Roger frees Angelica

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Roger frees Angelika (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres)
Roger frees Angelica
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , 1819
Oil on canvas
190 × 147 cm
Louvre (2015: Louvre Lens )

Roger frees Angelika (Original: Roger délivrant Angélique ) is an oil painting by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres from 1819. The picture illustrates a scene from the verse epic The Frenzied Roland of Ariosto , in which the Muslim knight Roger (Italian: Ruggiero ) , riding on a hippogriff , which saves Princess Angelica from a sea monster. The motif is closely related to the mythological theme of Perseus and Andromeda .

The landscape format painting measures 190 × 147 cm, according to earlier information from the Louvre 187 × 146 cm and is listed under the Louvre's inventory number INV 5419.

The episode at Ariosto

Roger (Ruggiero) is one of the main characters in Ariosto's verse epic The Furious Roland from the 16th century. In addition to Roland (Orlando) and Rinaldo, who are both madly in love with the Chinese princess Angelika , Roger is a Muslim knight who originally fought against the Franks, but is now in love with the Christian knight Bradamante and is finally baptized after numerous adventures to be able to marry her.

In the 10th song of Rasenden Roland , from verse 92 onwards, Roger finds himself riding a hippogriff - a mythical creature half horse, half eagle - riding through the air in Brittany , where he discovers Angelica, who was chained naked to a rock. A "raw nation" had seized them,

The - you remember them, I think -
Armed wandered from beach to beach
To catch beautiful women in every way,
The monster there for horrible food.

A sea monster appears on the coast every day to find a victim. Since she had slept enchanted on the beach, Angelika had become easy prey for the "mercilessly raw and wild gang".

As soon as she has noticed Roger and in tears is about to address him, the monster rises from the depths of the sea. Roger attacks immediately with his lance and has a tough fight with the animal. He cannot penetrate the animal's scales with his weapons; only by magic (a ring and a shield in his possession) does he force it down so that he can free Angelica.

The rider on his back with the sweetie
The Roger gave a seat behind him.
He made the fish forfeit the meal
Much too fine and delightful for him.

Roger takes Angelika to the next bank, where he sets her down and is seized by sexual pleasure - Ariosto ends the 10th song with brief words before Roger can get rid of his armor, which prevents further for the time being.

Image description

The painting shows the moment when Roger on the hippogriff attacks the monster with his lance as it rises from the sea. The scene is practically "frozen at its peak."

It's night. The rock, its upper tip cut off from the edge of the picture, is in the center of the picture, the sea is designed as foaming waves in the lower part of the picture, but merges into a uniform surface in the background. The horizon is about a third of the height from the top of the picture. A rocky coast is indicated on the right edge of the picture, the red fire of a lighthouse is visible in the upper right corner of the picture.

Against this background, the two main characters form a slightly offset V-shape to one another: the naked Angelica, standing slightly to the right of the center of the picture, forms the brightest, almost shining focal point of the painting.

Except for a diadem of white pearls and red stones in her hair, she is completely naked. She stands upright with her front facing the viewer; one leg slightly in front, with the arms chained to the rock above his head. Her head is set back so that the long blonde hair hangs loosely behind her back and the neck and larynx are clearly visible. Your eyes are rolled up as if you were about to faint.

Roger on the hippogriff

At her feet the churned sea hits the rocks, the spray rises up over her pubic area.

The monster emerges from the waves to the right of the viewer, it is only partially visible and cut off at the lower edge of the picture. It is scaly black and has wide, bloodshot eyes and a bright red tongue. The mouth is wide open and irregularly long, pointed teeth are visible.

The sea monster emerges from the waves

Knight Roger rushes into the scene diagonally from the top left on the hippogriff . The hippogriff pulls back its eagle head and claws as if it were about to land, the hooves are also still in the air. Roger, riding on him, wears gold armor that covers his entire body except for his face, as well as a gold helmet. His face is quite androgynous , his expression calm. A billowing white cape (the second lightest part of the picture) and a reddish shield are visible on his back. The knight grabs a long lance with both hands, which he thrusts into the monster's face.

The picture is kept in dark brown-gray tones, the exceptions are white spray, the light body of Angelika and the cape. Red accents are set by the monster's tongue, the stones in Angelica's diadem, Roger's red shield and the beacon. Reflections of the light coming from the top left can be seen on the shiny golden knight armor.

Origin, contemporary criticism and classification

The painting was commissioned by King Louis XVIII. who wanted a motif for the long-neglected Salon d'Apollon (also: throne room) in the Palace of Versailles that "combines eroticism and fantasy". It was to be a counterpart to Renaud et Armide servis par une nymphe by Pierre Nolasque Bergeret, which  illustrates a scene from the epic The Liberated Jerusalem by Torquato Tasso . Ingres found his "extreme" theme with the episode from the Mad Roland by the Italian poet Ariosto from the 16th century - a motif that is closely related to Perseus and Andromeda or Andromeda on the rock . Ingres may have been inspired by a fresco by Polidoro da Caravaggios and Maturino da Firenzes that he might have seen in Rome in 1818.

Angelica's unusually protruding neck, which aroused the derision of contemporary critics

Ingres completed the painting for the Paris Salon in 1819, where it was exhibited. Contemporary critics mocked the anatomy of Angelique, such as Theophile Silvestre on "Angelica with the goiter" or Henry de Waroquier on "Angelica with the three breasts". Art historian Andrew Carrington Shelton writes that the painting had the "wrath of critics" and the like. a. attracted by an assumed primitivism and archaism. His colleague Karin H. Grimme also points out that the contemporary audience primarily had problems with the lack of a unit of action, the “isolation of the characters”.

At the time Roger Liberated Angelica was written, Ingres was still living in Rome, where he had stayed in 1806 after receiving a scholarship. With this work, too, he had not succeeded in building on the earlier success in Paris; he continued to fail with critics and the Parisian public. One of the few exceptions of this time was the history painting Christ gives Peter the keys of paradise , which, however, as part of a church decoration in Rome, did not find the large public that Ingres needed for success. A return to Paris seemed impossible to him in this situation, and he moved to Florence with his wife in 1820. Shelton points out that Ingres was almost 40 years old and had already worked as a painter for 20 years, so that if there was no mid-life crisis, then there were fears of failure that motivated him to take this “radical” step. Only in 1824 did he return after the salon success with The Vow of Ludwig XIII. back to Paris.

Interpretations

The nocturnal scene reminds the historian and art critic Stéphane Guégan of Parisian painting of the 1800s. B. the figure of Sappho by Antoine-Jean Gros . Here, too, the female figure is as desperate as it is seductive. With Ingres the motif “Beauty and the Beast” would also come into play, he even assumed Ingres had a certain sadistic enjoyment of the threatening scene.

Shelton also goes into the contrast between Angelica's nudity and the almost absurdly exaggerated armor of Roger; it is more reminiscent of "Christmas tree decorations" than the armor of a brave warrior. As if the artist had been aware of this weakness of his hero, he tried to “give him back” masculinity with a particularly long lance. However, it is precisely these unexpected juxtapositions that “charge the picture emotionally into the quasi-surreal”. He also points to the phallic symbolism of the rock, the proportions of which are emphasized in one of the later versions of the picture to the point of "outrageous" (French: outrageuse ).

For Karin H. Grimme, the aggression of the knight with the lance and the eagle claws directed against her indicate the double threat situation for Angelika, if one considers Roger's later intention to rape. However, like Shelton, she sees the ridiculous of the situation, especially in the exaggeratedly long lance of the knight, understood as a phallic symbol. Ingres took up parodic elements from Ariosto's text.

Provenance

Labeling of the Louvre with inventory number

As a commissioned work for the Palace of Versailles, Roger Liberated Angelica was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819 and then added to the collection in Versailles . It is unclear whether it was installed in the castle's Apollon Hall as planned. What is certain, however, is that it was on public display in the Palais du Luxembourg from 1824 before it passed into the possession of the Louvre in 1874. It was thus one of the few works by Ingres that was publicly accessible and could, for example, be copied by other artists.

As part of the regular exchange of works of art, it has been on display since December 5, 2014 in the “Galerie der Zeit” of the Louvre Lens as the last object in the “Timeline”.

Ingres used the motif several times in a similar form; an upright version of the painting from the 1830s measuring 39.4 × 47.6 cm is in the National Gallery in London, while a larger and oval version (46 × 54 cm) from 1841 that matches the London picture is in Owned by the Musée Ingres in Montauban . An even larger, oval version (97 × 75 cm) from 1859 without Roger and Hippogriff is in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo . There are also a number of preliminary studies, in oil or drawn.

  • Preliminary study, Louvre; around 1819

  • Portrait version in the National Gallery, 1830s

  • Oval version in the Musée Ingres, 1841

  • Oval variant in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, 1859

References and interpretations of other artists (selection)

Before and after Ingres, other artists have dealt with the Ariosto episode, sometimes with different scenes of the story (such as "Roger and Angelica riding on the hippogriff" or "Roger after rescuing Angelica while trying to get rid of his armor"). A work from the 16th century, which, like Ingres, deals with the scene “Knight with a lance rushes to rescue Angelica / fights monsters”, is attributed to Girolamo da Carpi  .

After Ingres, Eugène Delacroix , Joseph Blanc , Arnold Böcklin and Odilon Redon , among others, have taken up the scene with their own compositions. There are also illustrations, for example engravings by Gustave Doré .

  • Girolamo da Carpi, Ruggiero saves Angelica on the hippogryph, 16th century

  • Eugène Delacroix: Roger frees Angelica or Saint George, 1856

  • Joseph Blanc: Roger et Angelique, 1876

  • Arnold Böcklin: Ruggiero and Angelika, 1877

  • Odilon Redon: Roger et Angelica, 1910

There are direct copies of Ingres' Angelica by Edgar Degas (1855) or Georges Seurat (1878), for example . A caricature by H. Demare im Carillon (1877), on the other hand, in which Roger flies up on a large beetle and the three other protagonists, including the monster, have male faces, Angelique as a priest, is mentioned in Cuzin / Salmon as a reference to Ingres. A modern derivative can be found in Patrick Raynaud's installation from 1991, where the Ingres angelica was mounted in a trunk under the title Untitled (Ingres travel angelique) or Valise d'Ingres: Angélique .

literature

Web links

Commons : Roger délivrant Angélique  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Xavier Dectot, Vincent Pomarede, Jean-Luc Martinez: Louvre Lens: The Guide 2015, No. 212 (English), ISBN 978-2757208960
  2. ↑ Louvre press release on the Ingres exhibition from February 24 to May 15, 2006 (French)
  3. ^ The mad Roland, 10th song, 93rd stanza
  4. ^ The mad Roland, 10th song, 112th verse
  5. ↑ a b c Stéphane Guégan: Ingres: "Ce révolutionnaire-là", p. 72/73
  6. ↑ a b c Andrew Carrington Shelton: Ingres , p. 74
  7. ↑ Vincent Pomarède, Stéphane Guégan, Louis-Antoine Prat, Eric Bertin: Ingres (1780-1867); Exhibition catalog of the Louvre , Gallimard, Musée du Louvre Éditions, Paris 2006. ISBN 2-35031-051-5 , p. 185
  8. ↑ Dossier de l'art n ° 127: Exposition Ingres au Louvre. , P. 28
  9. ^ Jean-Pierre Mourey: Philosophies et pratiques du détail: Hegel, Ingres, Sade et quelques autres. Editions Champ Vallon, 1996. ISBN 9782876732223 , p. 60, footnote 2, quoted from Daniel Ternois in Ingres , éd. Nathan, 1980, p. 59 ( Google Books )
  10. ↑ a b Karin H. Grimme: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, p. 27
  11. ↑ Andrew Carrington Shelton: Ingres , p. 103 (?)
  12. ^ Jean-Pierre Cuzin, Dimitri Salmon: Ingres: Regards croisés , p. 126
  13. ↑ Louvre-Lens: la Galerie du temps restera gratuite jusqu'en décembre 2015. La Voix du Nord (lavoixdunord.fr), October 30, 2014, accessed on December 28, 2014.
  14. ↑ Angelica saved by Ruggiero. 1819-39, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
  15. ↑ Peintre INGRES, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 1841 Romea on montauban.com
  16. ↑ Catalog entry of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo
  17. ^ Jules Martin: Nos peintres et sculpteurs, graveurs, dessinateurs. Portraits et biographies suivis d'une notice sur les Salons français depuis 1673, les Sociétés de Beaux-Arts, la Proriété aertistique, etc. Paris 1897
  18. ↑ a b Jean-Pierre Cuzin, Dimitri Salmon: Ingres: Regards croisés (p.?)