ART “4”
“2”-DAY 03 January |
| DEATH:
1809 DANLOUX |
BAPTISM:
1591 VALENTIN |
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Died on 03 January 1809: Henri-Pierre
Danloux, French artist born on 24 February 1753. — He was orphaned at an early age and was brought up by an uncle who was an architect and contractor. Around 1770 his uncle apprenticed him to genre painter Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié [16 Jun 1735 – 14 Sep 1784]. He exhibited for the first time in 1771 at the Exposition de la Jeunesse in Paris, where he showed A Drunkard at a Table. About 1773 he was admitted into the studio of history painter Joseph-Marie Vien [18 Jun 1716 – 27 Mar 1809], whom he followed to Rome in 1775 on the latter’s appointment as Director of the Académie de France. Danloux’s sketchbooks show that he also visited Naples, Palermo, Florence, and Venice. He was not interested in the monuments of antiquity but concentrated instead on drawing landscapes and, in particular, portraits, among them that of Jacques-Louis David. Settling in Lyon, France, in 1783, Danloux established himself as a portraitist in the relaxed, informal manner of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. After Danloux moved to Paris in 1785, his reputation grew as a portraitist to the aristocracy. Danloux paid great attention to rendering fabrics, embroidery, and accessories in both oils and chalk. After another sojourn in Rome, Danloux returned to Paris in 1789, where he was commissioned to make portraits of the royal family. Soon the French Revolution forced him to flee to London. Influenced by fashionable English portrait painters like George Romney, Danloux excelled in family groups and portraits of children, whom he captured in natural, spontaneous poses. He also began painting history subjects. He returned to Paris in 1801 and spent his remaining years frustrated by his failure to establish himself as a history painter. — LINKS — Mademoiselle Rosalie Duthé (1792; 55kb) [Ne pas confondre “voir Duthé” et “boire du thé”, bien qu'on puisse deviner que ce que servait à boire au peintre la demoiselle Duthé était du thé. (bien con?)] — Master Gardiner (1802, 75x62cm) — Le supplice d'une vestale (1790, 188x170cm; 916x826pix, 35kb) |
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Baptized as an infant
on 03 January 1591: “Moïse” Jean Valentin de Boulogne
, French painter, active in Italy, who died on 20 (18? 19?) August
1632. — (not to
be confused with sculptor Jean de Boulogne = Giambologna [1529 – 13
August 1608]) — He studied under Simon Vouet. He spent most of his career in Rome, where he came under the influence of Caravaggio and Bartolomeo Manfredi. He continued to paint in a variant of their dramatic chiaroscuro style even after this had fallen out of fashion in Italy. Although he is best known for his low-life genre scenes of the kind popularized by Manfredi, these represent only one aspect of a more varied oeuvre that also includes devotional pictures, allegories and portraits. The poetic character of his style, at once violent and tender, makes him one of the most engaging French painters of the 17th century. — Moïse Valentin (also called Le Valentin and Valentin de Boulogne), French Caravaggesque painter active in Rome from about 1612. His life is obscure; the name Moïse (the French form of Moses) by which he was called was not his Christian name (which is unknown) but a corruption of the Italian form of 'monsieur'. He did, however, have one major public commission: The Martyrdom of SS. Processus and Martinian (1629), painted for Saint Peter's as a pendant to Poussin's The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus. About fifty works are attributed to him. They vary in subject — religious, mythological, and genre scenes and portraits — but the same models often seem to reappear in them, and all his work is marked by an impressively solemn, at times melancholic, dignity. He was one of the finest of Caravaggio's followers and one of the most dedicated, still painting in his style when it had gone out of fashion. He died after taking a cold bath in a fountain following a drinking bout; his death was much lamented in the artistic community. — Nicolas Tournier was a student of Valentin de Boulogne. — LINKS — Crowning with Thorns (128x95cm; 950x698pix, 96kb) _ after a Caravaggio painting (now lost, possibly this, or even this). — The Last Supper (1626, 139x230cm; 680x1090pix, 94kb) _ The painting shows the most dramatic moment of the Last Supper, when Jesus reveals to the disquieted apostles that one of them would betray him. Beside Christ, Saint John rests his head on the table and sleeps, in keeping with an iconographic tradition popular in Emilia. Meanwhile Peter, to the left of Christ, raises his hands in a gesture of astonishment. In the left foreground, Judas can be seen holding a purse behind his back: this contains thirty coins, the price of his treachery. This painting is one of the masterpieces of Valentin's maturity. His compositional scheme shows classical influence, with the solemn and monumental figure of Christ at the exact center of the scene and the symmetric composition around him, with the apostles distributed regularly around the table. Such stylistic elements are distant from the convulsed and turbulent compositions Valentin had preferred earlier in his career. In contrast to these, which constitute a large part of Valentin's production, this picture reveals an attachment to the classicizing French modes that Poussin and Vouet were developing in these years. Yet Caravaggesque style, an essential component of this painting, is perfectly evident in the realism of the apostles' hands, which Valentin depicts without any sort of idealization. The influence of Caravaggio also shows in the masterful control of light which, through the deft play of chiaroscuro, aptly emphasizes the emotional state of the characters. Likewise, light enlivens the simple but effective still life that seems to spring forth from the white tablecloth. — Christ Driving the Money Changers out of the Temple (1618, 195x260cm; 773x1029pix, 137kb) _ The attribution to Valentin (1845) has been followed by all successive critics. The close dependence of this French artist on the style of Caravaggio extends even to the copying of individual passages like the figure lying on the ground to the left or the fleeing, screaming boy to the right. This, as well as, the use of strong light, chiaroscuro, and the realistic definition of the faces suggest a precocious date, perhaps around 1618. Despite the dependence on Caravaggio's style, the complex composition is fundamentally new. Everything is arranged along diagonals, carefully studied to give an overall sensation of whirling motion. Isolated in the center of all this is the powerful figure of Christ. With his arm raised against a terrorized, fleeing crowd, this figure is a very individual interpretation of its prototype, the Christ at the center of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Last Judgment. — Saint John the Baptist (1630, 130x90cm; 980x747pix, 93kb) [about Saint John the Baptist] — Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (1622, 195x261cm; 669x900pix, 121kb) _ Saint Lawrence was a Christian martyr of Spanish birth who died in Rome in 258, one of the most venerated saints since the 4th century. He was ordained deacon by Pope Sixtus II and met his death shortly after the pope's own martyrdom. Tradition has it that the pope, when arrested, instructed Lawrence to give away to the poor the church's treasures, consisting of precious vessels and money, for which, as deacon, he was responsible. No sooner had he done so than Lawrence was ordered by the Roman prefect to surrender them to him, whereupon Lawrence, indicating the poor and sick around him, said, 'Here are the treasures of the Church'. For this he was condemned to be roasted on a gridiron, a torture he underwent with equanimity, merely observing, 'See, I am done enough on one side, now turn me over and cook the other'. Valentin de Boulogne was a French Caravaggesque painter who came so close to the master that he was perfectly in place among his Italian contemporaries, French characteristics being confined to certain details. |
| — Martyrdom
of Saints Processus and Martinian (1629, 308x165cm; 1138x730pix, 100kb)
_ This painting was commissioned for Saint Peter's, and it was the only
important commission of the whole career of Valentin. It is of interest
because the artist modified his largely tenebrist style to suit the situation.
The subject, a gruesome one, is of the Martyrdom of Saint
Processus and Saint Martinian. It was subsequently replaced by a mosaic.
A possible reason for the lightening of the artist's style is the fact that the picture had to match the already completed Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus by the young Nicolas Poussin, who had in turn modified his style towards a much more Caravaggesque approach, especially in his realistic treatment of the gruesome subject-matter. Neither painter received such a commission again, and these two altarpieces stand out in their respective careers, proving that young French artists did appeal to influential people — in this case officials of the Papacy — with the money to give commission. It could also be argued that this was because by the end of the 1620s pure Caravaggism as such was already out of fashion among all successful Italian painters working in Rome. — The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew [about Saint Bartholomew] — The Judgment of Solomon (1626, 176x210cm; 844x1040pix, 127kb) _ The influence of Caravaggio's dramatic style which revolutionized European painting at the beginning of the seventeenth century can be seen clearly in Valentin's work. He would have come into contact with Caravaggio's work in Rome where he went as a very young man, and spent all of his short career. In The Judgment of Solomon the strength of forms outlined against the shadow, so reminiscent of Caravaggio, does not preclude an atmosphere of mystery and poetry that is peculiar to Valentin. Louis XIV owned several of his paintings; five are still hanging in the King's bedchamber in the Chateau de Versailles. — a very slightly different The Judgment of Solomon (1620, 174x213cm; 810x1020pix, 101kb) _ Though this painting was at one time thought to be a copy, it is now considered to be Valentin's original. A prominent member of Rome's colony of transalpine painters, this Frenchman was active in the papal city from around 1613 until his death in 1632. A replica of this picture, with slight variations and dated to 1626, is listed above. In both versions, Valentin arranges his scene along a central axis that coincides with the figure of Solomon: to either side are counterbalanced groups, each centering on one of the two female protagonists of this biblical narrative. The figures are emphasized as much as possible by the strong and direct light. Between the original and the second version, variants in the arms of the woman to the right (gathered to her breast in the 1626 picture) have the effect of giving greater movement to the scene and better emphasizing the figure of the true mother. Differences in the idealization of the figures, the more refined and subtle definition of the light and chromatic range in the 1626 picture, and the more intense rendering of the chiaroscuro in the 1620 painting lead to the conclusion that the latter is earlier than the 1626 one and must have been painted around 1620. This conclusion is supported by the many similarities between the 1620 picture and other confirmed works by Valentin that date to the same years. — Judith and Holofernes (1626, 106x141cm; 770x1099pix, 108kb) _ The figure of Judith emerges from the obscurity of the background with crude determination, rivaling the best productions of the Caravaggisti, particularly Bartolomeo Manfredi. — The Four Ages of Man (1630, 96x134cm; 433x600pix, 39kb) — The Fortune Teller (1628, 125x175cm; 750x1076pix, 96kb) Valentin's mature style of about 1630 was already slightly out of fashion, but it was at this time that he produced some of his best pictures. One of these is The Fortune Teller, which belonged to Louis XIV. The artist has, as usual, concentrated on the lowlife aspect of the subject — a gypsy telling fortunes to a hapless youth — yet the refinement of the tones and delicacy of the brushwork raise the painting above those of all his contemporaries in these respect. (The only Italian to achieve such refinement, although it was of a different character, was Gentileschi.) — The Concert (1625, 173x214cm; 820x1019pix, 90kb) _ The scene of this concert is an interior characterized only by a classical low-relief. Valentin's Caravaggism emerges not only from the subject but also from the melancholic characterization of the figures and the violent contrasts of light and shadow. — Cardsharps (1625, 95x137cm; 760x1127pix, 114kb) _ Of all French painters active in Rome in the 1620s, the most consistent, and the only one who can be claimed to have genius, is Valentin. He died relatively young, without leaving Rome. Many of his earlier pictures, painted when he was much closer in spirit to Caravaggio, have remained unidentified until recently. The best example of his early work is the Dresden Cardsharps which is based on a similar composition by Caravaggio (unfortunately missing since the late nineteenth century). In the Dresden painting Valentin has seized on the evil nature of the villain, creating an obvious story completely lacking in subtlety, but delicacy is shown in his handling of the paint which, as always in his work, is very much more refined than that of Caravaggio. |
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