The Tudors Arrive in Paris

The Tudors--their portraits, more precisely--are on exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris. From Time Out magazine:

Family drama, throne politics, religious quarrels, beheadings and sumptuous clothing ensured that the Tudor dynasty was anything but dull. This exhibition by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery looks beyond stiff-backed royal portraits to explore how the fact and fiction of the dynasty have merged in our collective cultural consciousness – so compelling are tales of Henry VIII, his six unfortunate wives, Bloody Mary and The Virgin Queen that the Tudor dynasty has been a rich source of drama for writers and directors ever since.

There's an impressive collection of Renaissance portraits by Nicholas Hilliard, Joos van Cleve, Hans Holbein and more, set alongside film and book extracts that emphasise the dynasty’s legendary status through the ages. Everyone from Shakespeare to Gioacchino Rossini and Shekhar Kapur seems to have tried their hand at fictionalising the family dramas, and the Tudors captured the French imagination too, in the writings of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas and paintings by Paul Delaroche. This is the first exhibition about the dynasty in France, and it highlights a mutual fascination and power play between French and English royals: from the friendly rivalry between Francois I and Henry VIII to Elizabeth I’s cordial relationship with Catherine de Médicis as the two countries’ foreign policies drew closer and closer together.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has this input into the development of the exhibition:

In 1523 Henry VIII’s troops, lead by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, made a bold - but ultimately unsuccessful - move to take Paris and reclaim the French throne for the English king. Nearly five hundred years later, Henry VIII is finally making it to Paris.

In partnership with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Gallery is co-presenting an exhibition on the Tudor dynasty at the Musée du Luxembourg. This exciting collaboration extends the research undertaken for ‘The Real Tudors’ to consider Anglo-French relations and artistic exchange in the sixteenth century. The scale of the exhibition has also offered the opportunity to incorporate a number of important international loans and to look beyond portraiture to the broader material culture of the English renaissance.

When developing this exhibition with Tarnya Cooper and Cécile Maisonneuve, it became evident that presenting the Tudors in Paris meant that the dynasty could also be considered in a very different context to that provided by the National Portrait Gallery – that of ‘La République française’. For the Tudors have a French ‘history’ too, created by the writers, artists and composers of the nineteenth century, such as Victor Hugo, Eugène Devéria and Camille Saint-Saëns. This has allowed us to consider the notion of ‘The Real Tudors’ from an entirely different standpoint – Une dynastie. Une légende.

The timing is also perfect, for 2015 marks the 500th anniversary of the accession of François Ier. Henry’s greatest rival will be celebrated in an exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and in terms of cultural competition their presentation in Paris will perhaps capture something of the magnificence of their meeting in 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Information about the BNF's exhibition mentioned above may be found here. It's at the huge newer library on the Seine, named for Francois-Mitterand.

Real Men Wear Pink--Err, Rose--Or Salmon(?)!

During our 2006 visit to Paris, I went to the Titien (or Titian) exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg, the gallery of the French Senat. It was a great event in Paris and I appreciated the quality of the selection. I've enjoyed attending exhibitions at the Grand Palais and the Luxembourg gallery--the organizational plans of the paintings, sculptures and artifacts have been brilliant and I've found myself mostly among Parisians. They are completely attentive viewers of each object, reading the descriptions and observing the details minutely. Perhaps the Marie Antoinette exhibition at the Grand Palais in 2008 was the best of all in its concept and presentation, although I also thrilled at both the thesis and the content of the France 1500 (between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment) exhibition there in 2010. My husband went with me last year to the Josephine exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg.

One painting that caught my eye was the Portrait de Gian Girolamo Grumelli dit “le Chevalier en rose”, 1561 by Giovan Battista Moroni. It is now included in an exhibition of Moroni's portraits at the Royal Academy in London. Piers Baker-Bates reviews the exhibition for History Today:

Moroni excelled above all as a portrait painter and the psychologically acute works on display at the Royal Academy should cement his reputation, although, arguably, the few religious works shown here are qualitatively on a par with the portraits. The exhibition takes us chronologically through Moroni’s career and illustrates clearly how his artistic trajectory developed. Particular attention has been paid to the background and hang, which superbly set off the paintings displayed. 

He mentions le Chevalier en rose:

For example, take the portrait of Giovanni Gerolamo Grumelli, the so-called Man in Pink (pictured above). Grumelli’s salmon pink, elaborately trimmed, costume dominates the room in which his portrait hangs. At the same time the cryptic motto of the sitter in the bottom right corner of the painting is not written in his native Italian, but in Spanish: Mas el çaguero que el primero (‘Better the latter than the former’). It is the dramatic realism of such portraits that struck the Victorians and that still impresses us today, as does Moroni’s ability to depict fabrics and textures.

What I noticed in 2006 was the pink in his cheeks and over his ear and his gaze at the viewer. The broken torso, fallen from the statue in the ruined niche and vine growing INSIDE--for all his personal grandeur, Gian Girolamo Grumelli has to face some facts--things are crumbling around him.

Josephine at the Musee du Luxembourg

 

I apologize for the lack of blogging since last Friday, but somewhere over North America or the Atlantic Ocean, my little netbook malfunctioned--it worked fine Thursday morning, March 13, but wouldn't locate my profile when we arrived in our rented Paris apartment Friday morning, March 14!

 

On Saturday, March 15, we made use of the free Metro (more about that in another post) to attend this exhibition on the life and times of Josephine Bonaparte at the Musee du Luxembourg, described here by parisvoice.com:

 

One of France's most remarkable First Ladies, Josephine, is the subject of an exhibition at Paris' Musée du Luxembourg. On the occasion of the bicentenary of her death at Malmaison in 1814, the exhibition revisits through paintings and many personal items Josephine's life and times.

Josephine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoleon I, which made her the first Empress of France. She was born in Martinique and married at sixteen to Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais. These were tumultuous times for France. During the Revolution's Reign of Terror she was thrown into prison along with her husband who was guillotined. She narrowly escaped death owing to Robespierrre's timely fall.

Bonaparte, then only a twenty-six-year-old general, fell for her charms and married her in 1792, less than five months after their first meeting. She rose up with him as wife of the First Consul after the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire (1799). She became the first Empress of France, crowned by Napoleon in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris (1804).

She did not bear Napoleon any children; as a result, he divorced her in 1810 to marry Marie Louise of Austria. She withdrew to Malmaison where she pursued her interests in the arts and gardening, most notably cultivating and hybridizing roses. Through her daughter, Hortense, she was the maternal grandmother of Napoléon III.

The exhibition illustrates Josephine's tastes and influence on French decorative arts showing some of her luxurious furnishings, tableware, elegant dresses and jewels. The exhibition includes many portraits including a large painting of her by Prud'hon on loan from the Louvre and another one by Gros from the Musée Masséna in Nice.

We enjoyed the exhibition, which as the article above notes, displayed many artefacts, furniture, fine porcelain, sculpture, etc. One of the most famous paintings about the Empress Josephine was not included in the exhibition because, I presume, its size precluded its display in the Luxembourg's gallery setting:

 

 

(Jacques-Louis David's The Coronation of Napoleon, from Wikipedia commons). The gift shop did feature postcards of this huge painting in the Louvre (32.1 foot by 20.4 ft). I bought the Dossier de L'Art magazine about the exhibition because it had many good photographs of artefacts we found interesting and beautiful.

 

The lady in the coat check asked us if we had enjoyed the exhibition, and we said yes. My husband commented on how sad it was that Napoleon had divorced Josephine because she could not or had not borne him an heir. She commented in reply that "He was not a very nice man." Mark responded, "Well, at least he didn't cut off her head, like Henry VIII!" I have taught him well.