, Andover and London, Nevertheless, the king appointed his own Royal household, and initially, that of his wife, together with that of his adult children when they first had their own establishments, and by convention the king made his own choice with less intervention or mediation from ministers, though as noted above some appointments might have a more political rationale behind them.

The point is, though, that there was nothing structural in the British system to prevent a determined consort to make political or quasi-political interventions. The concentration of patronage power at the royal apex of the system meant that it was really a matter of personal chemistry or policy by a king whether he permitted this female intervention or not.

George II was seen as subject to petticoat government; Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his son after him were determined to prevent this pattern repeating itself. Court attendance punctuated the life cycles of the aristocracy: Marriageable girls were presented by their mothers, no matter how wrinkled these matrons were, as the writer Mme du Bocage observed; and on getting married were presented again in their marital status.

Indeed another function of the court was to act as a marriage market drawing on the whole pool of potential partners, and not just a handful of county connections. Monarchs had a vested interest in the marital suitability and personal character of their pool of courtiers, and George III and Queen Charlotte were particularly keen to show their appreciation of the virtuous, faithful, domestic, and pious—those who in other words shared their values and behaviour. This could start very young, sometimes with the royal couple being godparents, and subsequently taking a kindly interest in the talents and promise of those godchildren.

Any child attending school at Eton, just below Windsor Castle, was within the purview of the king and queen. The court was an informal school of manners and morals, and the education of royal children, and also of the young aristocrats who would come to serve them, was of intense concern. The public buildings and spaces associated with each of these elements were all within easy reach of each other. The court was not a separate secluded world; London was not a residenz-stadt or residential capital like Versailles or Mannheim. It was in any case two cities, those of London and Westminster.

The latter was situated along the Thames as it curved to the south west. A pentagon-shaped collection of buildings between the river to the east and 12 J. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole, 2 vols. The park was defined along its northern side by Pall Mall, going diagonally form north-east down to the south-west.

Near the bottom corner was the Stable-yard entrance to St. It was not therefore in a secluded enclave, nor was it, like the Hof Residenz in Vienna, an adapted fortress. It had originally been a salubrious royal residence for Tudor and Stuart consorts to bear their children and have them nursed there. The palace was old fashioned and not very impressive, apart from its Tudor gateway, and although it was surrounded by its own park, the public were allowed access to this.

It had not been rebuilt by the Hanoverians, mainly for prudent financial reasons. Yet the roads near the palace became a new circulation centre of court life. Ladies and Gentlemen could promenade along it and exchange the news and gossip of the day or be carried in a sedan chair to their destination. Birdcage Walk, running east-west along the south side of the Park, provided an alternative route between the palace and Westminster Bridge.

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Parliament, government offices, and royal residences were all within easy reach of each other and none was hidden behind fortified walls. It was built partly on land leased from the crown and when this lease expired George III was able to purchase it as a new house for the Queen, replacing the now shabby Somerset House in the Strand, to the north-east of Whitehall. It cannot have felt very private.

Moreover the whole building was much smaller than her home at the palace of Neustrelitz. But then, acquiring and reading books was a pleasure common to both George and Charlotte. The Prince of Wales had a separate suite of rooms before he became of age and moved to Carlton House. It was he who developed the house into a Palace. It was he developed the house into a Palace. Parissien, George IV, London, It was also where an arranged marriage fortunately blossomed into an affectionate companionship. George and Charlotte married so young and lived so long that there was even one legitimate grandchild by the end of the reign and considerably more illegitimate ones.

Each of these residences can be where royal individuals hold their own court; and they can consequently be places of different political faction. This is again what George III hoped to avoid. We should always imagine these royal spaces, inside and out, as full of eager watchers and listeners, including servants and coachmen, who would decode body language and dress, and pass on insider information if they could.

Neither made sense without the other, and both were built into the calendar and geography of court life. By tradition, the monarch held court in London when the parliamentary season opened in November. Most landed families returned to their estates at Christmas and then London life resumed in the New Year. By June, London was getting smelly and unpleasant and the hay harvest created extra demand for horses. Country life resumed, coupled with visits to spas and seaside resorts, until the late autumn. Geographically, when the court was based at Whitehall under the Tudors and Stuarts, it also depended on the river axis for visits to seats at Richmond, Hampton Court, or further down river at Windsor, for fresh air and hunting.

George III remained very attached to Kew and the royal couple was peripatetic, spending part of the week there and later at Windsor, and travelling up to London, sometimes only for the day, to hold court. Retirement from the calendar of court life was therefore built into the weekly and seasonal routine, and it is closely connected with privacy. But just as the concept of the public sphere has multiple meanings, so too does the idea of the private sphere.

Yet at both Kew and Windsor royal privacy was also publicly displayed. At Kew, the public could see the royal family dining; at Windsor, the family walked on the terrace in the evenings and could be approached by courtiers, guests, and petitioners. Concentrating on her garden was also a solace when five of her seven sons were fighting abroad.

The Court and Popular Politics 17 See e. Until the s it also protected its proceedings from direct reportage, a legacy of the struggles to maintain parliamentary freedom against coercion by Charles I. However, reports thinly disguised as fictional appeared in newspapers and periodicals. Proceedings and speech summaries were of course freely shared in the conversation and correspondence of peers and MPs with their family and friends, and women were by no means excluded from this knowledge.

Joseph Levine has emphasised how theatrical were the speeches and demeanour of MPs and peers. They imagined themselves as Romans declaiming in the senate, and the classical studies that dominated gentlemanly education introduced future parliamentarians to the rhetorical tropes as well as the moral and political themes of civic behaviour. Gesture, deportment and facial expression could all add to this theatricality, as could dress.

The contests at Westminster, which had a large quantity of ratepayers eligible to vote, were particularly lively. Elections had a carnivalesque character, when normal working routines were relaxed and time was spent on listening to candidates, cheering or lampooning them, canvassing and being canvassed, voting in the open, and chairing successful candidates.

Astute politicians knew that they had to press the flesh locally and appear affable, and they relied on their wives and daughters to help entertain locally and keep electors sweet. He also showed how popular politics utilised the press and became part of the consumer culture of the metropolis, and the nation.

Citizenship and gender politics in Georgian England, Manchester, The Mayor was elected annually from the Aldermen, and had a handsome base for official entertainment. As Mme du Bocage observed in , it too was a theatre of power: There is a large palace built for his reception, but though he does not inhabit it, it serves him upon Court-days, and when he is called upon by any ceremony.

On the day of his installation he treats the Nobility and the Royal Family at this palace, which is called the Mansion House. Sir William Chambers designed one for them, but it was never timely to ask Parliament to vote public money for it. As Grayson Ditchfield has argued, the political contention of the Wilkesite opposition to the king, that he was trying to increase royal power, was at odds with the fact that his acceptance of a fixed civil list actually reduced it. The coffee houses contained newspapers, pamphlets and other political ephemera, as well as the periodicals, sometimes in bound volumes, and catered to different political clienteles: An Essay in Monarchy, Manchester, , pp.

For there was a great deal of fluidity between various types of media. A political issue which could be discussed at length in pamphlets replete with historical precedent and classical allusions, which might be too abstruse for a skilled or semi-skilled worker, could also be distilled into a raunchy cartoon. Plays attracted audiences from up and down the social ranks, from the royal family in its box flanked by aristocratic subscribers in theirs, to the artisans in the pit. There was no exclusive court theatre so the king and queen went out to the theatre like anyone else if they wanted to see a play.

The painting then attained wider exposure through prints of it. At the same time there were contrasting lascivious cartoons circulating about Augusta and Bute, and praising the Rev. Any mis-step Charlotte made in her first years as queen had the potential to be translated into a ballad, a broadsheet, a cartoon or an historical-political disquisition on interfering queens in British history. Wilkes, as Brewer discerned, also revelled in the political theatre that could be choreographed on a popular level. So, as an increasingly popular hero, he attracted gifts from his adoring public in multiples of 45, in reference to the controversial issue no.

Entrepreneurs quickly caught on to the commercial possibilities of Wilkesite memorabilia: Demonstrations deployed symbols such as a jackboot—satirising the name and Scottish origins of John [Jack] Stuart, earl of Bute, pronounced the same as boot by the Scots , and a petticoat, symbolising Princess Augusta. Crowd behaviour inverted the rituals of civic and legal activity, by holding feasts, usually 30 Ibid, p. Female Political Influence and Republican Response ca.

In , effigies of Bute, Augusta and the Speaker of the House of Commons were taken to Tower Hill and executed as if they were traitors. Crowd power could be very coercive: Wilkesite supporters demanded that houses be illuminated when Wilkes was elected MP for Middlesex, just as they were when there was a military victory, and refusal to do so invariably meant broken windows and other damage. Graffiti was even chalked on the walls of the palace and posters insinuated into its precincts. It was geographically impossible for a new young queen to be unaware of posters, placards and demonstrators, who could throng a royal carriage once outside the courtyard of St.

The fear of Petticoat Power Given the death of Queen Caroline as far back as , Charlotte became queen in in a kind of royal vacuum, and she and George had had no prior waiting time as Prince and Princess of Wales, in which they might have developed a role as the focus of the reversionary interest. So Charlotte stepped into a court and a political culture where the public imagination as well as the political elite associated monarchy with both of these dangers.

And the king was able to make clear to his aunt, the politically astute princess Amelia, and to his mother, that they were not to have visible roles at court. The former seldom attended, and his mother did not take part in the drawing-rooms, though it was known that the king regularly visited her at Kew.

Yet for all this apparent cordiality, Augusta was in essence the chief counter-example for the young queen. John Viscount Bolingbroke to write his thoughts on how a king should conduct himself. On the face of it, the book has virtually nothing to say about the role of the consort. There is no advice about the kind of woman a Patriot king should marry perhaps because its intended recipient had been married for two years already , how his wife should behave, and what could be gleaned from examples of consorts from British history: Nevertheless two key pieces of advice emerge: Deploring party as a political evil, and faction as the worst of all parties, Bolingbroke explains, The true image of a free people, governed by a Patriot King, is that of a patriarchal family, where the head and all the members are united by one common interest, and animated by one common spirit Wives, children and servants must therefore defer to male authority: By implication, also, a wife must be a fertile mother for there to be a family at all.

The biggest danger to the Patriot King is therefore the male or female favourite, who will come between him and wise counsellors. Even the suspicion that he has favourites will lower his reputation in public opinion. The remedy therefore is for the Patriot King to practice decorum in his private life, and ceremony in his public one. Essentially she was to take her cue from her husband. But she was no doormat even in the earliest days of her marriage, when she was still a young bride with barely an attendant from her native Saxe-Gotha. For example, she was persuaded rather than compelled to conform to the Church of England.

Augusta was a partner but not a dominator: She then played her cards adroitly with her father-in-law and contrived to keep her children with her. This is not to suggest cynically that she was unmoved by her sudden widowhood: He was not given a formal appointment—she did not want to risk disrupting the existing arrangements, but to bypass them. It was written partly as a critique of French absolutism, emphasising constitutional monarchy, a peaceful foreign policy, and the desirability of nurturing trade and agriculture.

It contains several stories demonstrating the dangers of seductive women, and reinforces the lesson that male and female favourites are to be 42 Ibid, p. Craddock and Carla H. Like his father before him, Telemachus learns to withstand the charms of Calypso, then nearly succumbs to her rival, Eucharis, but Mentor drags him away. When Telemachus finds a suitable princess to marry, Antiope, daughter of the worthy King Idomeneus of Salentum, she is almost more of a comrade than a bride, and certainly lacks obvious sexual charisma. She even enjoys hunting, when she reveals herself to be brave and bold.

But this rather androgynous type of female therefore obviates the risk of a consort who is a glamorous seductress who could attract rivals. In other words she does not exploit her sexuality--indeed, she is scarcely aware of her charms, and scorns gaudy clothes. All this bodes well for the future, and Telemachus feels for her a rational esteem, not passionate obsession. Unfortunately George continued to rely on his dearest friend after his accession to the throne the following year, and even to give him political office.

Soon the controversies orchestrated by Wilkes over the Peace of Paris, created a frenzy of protest, since the government attempted to arrest anyone connected with publishing or distributing it, using a General Warrant. Wilkes was able to challenge their legality and emerge as a defender of liberty. The court gossip that had rumbled on since was now out in the open and mutating constantly into new forms as it became bound up with the issues of Wilkes and Liberty.

It took until for George to outgrow his friendship with Bute and perceive it as a liability. To ministers succeeding Bute in office the myth of his secret influence persisted to the end of the decade. Its warning lesson must have imprinted itself firmly on her mind. For Augusta, it was a tragedy that her principled attempts to give her son the right education should have ballooned into an apparently uncontrollable frenzy against her and her trusted confidante, Lord Bute. Riley, Cambridge, , p. Essays in Re- Interpretation, Leicester, , pp. This was a bargain Queen Charlotte kept as far as domestic politics was concerned.

Instead her role was to be a gracious and attractive partner on public occasions: At the court drawing rooms, she was to help as much as possible in integrating the different groups within British society and help raise the monarchy above party. On a personal level, happily she and George quickly proved compatible and fertile and she was soon able to produce a son and heir—and fourteen more children. Finally, the range of cultural pursuits they both enjoyed in the arts, music, the sciences, and the theatre, gave her plenty of scope to occupy herself, improve and develop her mind with the help of the library she purchased, and use its resource to help in the education of her children, especially her daughters.

Like Antiope, she also had recourse to needlework in the evenings.

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While her conversation to Lady Harcourt is the nearest evidence available in her own words for the kind of advice George III must have given her, her reaction to a dilemma of her Lady of the Bedchamber, Lady Egremont, also demonstrates that she mastered very quickly how to be a Patriot queen who nevertheless took no initiative in politics. Lady Egremont was a strong advocate for educating young aristocratic women. In negotiations for the peace terms of the Seven Years War, Egremont and his brother-in-law George Grenville became critics of Bute, and of concessions he proposed to end the war quickly.

From September Egremont became increasingly despondent as the French seemed to be going back on their agreed position in the negotiations, and there was much disunity in the cabinet. On 22 October a Privy Council meeting considered how to present an ultimatum to the French government. The next day, the king wrote to Bute saying that Lord Egremont, evidently depressed and frustrated, was considering resignation. George had learnt this from the queen, who had been approached by Lady Egremont, in tears because she would have to resign her Bedchamber position if her husband left the government: But rather than argue herself with Lord Egremont, she referred the whole business back to the king.

When Charlotte married George III neither could have foreseen the unprecedented extent, in quantity and quality, of political activity the next two decades would bring. He was also able to maintain the decorum of the court. This was as much the achievement of Queen Charlotte in accepting the role outlined for her, in being able to act as a faithful wife, prolific mother, suitable co-hostess at royal drawing rooms, and an apolitical consort.

Unlike her mother-in-law, she was not perceived as, nor lampooned as, a power behind the throne in alliance with Bute, in the difficult first decade of the reign. She only figures in caricatures in thes. This article is a distillation of chapter 2 of my forthcoming book on Queen Charlotte, provisionally entitled A Consort and her Worlds: O, The Augustan Court: Campbell Orr, Clarissa, ed.

Richardson, Margaret, and Stevens, MaryAnne eds. A Declining Political Institution? Chatenet, La cour de France Baguenault de Puchesse, Paris, , dix tomes ; tome 2, p. Baudouin-Matuszek, La famille italienne…cit. Chatenet, La Cour de France Dans ces conditions, comment trouver le calme pour travailler? Viennot, Saint-Etienne, , p. Chatenet, La cour de France…cit.

La correspondance permet de lever le doute qui subsistait au sujet des lieux de naissance de Claude, de Charles et des jumelles Jeanne et Victoire: La liste indique les lieux de naissance des autres enfants: Cloulas, Henri II, Paris, , p. Architecte du Roi, Paris, , p. Nordman, Un Tour de France royal. Diane de Poitiers est morte peu avant, le 26 avril La cour implique non seulement une organisation de l'espace mais aussi du temps: Le voyage de Charles IX — , Paris, Cloulas, Henri II, Paris, Baguenault de Puchesse, Paris, , dix tomes.

Architecte du Roi, Paris, Pour la France, voire par exemple G. Le prevost des Marchans Faict a Paris le 23 octobre Les filles du premier prince du sang passent devant toutes, sauf les reines et filles de France. Dans le BNF, Ms. Car le rang est aussi affaire de patrimoine. Sur la condition de la veuve, S. Histoire sociale des comtes de Belin, Limoges, Pulim, U d'Aix-Marseille, ; M. Parce que constitutives du lignage, les femmes sont participatives de la vie politique. Mons le duc de Longueville qui a pour adresse A Mons.

Aubert, Aumosnier de ma femme. De Rouen le 25 fev. Les femmes apparaissent alors comme des agents de la distinction quand elles ne sont pas actrices de leur propre ascension. En par exemple, le nonce Bologneti refuse de visiter le premier M. On convint que le Nonce iroit voir Mad. Le Roux, La faveur du roi. Mignons et courtisans au temps des Valois, Seyssel, ChampVallon, Using a current and useful terminological anachronism, the author called the latter a private gallery and the former a public one.

Second, the transient nature of space when compared to construction — since space, in its interaction with social rules and habits, participates of the shifts in form and meaning of those rules and habits. In the present article I will explore a central chapter in the history of relations between architecture and society: John has helped me also with the English translations of the early modern Italian and French sources.

I also wish to thank the organizers and participants of the workshop Moving Elites, Cultural Transfers and the Life Cycle for their valuable observations. Public are called here those spaces whose accessibility was regulated by the ceremonial — that is, spaces courtiers could freely enter on the basis of rank, such as the salle presence chamber , the antichambre antechamber , and the bedchamber of a royal suite.

I will then propose a new interpretative reading based on an integrated analysis of architecture, decorative schemes, space accessibility, and ceremonial. Its renown is also due to the interior decoration, in which the queen employed some of the finest artists of the time, among them Philippe de Champaigne, Simon Vouet, and Peter Paul Rubens. Maria commissioned it in , one year after the assassination of Henri IV and her nomination to the regency of the throne on behalf of their son, Louis XIII, who was then nine years old. Among them, the origins, significance, and functional aspects of a layout characterized by two features which were unprecedented in French architecture: Le Jardin, Evreux-Paris , R.

The donjon of Chambord is indeed a symmetrical construction: It comprised a salle presence chamber and a gallery and it was provided with an independent access through an external monumental staircase. As tantalizing as it might be to explain the Luxembourg symmetry through the Italian origins of its patron, one would have to admit that, south of the Alps too, symmetry was often an outward rather than an inward feature in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century residential architecture, especially when considering urban buildings.

Since the palace was conceived during the minority of Louis XIII , Montclos has construed its symmetrical layout as the expression of the comparable status of the king and his mother during the regency. Since the rule might have simply formalized what was already common practice, it might also retrospectively explain the layouts of earlier buildings, as proposed by Montclos. Nevertheless, one can raise several objections to this interpretation. First, construction work took generally longer than regencies lasted, with the result that, by the time a residence conceived for the royal couple constituted by mother and son was ready to use, the royal couple had usually already changed into one constituted by king and queen consort.

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Second, not all the rules of the ceremonial reflected existing practices and many of them were in fact never put into practice. Third, the Tuileries, Charleval and Saint-Maur are more problematic precedents for the Luxembourg symmetry than Montclos has acknowledged. The Tuileries royal apartments were not, strictly speaking, identical: Saint- Maur was not symmetrical either. In the following revision of the project, commissioned from Jean Bullant, the twin galleries disappeared fig. Finally, the project of Charleval was left on paper; its symmetry was therefore an abstract feature which, as shown by the case of Saint-Maur, might have easily been compromised in the translation to built reality.

Neither building is formally similar to the Luxembourg in plan, but they both provided the queen and her architect with a new functional model. Moreover, a model which was simultaneously highly evocative with regards to status and risk-free with regards to decorum. While a layout featuring double galleries for the king and the queen suggested a relative rise in the status of the latter, the model could not be called inappropriate because it had been established by the king himself.

The origins of the queen galleries of Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain are far from clear. Seemingly, Henri IV broke a long-lasting association between galleries and male privilege without otherwise making any major change to court ceremonial. Hence, the two residences read ambiguously within the current understanding of the interplay between status and space: Possibly, Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain hint at a change in the status of royal galleries rather than their owners.

Ritual use of space at the court of Henri IV is a largely unexplored subject, therefore only a cautious hypothesis can be formulated here. There is evidence, though, that a change took place in the use of royal galleries in France around the turn of the seventeenth-century. Differently from his predecessors, Henri is known to have used galleries for ceremonies such as public audiences and public receptions of ambassadors. Luigi Bevilacqua, a Medicean envoy to the court of France, gives testimony of this in a letter of October in which he reports his own reception in the Louvre: I was met in the salle by the lieutenant and in the first room by the captain of the guards.

Once we entered the gallery, I was given a public audience. A large number of courtiers attended such public ceremonies, as well as several members of the royal family, as testified by Camillo Guidi in September Monsieur de Bonneuil came … and led me to the Louvre and to the room of the ambassadors. Then at the right time he led me to His Majesty whom I met midway down the gallery as he was coming towards me The audience was long and favorable … and one might say that the whole court and nobility was there Monsieur de Bonneuil then took me to the brother of the king, who was on one side of the gallery.

Rather, public and private galleries coexisted as separate spaces. At the Louvre Henri IV had two galleries at his disposal, the petite and the grande: Access to the latter was regulated by the king alone — admission was upon his invitation only, regardless of rank. The two phenomena might be directly connected.

Possibly, the inauguration of a new kind of gallery, serving new purposes, might have loosened some of the traditional connotations of the royal gallery, including its standing as a marker of male privilege. Furthermore, their decorative schemes matched one another: Screech, Michel de Montaigne. Not only did the residence celebrate the royal couple once constituted by Maria and Henri, but it did so in an unprecedented way: Dedicated to a king who was no longer alive, the palace was de facto emancipated from the practical requirements related to the presence of the king with regards to the expression of rank and the staging of court ceremonial.

As to the living king, the location of the building in Paris, not far from the Louvre, made it superfluous to provide apposite quarters for Louis XIII. The unique layout of the Luxembourg is due not to the peculiar status of its inhabitant s but to the uniqueness of its function as a memorial residence — that is, a residence dedicated not to a royal couple but to the memory of a royal couple.

Their power is the notion the viewer comes away with. This notion is also found in the depiction of the Coronation fig. Produced in a number of variants and replicas in the following years,19 these medals were unusual in their featuring the royal couple, as in antiquity,20 instead of the king alone, as typically in the Renaissance. I am grateful to Sheila Dillon for her help on this topic. Besides, several contextual objections can be raised against it.

First, no examples of double state-and-private apartments or of state-and-private bedchambers are known in early seventeenth century France. Second, the scheme contains substantial flaws with regards to the spatial relation between rooms, or groups of rooms. One of these concerns the location of the gallery in regard to the grand escalier main staircase of the palace fig.

WOLF, Heroic deeds and mystic figures: Both hypotheses are unconvincing. For it seems an inconvenient arrangement for the queen to have had to go through the antechamber — a crowded room at most times — in order to retire from her state apartment into her private one. In fact, one might reasonably expect a Medici princess to require a private apartment where to recreate the conditions of greater privacy compared to France she had known in her household of origin.

It would be a misplaced expectation though, since queens of foreign origins would embrace French custom with regards to approachability. They also indicate that, as in the sixteenth-century, this bedchamber served as the boundary between the public and the private areas of the apartment: Sainte Fare Garnot eds. The addition of the grand cabinet to the sequence of rooms was, instead, an essential novelty. Her Majesty summoned me and when I arrived in her gran gabinetto, where she was, she started to congratulate me, and [Your Highness the grand duke] is the main reason for it.

In the meanwhile the duchesse de Guise, the princesse de Conti and the marquise de Garbinille sic strode up to us and started making a terrible racket, and at times they spoke all together;32 In the name of our lord his Most Serene Highness the Grand Duke, I presented the king [Louis XIII] with the arbalest, the arquebuses, and their appurtenances in the gran gabinetto of the queen. The king was present, as were several princesses, princes, and members of the nobility. The entrance was moved from the central bay to the east end of the courtyard elevation, and a salle S and antechamber ACH were added to the previous layout.

Finally, a corridor c was created in order to connect the antechamber directly to both the grand cabinet and the bedchamber, thus providing the visitor with two alternative routes: As in the Louvre, the queen must have used it to hold the Council, to give audience to her guests, and to gather the court members on a variety of other formal occasions. The official function of the room is also explicitly referred to in the discussion concerning its decorative program, in particular the series of paintings known as the Medici marriages.

The paintings Gondi refers to belong to the series of the Medici marriages. Marrow misinterpreted the archival sources in regards to the location of the grand cabinet, which they both confused for the antechamber A. The location of the room was correctly identified by M. The series was not intended as a dynastic celebration, as its modern title misleadingly suggest. As clearly expressed in a letter addressed to the Florentine court by one of her intermediaries, Maria had a very specific audience in mind for the paintings, one that suited the public and political function of the room: Of those deeds of the Most Serene House of the Medici that are to be represented in these paintings [for the grand cabinet], Her Majesty would be most pleased by those that would show and remind the French that France is not without obligations to the Most Serene House of Her Majesty.

However, the two layouts were similar in regards to the distribution of space. The sequences leading from the entrance to the bedchamber, in particular, were identical: Also, precisely because of the parallel location of bedchamber and grand cabinet as each independently accessible from the antechamber, both layouts were atypical, because in both of them the common enfilade arrangement had been intentionally avoided.

The intentionality is especially evident in the case of the Louvre, where it would have been easier and more elegant to dispense with the corridor c and to place antechamber ACH , grand cabinet GC and bedchamber CH in an enfilade. This would also have provided the queen with a grand cabinet larger than the one realized and better lit, since its windows would have opened on two exterior walls instead of only one.

Yet, evidently — given the architectural straining it took to realize it in the Louvre and the fact that it was reproduced in the Luxembourg — this laborious and ambiguous solution met the functional requirements set by the queen. However, the comparison with earlier layouts suggests the sequence of public rooms in her apartments to have been an ingenuous response to two potentially contrasting objectives: The introduction of the antechamber had enabled Henri II to restructure the ceremonial by dividing the courtiers into three groups: To place the grand cabinet parallel to the bedchamber so that both rooms could be accessed directly from the antechamber, meant placing it off the enfilade salle-antechamber-bedchamber thus, de facto, not interfering with the traditional royal suite.

With this subtle arrangement the queen gained an extra room, which made it possible for a number of official ceremonies and the crowd associated with them to be transferred out from the bedchamber, while, since the new room was not in sequence with the others, the court members could still perceive themselves as at the usual distance from the sovereign.

The Flight depicts an act of disobedience: The Council depicts a major political controversy. Amongst the fundamental works, O. Rubens, Leipzig , J. WOLF, Heroic deeds and mystic figures… cit. Amongst women and gender studies, see in particular G. Thus, they have concluded, the painting was a public provocation of the king. The same applied, of course, to the less-than dignifying nighttime episode of the Flight from Blois. The composition of the audience is what ultimately determines whether a disrespectful political provocation results in a career-ending, self-inflicted humiliation or in a consensus-generating exploit.

The determining factor is of course the quality, not the size, of the audience — what could have been foolish for Maria to show to the undifferentiated audience of a public room might have been astute to show to the selected elite of a private one. As mentioned earlier on, private is not to be understood as off limits: Rather, they were objects whose audience — be it small or large — was selected by their owners.

A gallery which, as the one of Maria de Medici in the Luxembourg, had no direct connection with the public rooms of the apartment — the salle fig. This is also confirmed by the fact that occasionally Maria used the gallery as discreet access to her quarters — that is, an access which allowed selected visitors to receive audience without passing through the salle, the antechamber, and the bedchamber where the courtiers gathered. After Their Majesties had dinner, they retired in private in the Cabinet des Muses … , and after a little while Cardinal Bagno and Cardinal Richelieu joined them, but they passed through the gallery [of the queen] so that no one could enter and witness this ceremony.

The king too honored me by coming to see our gallery, and it was the first time he had set foot in the palace, which has now been under construction for sixteen to eighteen years. His Majesty was very pleased with our paintings as well, as I was told by all those who were present and, in particular, by Monsieur de Saint-Ambroise [Claude Maugis] who served as an interpreter of the subjects and who most artfully diverted and dissimulated their real meaning. Finally, physical and intellectual control combined made it possible for the gallery series to be widely publicized as the prestigious, spectacular masterpiece it was and whose limited accessibility was, incidentally, a surplus value , without compromising the confidentiality of part of its content.