CONF 19.10.2021

Celebrating the Illustrious in Europe, 1580-1750 (online, 25-26 Nov 21)

Online, 25.–26.11.2021

Matthieu Lett

Celebrating the Illustrious in Europe (1580-1750): Towards a New Paradigm ?

In the preface to the second volume of his Hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce siècle, avec leurs portraits au naturel (1696-1700), Charles Perrault was compelled to justify one of the choices that he and his protector, Michel Bégon, had made. He was indeed criticized for « having mixed artisans with princes and cardinals, » that is, for having given the same glory to men of very different conditions. This criticism – and the author’s response, which invokes the canonical examples of Apelles and Phidias, whose names « placed after that of Alexander himself, do not bring shame to either Alexander or his century » – suggests that Perrault’s work departed from the encomiastic tradition which developed during the sixteenth century, in the wake of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. According to this tradition, only the princes and the main servants of the state would deserve to be celebrated, and such a perspective naturally led to the exclusion of scholars, scientists and artists. Pictorial enterprises such as the Gallery of the Illustrious in the Château de Beauregard, decorated with 327 portraits around 1620, or the one in the Cardinal Palace in Paris commissioned in 1632 by Richelieu, were still part of this tradition. The same is true for engraved collections, such as the series of portraits by Thomas de Leu, or biographies of illustrious women, such as Les Harangues héroïques by Madeleine de Scudéry (1642-1644) or the Gallerie des femmes fortes by the Jesuit Pierre Le Moyne (1647), both being exclusively devoted to the leaders and great heroines of ancient history.

Scholars and artists could, of course, be the subject of autonomous lives or included in series devoted exclusively to them. Thus, in the seventeenth century, following Vasari’s Vite, artists were represented in various real or fictitious « galleries, » ranging from Leopold de Medici’s collection of artists’ self-portraits continued by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III, to biographical collections such as Cornelis de Bie’s Gulden Cabinet van de Vry Schilder-Const (1662). However, while such undertakins do testify the elevation of the status of painters and sculptors, they remain largely distinct from the practices of celebrating great statesmen. Thus, an implicit hierarchy clearly remained strong, as the criticism of Perrault’s project suggests.

However, in the following century, Voltaire could, on the contrary, affirm that those who « excelled in the useful or the pleasant », that is to say the scholars and the artists, were the true exempla virtutis : they were then likely to surpass in merit the military heroes, and to count among the first of the great men. How did this paradigm shift – in which Perrault’s work seems central – take place between 1580 and 1750? The France of Louis XIV a priori appears as a catalyst, because of the renewal of the modes of celebration of the royal glory and, above all, because of the institutionalization of the worlds of the arts, sciences and letters under the ministry of Colbert, a phenomenon that gave rise to the elaboration of new structured social bodies, accompanied by new types of discourses which aimed to support their legitimacy. However, like André Thevet’s Vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres (1584) or Van Dyck’s Icones Principum Virorum (1645), some undertakings prior to Perrault’s work were already bringing together scholars, artists and statesmen on the same level. These few examples should lead us to reconsider the pivotal role hitherto attributed to the reign of Louis XIV, in order to try to retrace in greater detail the evolution of the social and intellectual conditions that allowed the emergence of new types of discourse on the Illustrious.

Until now, the historiography has mainly focused on the issues of biography in the humanist context of the sixteenth century, which largely relied on the model of Plutarch (Dubois, 2001; Eichel-Lojkine, 2001), or conversely, on the development of the cult of great men after 1750 (Bonnet, 1998; Gaehtgens and Wedekind, dir., 2009). The aim of this symposium is therefore to review all the biographical productions of a period that has been little considered until now, in order to better understand how the modes of celebrating the glory of illustrious men were transformed between 1580 and 1750, both in writing and in images, by taking into account various media such as books, prints, paintings, sculptures and even medals.

Online Symposium (Université de Bourgogne/LIR3S, Université de Lausanne/CUSO) : https://unil.zoom.us/j/92708025500

For informations, please contact Carla Julie (carla.julieunil.ch)


PROGRAMM

November 25th

09:15 Accueil
09:30 Introduction
Antoine Gallay, Carla Julie, Matthieu Lett

NOUVEAUX ILLUSTRES
Président de séance : Matthieu Lett

10:00 Gabriel-Michel de La Rochemaillet, Jean Le Clerc et Les pourtraicts de plusieurs hommes illustres qui ont flory en France depuis l’an 1500
Rémi Jimenes (Université de Tours) et Estelle Leutrat (Université Rennes 2)

10:45 Pause

11:00 Les “femmes illustres” : représentations littéraires et culturelles au Portugal (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles)
Paula Almeida Mendes (CITCEM – Université de Porto)

11:45 How did images make modern authors illustrious ?
Malcolm Baker (University of California, Riverside)

NOUVEAUX RÉGIMES DE CÉLÉBRATION
Président de séance : Frédéric Tinguely

14:00 En être, ou pas. Conversions, redéfinitions et exclusions de l’économie des grandeurs dans les recueils protestants d’hommes illustres (XVIe- XVIIe siècles)
Marion Deschamp (Université de Lorraine)

14:45 Le monde du spectacle dans les portraits en mode parisiens (1690-1710) : à propos de la célébration gravée de quelques noms de la Comédie-Française et de l’Opéra
Pascale Cugy (Université Rennes 2)

15:30 Pause

15:45 A faceless gallery of illustrious scientists and artists ? Sébastien Leclerc’s orchestration of an institutional utopia
Sophie-Luise Mävers (Universität zu Köln)

16:30 Recueillir les bons mots des « personnes illustres » dans la France moderne : pratiques de compilation et célébration de l’esprit des grands hommes (1680-1750)
François Lavie (Université Paris 8)


November 26th

DESSEINS POLITIQUES
Président de séance : Laurence Giavarini

09:30 La Gallerie des femmes fortes : de la collection historiographique au miroir politique
Stanis Perez (Maison des sciences de l’homme Paris-Nord)

10:15 De la célébration des Grands à celle des Lorrains : les œuvres de Dom Calmet (1672- 1757) au gré des évolutions de la France de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle
Margaux Prugnier (Université Paris Nanterre)

11:00 Pause

11:15 Thomas Birch’s Heads of Illustrious Persons (1743-1751). Collecting Art, Collecting National Histories
Craig Hanson (Calvin University, Grand Rapids)

DE LA COLLECTION À LA CÉLÉBRATION
Président de séance : Antoine Gallay

13:30 Regard d’un illustre sur ses pairs : l’Armamentarium Heroicum, de la collection d’armures au théâtre de papier
Clarisse Evrard (Université de Lille)

14:15 Curieux d'estampes et Illustres dans la France du XVIIe siècle : autour de Michel de Marolles
Carla Julie (Université de Lausanne-Université de Bourgogne)

15:00 Pause

15:15 Choisir les Illustres : Michel Bégon et le projet biographique
Maxime Martignon (Université Paris Nanterre)

16:00 Conclusion
Christian Michel (Université de Lausanne)


Organizers:

Antoine Gallay (Université de Tel Aviv – The Cohn Institute)
Carla Julie (Université de Lausanne-Université de Bourgogne)
Matthieu Lett (Université de Bourgogne – LIR3S)

Scientific Committee:

Jan Blanc, professeur d’histoire de l’art de la période moderne (Université de Genève)
Estelle Doudet, professeure de littérature française (Université de Lausanne)
Laurence Giavarini, maîtresse de conférences HDR en littérature des XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Université de Bourgogne – LIR3S)
Christian Michel, professeur d’histoire de l’art de la période moderne (Université de Lausanne)
Frédéric Tinguely, professeur de littérature française (Université de Genève)

Quellennachweis:
CONF: Celebrating the Illustrious in Europe, 1580-1750 (online, 25-26 Nov 21). In: ArtHist.net, 19.10.2021. Letzter Zugriff 28.03.2024. <https://arthist.net/archive/35126>.

^