Art Of The Day Weekly

My love, the troubadour

LYON and BOURG-EN-BRESSE – At the beginning of the XIXth century interest was awoken on a period which till then had been looked down upon, the Middle Ages Age. How could they represent those events and above all its setting? That was the question a new school of art asked itself, stimulated by the editorial production of Horace Walpole, Walter Scott and others such as Mary Shelley. Lyon was particularly dynamic in this field, and gave birth to the «troubadour» style ,which brings back to life the atmosphere of the former centuries, of its gentle ladies and the knights tournaments, with an abundance of details (donjons and guard rooms, hangings and furniture, cloths and materials, etc.), that were not always authentic. These artists, hidden by Ingres’ success, are forgotten today, even the most notorious representatives such as Pierre Révoil (1776-1842) or Fleury Richard (1777-1852). They have been ‘ressurected’ today in two different places which have enriched their collections over the last forty years. The international dimension is important as the genre had a European branch, with Leighton, Palagi, Rosales and their sidekicks, who produced endlessly Dürer at his balcony in his house in Nuremberg, François Ist visiting the workshop of Benvenuto Cellini and Dementia of Juana of Castile among others.

• L’invention du passé, histoires de cœur et d’épée en Europe, 1802-1850 at the musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, from 19 April to 29 July 2014.

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