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{{main| Catherine de' Medici's patronage of the arts| Catherine de' Medici's building projects| Catherine de' Medici's court festivals}}
{{main| Catherine de' Medici's patronage of the arts| Catherine de' Medici's building projects| Catherine de' Medici's court festivals}}



Catherine was inspired by the example of her father-in-law, [[Francis I of France| King Francis I of France]], who had hosted the leading artists of Europe at his court. As governor and [[regent]] of France, Catherine set out to imitate Francis's politics of magnificence. In an age of civil war and declining respect for the monarchy, she sought to bolster royal prestige through lavish cultural display. Once in control of the royal purse, she launched a programme of artistic patronage which lasted for three decades, presiding over distinctive late French-Renaissance forms in literature, architecture, and the performing arts,<ref>Knecht, 220.</ref> and becoming one of the great art collectors of the [[Renaissance]]. In 1569, the [[Republic of Venice| Venetian]] ambassador had identified her with her [[House of Medici| Medici]] forbears: "One recognises in the queen the spirit of her family. She wishes to leave a legacy behind her: buildings, libraries, collections of antiquities".<ref name = z6>Zvereva, 6.</ref>
Catherine was inspired by the example of her father-in-law, [[Francis I of France| King Francis I of France]], who had hosted the leading artists of Europe at his court. As governor and [[regent]] of France, Catherine set out to imitate Francis's politics of magnificence. In an age of civil war and declining respect for the monarchy, she sought to bolster royal prestige through lavish cultural display. Once in control of the royal purse, she launched a programme of artistic patronage which lasted for three decades, presiding over distinctive late French-Renaissance forms in literature, architecture, and the performing arts,<ref>Knecht, 220.</ref> and becoming one of the great art collectors of the [[Renaissance]]. In 1569, the [[Republic of Venice| Venetian]] ambassador had identified her with her [[House of Medici| Medici]] forbears: "One recognises in the queen the spirit of her family. She wishes to leave a legacy behind her: buildings, libraries, collections of antiquities".<ref name = z6>Zvereva, 6.</ref>
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Many of Caron's paintings, such as those of the ''Triumphs of the Seasons'', are of [[allegory| allegorical]] subjects that echo the festivities for which Catherine's court was famous. His designs for the [[Valois Tapestries]] depict the ''fêtes'', picnics, and mock battles of the "magnificent" entertainments hosted by Catherine at Fontainebleau, at [[Bayonne]] in June 1565 for the summit meeting with the Spanish court, and at the [[Tuileries]] in August 1573 for the visit of the Polish ambassadors who presented the Polish crown to Catherine's son [[Henry III of France| Henry of Anjou]].<ref name = "biic">Blunt, 98.</ref> The tapestries glorify the house of Valois by celebrating its magnificent festivals.<ref name =K244>Knecht, 244.</ref> Biographer Leonie Frieda suggests that "Catherine, more than anyone, inaugurated the fantastic entertainments for which later French monarchs also became renowned".<ref name =FF>Frieda, 225.</ref>
Many of Caron's paintings, such as those of the ''Triumphs of the Seasons'', are of [[allegory| allegorical]] subjects that echo the festivities for which Catherine's court was famous. His designs for the [[Valois Tapestries]] depict the ''fêtes'', picnics, and mock battles of the "magnificent" entertainments hosted by Catherine at Fontainebleau, at [[Bayonne]] in June 1565 for the summit meeting with the Spanish court, and at the [[Tuileries]] in August 1573 for the visit of the Polish ambassadors who presented the Polish crown to Catherine's son [[Henry III of France| Henry of Anjou]].<ref name = "biic">Blunt, 98.</ref> The tapestries glorify the house of Valois by celebrating its magnificent festivals.<ref name =K244>Knecht, 244.</ref> Biographer Leonie Frieda suggests that "Catherine, more than anyone, inaugurated the fantastic entertainments for which later French monarchs also became renowned".<ref name =FF>Frieda, 225.</ref>


For Catherine, these entertainments were worth their colossal expense, since they served a political purpose. Presiding over the royal government at a time when the French monarchy was in steep decline, she set out to show not only the French people but foreign courts that the Valois monarchy was as prestigious and magnificent as it had been during the reigns of [[Francis I of France| Francis I]] and her husband [[Henry II of France| Henry II]].<ref name =St>Strong, 99.</ref> At the same time, she believed these elaborate entertainments and sumptuous court rituals, which incorporated martial sports and tournaments of many kinds, would occupy her feuding nobles and distract them from fighting against against each other to the detriment of the country and the royal authority.<ref>Yates, 51–52.<br />• Catherine wrote to Charles IX: "I heard it said to your grandfather the King that two things were necessary to live in peace with the French and have them love their King: keep them happy, and busy at some exercise, notably tournaments; for the French are accustomed, if there is no war, to exercise themselves and if they are not made to do so they employ themselves to more dangerous [ends]". Quoted in Jollet, 111.</ref>
For Catherine, these entertainments were worth their colossal expense, since they served a political purpose. She set out to show not only the French people but foreign courts that the Valois monarchy was as prestigious and magnificent as it had been during the reigns of [[Francis I of France| Francis I]] and her husband [[Henry II of France| Henry II]].<ref name =St>Strong, 99.</ref> At the same time, she believed these elaborate entertainments and sumptuous court rituals, which incorporated martial sports and tournaments of many kinds, would occupy her feuding nobles and distract them from fighting against against each other to the detriment of the country and the royal authority.<ref>Yates, 51–52.<br />• Catherine wrote to Charles IX: "I heard it said to your grandfather the King that two things were necessary to live in peace with the French and have them love their King: keep them happy, and busy at some exercise, notably tournaments; for the French are accustomed, if there is no war, to exercise themselves and if they are not made to do so they employ themselves to more dangerous [ends]". Quoted in Jollet, 111.</ref> A highly talented and artistic woman, Catherine took the lead in devising and planning her own musical-mythological shows. She employed the leading writers, artists, and architects of the day, including [[Antoine Caron]], [[Germain Pilon]], [[Pierre Ronsard]], and [[Claude Le Jeune]], to create the dramas, music, scenic effects, and decorative works required to animate the themes of the festivals, which were usally [[mythological]] and dedicated to the ideal of peace in the realm. Catherine's "magnificences" are studied by modern scholars as works of art.<ref name =FF>Frieda, 225.</ref> Historian Frances Yates has called her "a great creative artist in festivals".<ref>Yates, 68.</ref> Catherine gradually introduced changes to the traditional form of these entertainments: in particular, she developed and increased the prominence of dance in the shows that climaxed each series of entertainments. A distinctive new art form, the ''[[ballets de cour| ballet de cour]]'', emerged from the creative advances in court entertainment devised by Catherine de' Medici.<ref>Yates, 51; Strong, 102, 121–22.</ref>

It is clear, however, that Catherine regarded these festivals as more than a political and pragmatic exercise; she revelled in them as a vehicle for her creative gifts. A highly talented and artistic woman, Catherine took the lead in devising and planning her own musical-mythological shows and is regarded as their creator as well as their sponsor. Historian Frances Yates has called her "a great creative artist in festivals".<ref>Yates, 68.</ref> Though they were [[ephemeral]], Catherine's "magnificences" are studied by modern scholars as works of art.<ref name =FF>Frieda, 225.</ref> Catherine employed the leading writers, artists, and architects of the day, including [[Antoine Caron]], [[Germain Pilon]], and [[Pierre Ronsard]], to create the dramas, music, scenic effects, and decorative works required to animate the themes of the festivals, which were usally [[mythological]] and dedicated to the ideal of peace in the realm. It is difficult for scholars to reconstruct the exact form of Catherine's entertainments, but research into the written accounts, scripts, artworks, and [[tapestries]] that derived from these famous occasions has provided evidence of their richness and scale.

In the tradition of sixteenth-century royal festivals, Catherine de' Medici's magnificences took place over several days, with a different entertainment on each day. Often individual lords and ladies and members of the royal family were responsible for preparing one particular entertainment. Spectators and participants, including those involved in martial sports, would dress up in costumes representing mythological or romantic themes. Catherine gradually introduced changes to the traditional form of these entertainments. She forbade heavy [[jousting| tilting]] of the sort that led to the death of her husband in 1559; and she developed and increased the prominence of dance in the shows that climaxed each series of entertainments.

===Dance===

A distinctive new art form, the ''[[ballets de cour| ballet de cour]]'', emerged from the creative advances in court entertainment devised by Catherine de' Medici.<ref>Yates, 51; Strong, 102, 121–22.</ref> The Italian influence on the ''ballet de cour'' owed much to Catherine, who was Italian herself and had grown up in [[Florence]], where ''[[intermedio| intermedii]]'', patronised by her rich relatives, were a staple of court entertainments and a focus of innovation. These between-acts entertainments had evolved a unique artistic form of their own, with choral dances, masquerades (''mascherate''), and consecutive themes.<ref>Shearman, 105.</ref> Once in France, Catherine kept in touch with artistic innovations in Italy. She encouraged Italian dancing masters accept posts in France, among them the Milanese [[Cesare Negri]], who introduced the skills of [[Dance figure| figured dancing]] to France, and Pompeo Diobono, whom Catherine employed as dancing master to her four sons.<ref>Lee, 39.</ref> The most significant figure was [[Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx]] (his name gallicised from the Italian Baldassare da Belgiojoso), whom Catherine placed in charge of training dancers and producing performances at court.<ref>Lee, 40–42.</ref>

Historian [[Frances Yates]] has credited Catherine as the guiding light of the ''ballets de cour'':
<blockquote>
It was invented in the context of the chivalrous pastimes of the court, by an Italian, and a Medici, the Queen Mother. Many poets, artists, musicians, choreographers, contributed to the result, but it was she who was the inventor, one might perhaps say, the producer; she who had the ladies of her court trained to perform these ballets in settings of her devising.<ref>Yates, 68.</ref>
</blockquote>


[[Image:Siren from Ballet Comique de la Reine.jpg|thumb|left| A [[siren]] from the ''[[Ballet Comique de la Reine]]'', 1581]]
[[Image:Siren from Ballet Comique de la Reine.jpg|thumb|left| A [[siren]] from the ''[[Ballet Comique de la Reine]]'', 1581]]


The dance performances at the [[House of Valois| Valois]] court were conceived on a large scale, as elaborate, choreographed showpieces, sometimes performed by considerable forces. At the Château of Fontainebleau in 1564, the court attended a ball in which 300 "beauties dressed in gold and silver cloth" performed a choreographed dance.<ref>Frieda, 211.</ref> In his illustrated ''Magnificentissimi spectaculi'', [[Jean Daurat| Jean Dorat]] described an intricate ballet, ''The Ballet of the Provinces of France'', performed for the Polish ambassadors at the Tuileries palace in 1573, in which sixteen nymphs, each representing a French province, distributed devices to the spectators as they danced. Choreographed by Beaujoyeulx, the dancers performed complex, interlaced figures and patterned movements, each expressing a certain moral or spiritual truth that the spectators, assisted by printed programmes, were expected to recognise.<ref>Lee, 42.</ref> The chronicler [[Agrippa d'Aubigné]] recorded that the Poles marvelled at the ballet.<ref>Knecht, 239.</ref> [[Brantôme]] called the performance performance "the finest ballet that was ever given in this world" and praised Catherine for bringing prestige to France with "all these inventions".<ref>Knecht, 239.</ref> Jean Dorat described the movements of the dancers in verse:
The dance performances at the [[House of Valois| Valois]] court were conceived on a large scale, as elaborate, choreographed showpieces, sometimes performed by considerable forces. At the Château of Fontainebleau in 1564, the court attended a ball in which 300 "beauties dressed in gold and silver cloth" performed a choreographed dance.<ref>Frieda, 211.</ref> [[Brantôme]] called the performance performance "the finest ballet that was ever given in this world" and praised Catherine for bringing prestige to France with "all these inventions".<ref>Knecht, 239.</ref>

:They blend a thousand flights with a thousand pauses of the feet
:Now they stitch through one another like bees by holding hands
:Now they form a point like a flock of voiceless cranes.
:Now they draw close, intertwining with one another
:Creating an entangled hedge like a kind of bramble bush.
:Now this one and now that switches to a flat figure
:Which describes many letters without a tablet.<ref>Quoted in Lee, 43.</ref>

After the dance was over, Catherine invited the spectators to join with the performers in a social dance.


[[Image:Ballet 1582.png|thumb| The ''[[Ballet Comique de la Reine]]'', from an engraving of 1582]]
[[Image:Ballet 1582.png|thumb| The ''[[Ballet Comique de la Reine]]'', from an engraving of 1582]]


The dance elements in the court festivities represented a response to the increasing political disharmony of the country.<ref>Lee, 42.</ref> The ''Ballet Comique de la Reine'' marked the final transformation of court dance as a purely personal and social activity into a unified theatrical performance with a philosophical and political agenda.<ref>Lee, 41. See also [http://www.graner.net/nicolas/arbeau/ ''Orchésographie''] (1588) by [[Thoinot Arbeau]], the first publication to [[dance notation| notate]]—in relation to music—the steps taken from social dances.</ref> Owing to its synthesis of dance, music, verse, and setting, the production is regarded by scholars as the first authentic ballet, <ref>Lee, 44.</ref>
Over the years, Catherine increased the element of dance in her festive entertainments, and it became the norm for a major ballet to climax each series of magnificences. The ''[[Ballet Comique de la Reine]]'', devised under Catherine's influence, by [[Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont|Queen Louise]] for the Joyeuse Magnificences of 1581, is regarded by historians as the moment when the ''[[ballets de cour| ballet de cour]]'' assumed the character of a new art form. The theme of the entertainment was an invocation of cosmic forces to aid the monarchy, which at that time was threatened by the rebellion not only of Huguenots but of many Catholic nobles. Men were shown as reduced to beasts by [[Circe]], who held court in a garden at one end of the hall. Louise and her ladies, costumed as [[naiads]], entered on a chariot designed as a fountain and then danced a ballet of thirteen geometric figures. After being turned to stone by Circe, they were freed to dance a ballet of forty geometric figures. Four groups of dancers, each wearing a different-coloured costume, moved through a sequence of patterns, including squares, triangles, circles, and spirals.<ref>Lee, 45; Strong, 120–21.</ref>

The figured choreography that enacted the mythological and symbolic themes reflected the principle, derived from the ''[[Enneads]]'' of [[Plotinus]] (c. 205–270), of "cosmic dance", the imitation of heavenly bodies by human motion to produce harmony. This imitation was achieved in the dance through geometric choreography and figures based on the harmony of numbers.<ref>Lee, 41–42.</ref> The dance elements in the court festivities represented a response to the increasing political disharmony of the country.<ref>Lee, 42.</ref> The ''Ballet Comique de la Reine'' marked the final transformation of court dance as a purely personal and social activity into a unified theatrical performance with a philosophical and political agenda.<ref>Lee, 41. See also [http://www.graner.net/nicolas/arbeau/ ''Orchésographie''] (1588) by [[Thoinot Arbeau]], the first publication to [[dance notation| notate]]—in relation to music—the steps taken from social dances.</ref> Owing to its synthesis of dance, music, verse, and setting, the production is regarded by scholars as the first authentic ballet, <ref>Lee, 44.</ref>

===Music===

The dance, verse, and musical elements of Catherine's entertainments increasingly reflected the principles of an academic movement—also influential in the [[Florentine Camerata]]—to unify the performing arts in what was believed to be the classical, Greek way. In 1570, [[Jean-Antoine de Baïf]] founded the [[Académie de Poésie et de Musique]], whose aim was to revive ancient metrical practices, and, though the academy was short lived, similar aims were adopted by the ''Académie du Palais'', founded in 1577. Both enterprises were supported by the Valois court. One result of this movement was ''[[Musique mesurée| Musique mesurée à l'antique]]'', in which the metres of music and verse were matched precisely, to create a new harmony. The theory was not merely technical but [[Renaissance humanism| humanistic]]; practitioners believed a harmonious combination of elements would produce benign moral and ethical effects on the audience. Dance was also subject to the new system and was designed to match the rhythms of the music and verse. The result was a new unified approach to the interrelationship between the performing arts.<ref>Strong, 102.</ref>

[[Image:ClaudeLeJeune.jpg|right|thumb|[[Claude Le Jeune]], the leading composer of the day, wrote music for Catherine de' Medici's entertainments and for court ceremonies and religious occasions]]


In 1570, [[Jean-Antoine de Baïf]] founded the [[Académie de Poésie et de Musique]], whose aim was to revive ancient metrical practices, and, though the academy was short lived, similar aims were adopted by the ''Académie du Palais'', founded in 1577. Both enterprises were supported by the Valois court. One result of this movement was ''[[Musique mesurée| Musique mesurée à l'antique]]'', in which the metres of music and verse were matched precisely, to create a new harmony. The result was a new unified approach to the interrelationship between the performing arts.<ref>Strong, 102.</ref>
The well-documented Joyeuse magnificences of 1581 provide the clearest evidence of the influence of this artistic movement on Catherine de' Medici's entertainments. The chief composer of music for the performances was [[Claude Le Jeune]] (1528–1600). His ''musique mesurée'' was played at the wedding itself, and his song "La Guerre" was sung during a foot-combat in the Louvre. He also wrote the music for an elaborate show on a sun-moon theme, once again setting ''vers mesurés'' to ''musique mesurée''.<ref>Strong, 118.</ref> For the ''Ballet Comique de la Reine'', the music was composed by the Sieur de Beaulieu. The musicians were fully incorporated in the dramatic whole: on one side of the performing space was a cloud containing costumed singers and musicians, and on the other, a [[grotto]], guarded by [[Pan]], containing a second band of musicians. Further groups of singers and musicians made various entries and exits during the five-and-a-half-hour performance. At one stage, [[Circe]] turned the dancers and musicians to stone.<ref>Strong, 119–20.</ref> When, at the climax of the show, [[Jupiter]] descended from the heavens, forty singers and musicians performed a song in honour of the wisdom and virtue of the Valois monarchy.<ref>Strong, 121.</ref> Published accounts praised the length and variety of the music. The Jupiter music was called the "most learned and excellent music that had ever been sung or heard".<ref>Knecht, 241.</ref>


==Sculpture==
==Sculpture==

Revision as of 15:41, 24 March 2008

Qp10qp's sandbox for notes and editing.

Heading

Arts and entertainment

Catherine was inspired by the example of her father-in-law, King Francis I of France, who had hosted the leading artists of Europe at his court. As governor and regent of France, Catherine set out to imitate Francis's politics of magnificence. In an age of civil war and declining respect for the monarchy, she sought to bolster royal prestige through lavish cultural display. Once in control of the royal purse, she launched a programme of artistic patronage which lasted for three decades, presiding over distinctive late French-Renaissance forms in literature, architecture, and the performing arts,[1] and becoming one of the great art collectors of the Renaissance. In 1569, the Venetian ambassador had identified her with her Medici forbears: "One recognises in the queen the spirit of her family. She wishes to leave a legacy behind her: buildings, libraries, collections of antiquities".[2]

An inventory drawn up at the Hôtel de la Reine after Catherine’s death shows that she was a keen collector. Works of art included tapestries, hand-drawn maps, sculptures, and hundreds of pictures, many by Côme Dumoûtier and Benjamin Foulon, Catherine’s last official painters. There were rich fabrics, ebony furniture inlaid with ivory, sets of china (probably from Bernard Palissy’s workshop), and Limoges pottery.[3]

The vogue for portrait drawings intensified during Catherine de' Medici's life, and she loved having her children painted: "I would like", she wrote in 1547 to her children’s governor, Jean d’Humières, "to have paintings of all the children done . . . and sent to me, without delay, as soon as they are finished".[4] However, the more formal pictures include a high proportion of portraits of European kings and queens, past and present, most of which she probably commissioned personally.[5] A large group of portraits from Catherine's collection includes portraits by Jean Clouet (1480–1541) and by his son François Clouet (c. 1510–1572). Jean drew and painted in the style of the Italian High Renaissance, but in the portraits of François, a northern-European naturalism is apparent, and a flatter, more meticulous technique.[6] François Clouet drew and painted portraits of all Catherine's family as well as of many members of the court. His drawing has been called profound, owing to its accuracy and harmony of form and its psychological penetration.[7] After the death of Catherine de' Medici, a decline in the quality of French portraiture set in; and by 1610, the school patronised by the late Valois court and brought to its pinnacle by François Clouet had all but died out.[8]

Triumph of Winter, by Antoine Caron, c. 1568.

Beyond portraiture, little is known about the painting at Catherine de' Medici's court.[9] In the last two decades of Catherine's life, only two painters stand out as recognisable personalities, Jean Cousin the Younger and Antoine Caron. Cousin's most important surviving work is The Last Judgement in the Louvre, which like Caron's art, depicts human beings dwarfed by the landscape and, in Blunt's words, "made to swarm over the earth like worms".[10] Caron became painter to Catherine de' Medici after working at Fontainebleau under Primaticcio. His vivid Mannerist style, with its love of ceremonial and allegory, perhaps reflects the peculiarly neurotic atmosphere of the French court during the Wars of Religion.[11]

Many of Caron's paintings, such as those of the Triumphs of the Seasons, are of allegorical subjects that echo the festivities for which Catherine's court was famous. His designs for the Valois Tapestries depict the fêtes, picnics, and mock battles of the "magnificent" entertainments hosted by Catherine at Fontainebleau, at Bayonne in June 1565 for the summit meeting with the Spanish court, and at the Tuileries in August 1573 for the visit of the Polish ambassadors who presented the Polish crown to Catherine's son Henry of Anjou.[12] The tapestries glorify the house of Valois by celebrating its magnificent festivals.[13] Biographer Leonie Frieda suggests that "Catherine, more than anyone, inaugurated the fantastic entertainments for which later French monarchs also became renowned".[14]

For Catherine, these entertainments were worth their colossal expense, since they served a political purpose. She set out to show not only the French people but foreign courts that the Valois monarchy was as prestigious and magnificent as it had been during the reigns of Francis I and her husband Henry II.[15] At the same time, she believed these elaborate entertainments and sumptuous court rituals, which incorporated martial sports and tournaments of many kinds, would occupy her feuding nobles and distract them from fighting against against each other to the detriment of the country and the royal authority.[16] A highly talented and artistic woman, Catherine took the lead in devising and planning her own musical-mythological shows. She employed the leading writers, artists, and architects of the day, including Antoine Caron, Germain Pilon, Pierre Ronsard, and Claude Le Jeune, to create the dramas, music, scenic effects, and decorative works required to animate the themes of the festivals, which were usally mythological and dedicated to the ideal of peace in the realm. Catherine's "magnificences" are studied by modern scholars as works of art.[14] Historian Frances Yates has called her "a great creative artist in festivals".[17] Catherine gradually introduced changes to the traditional form of these entertainments: in particular, she developed and increased the prominence of dance in the shows that climaxed each series of entertainments. A distinctive new art form, the ballet de cour, emerged from the creative advances in court entertainment devised by Catherine de' Medici.[18]

A siren from the Ballet Comique de la Reine, 1581

The dance performances at the Valois court were conceived on a large scale, as elaborate, choreographed showpieces, sometimes performed by considerable forces. At the Château of Fontainebleau in 1564, the court attended a ball in which 300 "beauties dressed in gold and silver cloth" performed a choreographed dance.[19] Brantôme called the performance performance "the finest ballet that was ever given in this world" and praised Catherine for bringing prestige to France with "all these inventions".[20]

The Ballet Comique de la Reine, from an engraving of 1582

The dance elements in the court festivities represented a response to the increasing political disharmony of the country.[21] The Ballet Comique de la Reine marked the final transformation of court dance as a purely personal and social activity into a unified theatrical performance with a philosophical and political agenda.[22] Owing to its synthesis of dance, music, verse, and setting, the production is regarded by scholars as the first authentic ballet, [23]

In 1570, Jean-Antoine de Baïf founded the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, whose aim was to revive ancient metrical practices, and, though the academy was short lived, similar aims were adopted by the Académie du Palais, founded in 1577. Both enterprises were supported by the Valois court. One result of this movement was Musique mesurée à l'antique, in which the metres of music and verse were matched precisely, to create a new harmony. The result was a new unified approach to the interrelationship between the performing arts.[24]

Sculpture

According to the contemporary art historian Vasari, Catherine wanted Michelangelo to make her husband Henry II’s equestrian statue; but Michelangelo passed the commission on to Daniele da Volterra, and only the horse was ever made.[25]

Monument containing the heart of Henri II of France, by Germain Pilon and Domenico del Barbiere

On commission from Catherine, Germain Pilon carved the marble sculpture that contains Henry II’s heart. The Florentine Domenico del Barbiere, who had worked at Fontainebleau, carved the base. Pilon's fluid style echoes Primaticcio's stucco work at Fontainebleau. The piece may also have been influenced by Pierre Bontemps’ monument for the heart of Francis I.[26] Pilon set the bronze urn on the heads of the Three Graces, who are poised back to back, as if to dance.[27] He may have based the design on that for an incense burner for Francis I, engraved by Marcantonio. Pilon's figures, however, with their long necks and small heads, are more like nymphs.[26] A poem by Ronsard is engraved at the foot of the sculpture. It asks the reader not to wonder that so small a vase can hold so large a heart, since Henry's real heart resides in Catherine's breast.[28] Henri Zerner has called the monument, which can be seen at the Louvre, "one of the summits of our sculpture".[29]

In the 1580s, Pilon began work on statues for the chapels that were to circle the tomb of Catherine de' Medici and Henry II at the basilica of Saint Denis. Among these, the fragmentary Resurrection, now in the Louvre, was designed to face the tomb of Catherine and Henry from a side chapel.[30] This work owes a clear debt to Michelangelo, who had designed the tomb and funerary statues for Catherine's father at the Medici chapels in Florence.[31] Pilon openly depicted extreme emotion in his work, sometimes to the point of the grotesque. His style has been interpreted as a reflection of a society torn by the conflict of the French wars of religion.[32]

Architecture

Drawing by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau of an enlarged project of 1578–1579 for the Tuileries, with oval halls

Architecture was Catherine de' Medici's first love among the arts. "As the daughter of the Medici," suggests French art historian Jean-Pierre Babelon, "she was driven by a passion to build and a desire to leave great achievements behind her when she died."[33] Having witnessed in her youth the huge architectural schemes of Francis I at Chambord and Fontainebleau, Catherine set out, after Henry II's death, to enhance the grandeur of the Valois monarchy through a series of costly building projects.[34] These included work on châteaux at Montceaux-en-Brie, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, and Chenonceau, and the building of two new palaces in Paris: the Tuileries and the Hôtel de la Reine. Catherine was closely involved in the planning and supervising of all her architectural schemes.[35] Architects of the day dedicated treatises to her in the sure knowledge that she would read them.[36] The poet Ronsard accused her of preferring masons to poets.[37]

Effigies on the tomb of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici at the basilica of Saint Denis, carved by Germain Pilon[38]

Catherine was intent on immortalising her sorrow at the death of her husband and had emblems of her love and grief carved into the stonework of her buildings.[39] As the centrepiece of an ambitious new chapel, she commissioned a magnificent tomb for Henry at the basilica of Saint Denis, designed by Francesco Primaticcio. In a long poem of 1562, Nicolas Houël, laying stress on her love for architecture, likened Catherine to Artemisia, who had built the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as a tomb for her dead husband.[40] Primaticcio's circular plan for the Valois chapel, by allowing the tomb to be viewed from all angles, solved the problems faced by the Giusti brothers and Philibert de l'Orme, buidlers of previous royal tombs.[41] Art historian Henri Zerner has called the design "a grand ritualistic drama which would have filled the rotunda's celestial space” and "the last and most brilliant of the royal tombs of the Renaissance".[42] Work on the building was abandoned in 1585, as the monarchy faced bankruptcy and a series of rebellions. Over two hundred years later, in 1793, a mob tossed Catherine and Henry's bones into a pit with the rest of the French kings and queens.[43]

Catherine de' Medici spent extravagant sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces, and as the country slipped deeper into anarchy, her plans grew ever more ambitious.[44] Yet the Valois monarchy was crippled by debt and its moral authority in steep decline. The popular view condemned Catherine's building schemes as obscenely wasteful. This was especially true in Paris, where the parlement was often asked to contribute to her costs.

Ronsard captured the mood in a poem:

The queen must cease building,
Her lime must stop swallowing our wealth…
Painters, masons, engravers, stone-carvers
Drain the treasury with their deceits.
Of what use is her Tuileries to us?
Of none, Moreau; it is but vanity.
It will be deserted within a hundred years.[45]

Ronsard was in many ways proved correct. Little remains of Catherine de' Medici's investment today: one Doric column, a few fragments in the corner of the Tuileries gardens, an empty tomb at Saint Denis.

Literature

Astrologers Studying an Eclipse, by Antoine Caron: Catherine was fascinated by astronomy and astrology and had a tower built, the Colonne de l'Horoscope, possibly used for observation of the stars.[46]

Catherine believed in the humanist ideal of the learned Renaissance prince whose power depended on letters as well as arms, and she was familiar with the writing of Erasmus, among others, on the subject.[47] She enjoyed and collected books, and moved the royal collection to the Louvre, her principle residence. She delighted in the company of learned men and women, and her court was highly literary. Her government officials, such as secretary-of-state Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy, whose wife translated the epistles of Ovid, were perfectly at home in literary circles.[48] When she could find the time, Catherine occasionally wrote verses herself, which she would show to the court poets.[49] Her reading was not entirely highbrow, however. A superstitious woman, she believed implicitly in astrology and soothsaying, and her reading matter included The Book of Sibyls and the almanacs of Nostradamus.[50]

Catherine patronised poets such as Pierre de Ronsard, Rémy Belleau, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, and Jean Dorat, who wrote verses, scripts, and associated literature for her court festivals, and for public events such as royal entries and royal weddings.[51] Catherine even had Ronsard write a poem to Elizabeth of England, honouring a new peace treaty.[52] These poets were part of a group sometimes known as the Pléiade, who forged a vernacular French literature on Greek and Latin models. They gave form to their interest in ancient poetry in vers mesurés, a metric system that aspired to imitate classical poetic rhythms. Catherine de' Medici was also interested in Italian literature: Tasso presented his Rinaldo to her, and Aretino eulogised her as "woman and goddess serene and pure, the majesty of beings human and divine".[53]

Theatre

In 1559, Catherine and Henry II attended a performance of the tragedy Sophonisba by Trissino, adapted earlier by the poet Mellin de Saint-Gelais to Catherine's commission.[54] The performance style of the day inserted musical interludes unrelated to the plot between the acts, devoted to praise of the royal court. Princesses and other high-ranking ladies performed on this occasion, which celebrated royal and noble marriages.[53] Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, claimed in his memoirs that having seen Sophonisba shortly before her husband's death, Catherine refused to watch any more tragedies, believing the play had brought him bad luck. Tragedy went out of fashion at the court soon afterwards, replaced by the new genre of tragicomedy, though the change in taste may have had less directly to do with Catherine than with the revulsion of the court against the violence of the times.[53] Genevra, staged at Fontainebleau on 13 February 1564, adapted into French from an episode of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, was the first tragicomedy known to have been performed for the French court.[53]

I Gelosi performing commedia dell'arte, perhaps featuring Isabella Andreini, in the late sixteenth century

Catherine enjoyed comedy and risqué humour. She drew the line at obscenity, however: in 1567, after seeing Le Brave, an adaptation of Plautus's Miles Gloriosus by one of her official poets Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Catherine told the author to cut the "lascivious talk" of the classical writers.[55] In the 1570s, the Italian commedia dell’arte rose to popularity in France and became all the rage.[56] Catherine was not, as has sometimes been supposed, the first to bring Italian comedy to France: Louis Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers, himself an Italian, was the first to invite high-quality Italian players to France in 1571. The following year, two companies called I Gelosi appeared in Paris, and a performance was given to the court in Blois. A year later, I Gelosi performed during the celebrations for the marriage of Catherine's daughter Marguerite de Valois and Henry of Navarre. Further groups appeared under the same name in the reign of Catherine's son Henry III (1574–89).


Although Catherine spent ruinous sums on the arts, the majority of her patronage had no lasting effect. The end of the Valois dynasty shortly after her death brought a change in priorities. Her collections were dispersed, her palaces sold, and her buildings were left unfinished or later destroyed. Where Catherine had made her mark was in the magnificence and originality of her famous court festivals. Today’s ballets and operas are distantly related to Catherine de' Medici's court productions.[57]


Caron was also responsible for a series of cartoons for tapestries on the theme of Artemesia, in honour of Catherine de' Medici.</ref> were woven later in the Spanish Netherlands with additions, possibly designed by Lucas de Heere,[58] who worked for Catherine between 1559 and 1565,[59] that show fashions as late as 1580 and depict Henry III as king rather than Charles IX.[60]

and the celebrations following the marriages of Catherine's daughter Marguerite to Henry of Navarre in 1572 and of her daughter-in-law's sister, Marguerite of Lorraine, to Anne, Duke of Joyeuse, in 1581. On all these occasions, Catherine organised sequences of lavish and spectacular entertainments.







Catherine followed the example of Francis I in seeking to divert the nobles from civil strife by entertaining them lavishly at court.

Tomb of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici in Saint Denis Cathedral

In architecture she was especially well versed, and Philibert de l'Orme relates that she discussed with him the plan and decoration of her palace of the Tuileries.

n

  1. ^ Knecht, 220.
  2. ^ Zvereva, 6.
  3. ^ Knecht, 240–41.
  4. ^ Frieda, 109.
  5. ^ Dimier, 195. The similarity in sizes suggests that they were ordered to her specifications.
  6. ^ Blunt, 73.
  7. ^ Dimier, 205–6.
  8. ^ Dimier, 308–19; Jollet, 17–18.
  9. ^ "There are few periods at which French painting was at a lower ebb than in the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth, and few periods about which we are more ignorant." Blunt, 98.
  10. ^ Blunt, 100.
  11. ^ Blunt calls Caron's style "perhaps the purest known type of Mannerism in its elegant form, appropriate to an exquisite but neurotic society". Blunt, 98, 100.
  12. ^ Blunt, 98.
  13. ^ Knecht, 244.
  14. ^ a b Frieda, 225.
  15. ^ Strong, 99.
  16. ^ Yates, 51–52.
    • Catherine wrote to Charles IX: "I heard it said to your grandfather the King that two things were necessary to live in peace with the French and have them love their King: keep them happy, and busy at some exercise, notably tournaments; for the French are accustomed, if there is no war, to exercise themselves and if they are not made to do so they employ themselves to more dangerous [ends]". Quoted in Jollet, 111.
  17. ^ Yates, 68.
  18. ^ Yates, 51; Strong, 102, 121–22.
  19. ^ Frieda, 211.
  20. ^ Knecht, 239.
  21. ^ Lee, 42.
  22. ^ Lee, 41. See also Orchésographie (1588) by Thoinot Arbeau, the first publication to notate—in relation to music—the steps taken from social dances.
  23. ^ Lee, 44.
  24. ^ Strong, 102.
  25. ^ Blunt, 282; Knecht, 225. Da Volterra died in 1566. The horse did not reach France until the seventeenth century, when it was utilised for an equestrian statue of Louis XIII. It was melted down during the French revolution.
  26. ^ a b Blunt, 94.
  27. ^ Hoogvliet, 110.
  28. ^ Hoogvliet, 111. Ronsard may refer to Artemisia, who drank the ashes of her dead husband, which fused with her own body.
  29. ^ Knecht, 225, quotes Henri Zerner, L’art de la Renaissance en France. L'invention du classicisme, Paris: Flammarion, 1996, 354. The urn is a nineteenth-century restoration.
  30. ^ Zerner, 383. Whereas the Resurrection for the tomb of Francis I had been positioned close to the corpses, this design would have involved the visitor.
  31. ^ Blunt, 95. Pilon based the Christ on Michelangelo's cartoon for Noli me tangere (1531) and carved the soldiers in Michelangelo's contrapposto style.
  32. ^ Blunt, 96–97.
  33. ^ Babelon, 263.
  34. ^ Frieda, 79, 455; Sutherland, Ancien Régime, 6.
  35. ^ De l’Orme wrote that Catherine, with "an admirable understanding combined with great prudence and wisdom," took the trouble "to order the organization of her said palace [the Tuileries] as to the apartments and location of the halls, antechambers, chambers, closets and galleries, and to give the measurements of width and length". Quoted by Knecht, 228.
  36. ^ Blunt, 91. For example, Jacques Androuet du Cerceau dedicated his Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France (1576 and 1579) to Catherine.
  37. ^ Knecht, 228.
  38. ^ Knecht, 227. Henry’s gesture is now unclear, since a missal, resting on a prie-dieu (prayer desk), was removed from the sculpture during the French revolution and melted down.
  39. ^ Knecht, 223.
  40. ^ Frieda, 266; Hoogvliet, 108. Louis Le Roy, in his Ad illustrissimam reginam D. Catherinam Medicem of 1560, was the first to call Catherine the "new Artemisia".
  41. ^ Blunt, 56.
  42. ^ L’art de la Renaissance en France. L'invention du classicisme (Zerner, 1996: 349–54), quoted by Knecht, 227; Zerner, 379.
  43. ^ Knecht, 269.
  44. ^ Thomson, 168.
  45. ^ Quoted in Knecht, 233. Ronsard addressed these lines to the financial official Raoul Moreau. Au tresorier de l'esparne (ca. 1573).
  46. ^ Knecht, 223.
  47. ^ Hoogvliet, 109.
  48. ^ Sutherland, Secretaries of State, 153–56.
  49. ^ Heritier, 460.
  50. ^ Knecht, 221, 244–45
  51. ^ Frieda, 105.
  52. ^ Heritier, 238–39.
  53. ^ a b c d Knecht, 234.
  54. ^ Plazenet, 261.
  55. ^ Knecht, 235.
  56. ^ Heller, 104.
  57. ^ Knecht, 245.
  58. ^ See The Valois Tapestries (1959), by Frances Yates, who proposed de Heere as the designer of the additions.
  59. ^ Dimier, 216. The information about de Heere comes from Karel van Mander (1548–1606).
  60. ^ Knecht, 242–43.


Random images

Henry II of France, by François Clouet.
Catherine's youngest surviving child, Marguerite de Valois (born 1553), aged about seven. By François Clouet
Claude of Valois.