II.5.5. ALLÉGORIE ET MESSAGE POLITIQUE

 

ALLEGORIES RELATE THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ROYALS OR NOBLES AS MYTHOLOGY AND THE HEBREW BIBLE TELL STORIES OF FIGURES OF ANTIQUITY

Works can express a coded message:  

The Bath of Diana by Francois Clouet, court painter, toward 1565 / zoom with analysis

The three goddesses are real rivals, Catherine de Medici (black cloth because widow of Henri II), Diane de Poitiers, Henri's favorite (colors were white and black) and Marie de Guise (Scottish, shown by the thistle), queen after Henri's death and member of the rival Guise clan). The satyrs are Guise leaders. The horseman is a hunter with his dog, who will kill them.

The painting is commissioned by a Protestant nobleman at the court, a few years before the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

The style characterizes mansions and nobles' chateaux: 

• The mansion of the Minister of Finance (toward 1630):

                                                                                                                                                                Zoom

The Hotel de Sully, on the first trade route (rue Saint-Antoine) and next to the first royal place (place des Vosges). 

Mantels, the most prestigious sites of glacial châteaux 

• At Écouen* north of Paris, Jacob sins, leaves, returns and is forgiven, like the owner** who offends Diane de Poitiers, leaves the court and eventually reconciles with the king.

*Now the Renaissance Museum

**The Constable of Montmorency (1493-1567) 

Esau's Hunt, museum publication

• At Condé en Brie in Champagne a god carries off a woman. The work alludes to the owner* making a married woman his mistress as Louis XIV had done with Madame de Montespan (before he knew of her visits to the witch) and imitates a Versailles statue.

*The Marquis de la Faye, private secretary to Louis XIV

Claude Abron

Château de Condé - Aymeri de Rochefort; Pluto Carries off Prosperine by François Girardon, toward 1690, Versailles / zoom

That mistress, the Marquise de Montespan,

chose the story of Helen of Troy 

as decor for her chateau.

-- Athénaïs, the Real Queen of France by Lisa Hilton, 200