landscape painter; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait painter. In
portraits truth and nature are particularly in their place, relieved by
coloring, and idealized in proper measure by expression. The portraits
of Champagne are so many monuments in which his most illustrious
contemporaries will live forever. Every thing about them is strikingly
real, grave, and severe, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the
records of Port-Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in
Champagne. Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran,[148]
as well as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu.[149] We see, too,
the learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of
Bossuet decreed the name of Great;[150] and Mme. Angelique Arnaud, with
her naive and strong figure.[151] Among them is mother Agnes and the
humble daughter of Champagne himself, sister St. Suzanne.[152] She has
just been miraculously cured, and her whole prostrated person bears
still the impress of a relic of suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling before
her, regards her with a look of grateful joy. The place of the scene is
a poor cell; a wooden cross hanging on the wall, and some straw chairs,
are all the ornaments. On the picture is the inscription,--_Christo uni
medico animarum et corporum_, etc. There is possessed the Christian
stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add to all these
portraits that of Champagne;[153] for the painter may be put by the side
of his personages.
Had France produced in the seventeenth century only these four great
artists, it would be necessary to give an important place to the French
school; but she counts many other painters of the greatest merit. Among
these we may distinguish P. Mignard, so much admired in his times, so
little known now, and so worthy of being known. How have we been able to
let fall into oblivion the author of the immense fresco of
_Val-de-grace_, so celebrated by Moliere, which is perhaps the greatest
page of painting in the world![154] What strikes at first, in this
gigantic work, is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charming
details and innumerable episodes which form themselves important
compositions. Remark also the brilliant and sweet coloring which should
at least obtain favor for so many other beauties of the first order.
Again, it is to the pencil of Mignard that we owe that ravishing ceiling
of a small apartment of the King at Versailles, a master-piece now
destroyed, but of which there remains to us a magnificent translation in
the beautiful engraving of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in
the _Plague of AEacus_,[155] and in the _St. Charles giving the
Communion to the Plague-infected of Milan_! Mignard is recognized as
one of our best portrait painters: grace, sometimes a little too
refined, is joined in him to sentiment. The French school can also
present with pride Valentin, who died young and was so full of promise;
Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claudine, Antoinette,
and Francoise Stella; Lahyre, who has so much spirit and taste;[156]
Sebastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated;[157] the Lenains, who
sometimes have the _naivete_ of Lesueur and the color of Champagne;
Bourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm; Jouvenet, whose composition is
so good;[158] finally, besides so many others, Lebrun, whom it is now
the fashion to treat cavalierly, who received from nature, with perhaps
an immoderate passion for fame, passion for the beautiful of every kind,
and a talent of admirable flexibility,--the true painter of a great king
by the richness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV.,
worthily closes the seventeenth century.[159]
Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would it not be
unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its daughter, or its sister?
Certainly it is not an art of ordinary importance; we have excelled in
it; we have above all carried it to its perfection in portraits. Let us
be equitable to ourselves. What school--and we are not unmindful of
those of Marc' Antonio, Albert Durer, and Rembrandt--can present such a
succession of artists of this kind? Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gautier
make in some sort the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth
century. Then come a crowd of men of the most diverse talents,--Mellan,
Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nanteuil, Drevet, Van
Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, and the Audrans. Gerard Edelinck
and Nanteuil alone have a popular renown, and they merit it by the
delicacy, splendor, and charm of their graver. But the connoisseurs of
elevated taste find at least their rivals in engravers now less admired,
because they do not flatter the eye so much, but have, perhaps, more
truth and vigor. It must also be said, that the portraits of these two
masters have not the historic importance of those of their predecessors.
The _Conde_ of Nanteuil is justly admired; but if we wish to know the
great Conde, the conqueror of Rocroy and Lens, we must not demand him
from Nanteuil, but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret,[160] who
designed and engraved him in all his force and heroic beauty. Edelinck
and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and retraced the seventeenth century,
except at the approach of its decline.[161] Morin and Mellan were able
to see it, and transmit it in its glorious youth. Morin is the Champagne
of engraving: he does not engrave, he paints. It is he who represents
and transmits to posterity the illustrious men of the first half of the
great century--Henry IV., Louis XIII., the de Thous, Berulle, Jansenius,
Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin, still young,
and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor.[162] Mellan had the same
advantage. He is the first in date of all the engravers of the
seventeenth century, and perhaps is also the most expressive. With a
single line, it seems that from his hands only shades can spring; he
does not strike at first sight; but the more we regard him, the more he
seizes, penetrates, and touches, like Lesueur.[163]
Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is favorable to
painting, is particularly expressive. Sculpture seems to be a pagan art;
for, if it must also contain moral expression, it is always under the
imperative condition of beauty of form. This is the reason why sculpture
is as it were natural to antiquity, and appeared there with an
incomparable splendor, before which painting somewhat paled,[164] whilst
among the moderns it has been eclipsed by painting, and has remained
very inferior to it, by reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing
stone and marble to express Christian sentiment, without which, material
beauty suffers; so that our sculpture is too insignificant to be
beautiful, too mannered to be expressive. Since antiquity, there have
scarcely been two schools of sculpture:[165]--one at Florence, before
Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo; the other in
France, at the _Renaissance_, with Jean Cousin, Goujon, Germain Pilon.
We may say that these three artists have, as it were, shared among
themselves grandeur and grace: to the first belong nobility and force,
with profound knowledge;[166] to the other two, an elegance full of
charm. Sculpture changes its character in the seventeenth century as
well as every thing else: it no longer has the same attraction, but it
finds moral and religious inspiration, which the skilful masters of the
_Renaissance_ too much lacked. Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of
them that is superior to Jacques Sarazin? That great artist, now almost
forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and the Italian
school, and to the qualities that he borrows from his predecessors, he
adds a moral expression, touching and elevated, which he owes to the
spirit of the new school. He is, in sculpture, the worthy contemporary
of Lesueur and Poussin, of Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal. He belongs
entirely to the reign of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mazarin; he did not
even see that of Louis XIV.[167] Called into France by Richelieu, who
had also called there Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few
years produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great
character. What has become of them? The eighteenth century passed over
them without regarding them. The barbarians that destroyed or scattered
them, were arrested before the paintings of Lesueur and Poussin,
protected by a remnant of admiration: while breaking the master-pieces
of the French chisel, they had no suspicion of the sacrilege they were
committing against art as well as their country. I was at least able to
see, some years ago, at the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the
piety of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mausoleum
erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second of the name, Prince of
Conde, father of the great Conde, the worthy support, the skilful
fellow-laborer of Richelieu and Mazarin. This monument was supported by
four figures of natural grandeur,--_Faith, Prudence, Justice, Charity_.
There were four bas-reliefs in bronze, representing the _Triumphs of
Renown, Time, Death_, and _Eternity_. In the _Triumph of Death_, the
artist had represented a certain number of illustrious moderns, among
whom he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo.[168] We can
still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pavilion of the
Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so majestic and so
graceful, which are detached with admirable relief and lightness. Have
Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon done any thing more elegant and lifelike?
Those females breathe, and are about to move. Take the pains to go a
short distance[169] to visit the humble chapel that now occupies the
place of that magnificent church of the Carmelites, once filled with the
paintings of Champagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun; where the voice of
Bossuet was heard, where Mlle. de Lavalliere and Mme. de Longueville
were so often seen prostrated, their long hair shorn, and their faces
bathed in tears. Among the relics that are preserved of the past
splendor of the holy monastery, consider the noble statue of the
kneeling Cardinal de Berulle. On those meditative and penetrating
features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes the soul of that
great servant of God, who died at the altar like a warrior on the field
of honor. He prays God for his dear Carmelites. That head is perfectly
natural, as Champagne might have painted it, and has a severe grace that
reminds one of Lesueur and Poussin.[170]
Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy would admire,
and to whom there is wanting, since the great century, nothing but
judges worthy of them. These two brothers covered Paris and France with
the most precious monuments. Look at the tomb of Jacques-Auguste de
Thou, by Francois Anguier: the face of the great historian is reflective
and melancholy, like that of a man weary of the spectacle of human
things; and nothing is more amiable than the statues of his two wives,
Marie Barbancon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Chatre.[171] The mausoleum
of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, which is still
seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient convent of the daughters
of Sainte-Marie, is an important work of the same artist, in which force
is manifest, with a little heaviness.[172] To Michel Anguier are
attributed the statues of the duke and duchess of Tresmes, and that of
their illustrious son, Potier, Marquis of Gevres.[173] Behold in him the
intrepid companion of Conde, arrested in his course at thirty-two years
of age before Thionville, after the battle of Rocroy, already
lieutenant-general, and when Conde was demanding for him the baton of a
marshal of France, deposited on his tomb; behold him young, beautiful,
brave, like his comrades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval,
Chatillon, La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the
monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, that faithful friend
of Conde, who by the splendor of his valor, especially by the graces of
his person, knew how to gain the heart, the fortune, and the name of the
beautiful Marguerite, the daughter of the great Duke of Rohan. The new
duke died, still young, in 1655, at thirty-nine years of age. He is
represented lying down, the head inclined and supported by an angel;
another angel is at his feet. The whole is striking, and the details are
exquisite. The face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its
reputation, but the beauty is that of one dying. The body has already
the languor of death, _longuescit moriens_, with I know not what antique
grace. This morsel, if the drawing were more severe, would rival the
_Dying Gladiator_, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even
imitates.[174]
In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly of Puget and
Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first order cannot be refused. He
has the fire, the enthusiasm, the fecundity of genius. The caryatides of
the Hotel de Ville of Toulon, which have been brought to the Museum of
Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The _Milon_ reminds one of the manner
of Michael Angelo; it is a little overstrained, but it cannot be denied
that the effect is striking. Do you want a talent more natural, and
still having force and elevation? Take the trouble to search in the
Tuileries, in the gardens of Versailles, in several churches of Paris,
for the scattered works of Girardon, here for the mausoleum of the
Gondis,[175] there for that of the Castellans,[176] that of
Louvois,[177] etc.; especially go to see in the church of the Sorbonne
the mausoleum of Richelieu. The formidable minister is there represented
in his last moments, sustained by religion and wept by his country. The
whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure has the fineness,
the severity, the superior distinction given to it by the pencil of
Champagne, and the gravers of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan.
Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, who, under the
influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins the theatrical style, who
still has the facility, movement, and elegance of Lebrun himself. He
reared worthy monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and Lebrun,[178] and thus
to speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of his time. For, remark it
well, artists then took scarcely any arbitrary and fanciful subjects.
They worked upon contemporaneous subjects, which, while giving them
proper liberty, inspired and guided them, and communicated a public
interest to their works. The French sculpture of the seventeenth
century, like that of antiquity, is profoundly natural. The churches and
the monasteries were filled with the statues of those who loved them
during life, and wished to rest in them after death. Each church of
Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences of the
aristocracy--for at that period, there was one in France, like that of
England at the present time--possessed their secular tombs, statues,
busts, and portraits of eminent men whose glory belonged to the country
as well as their own family. On its side, the state did not encourage
the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, in a small way; it gave them a
powerful impulse by demanding of them important works, by confiding to
them vast enterprises. All great things were thus mingled together,
reciprocally inspired and sustained each other.
One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful art that
surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gardens or magnificent
parks,--that man is a Frenchman of the seventeenth century, is Le Notre.
Le Notre may be reproached with a regularity that is perhaps excessive,
and a little mannerism in details; but he has two qualities that
compensate for many defects, grandeur and sentiment. He who designed the
park of Versailles, who to the proper arrangement of parterres, to the
movement of fountains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the
mysterious shades of groves, has known how to add the magic of infinite
perspective by means of that spacious walk where the view is extended
over an immense sheet of water to be lost in the limitless
distances,--he is a landscape-painter worthy of having a place by the
side of Poussin and Lorrain.
We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like all the nations
of northern Europe. In the sixteenth century what architects were Pierre
Lescot, Jean Bullant, and Philibert Delorme! What charming palaces, what
graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville of Paris, Chambord,
and Ecouen! The seventeenth century also had its original architecture,
different from that of the middle age and that of the _Renaissance_,
simple, austere, noble, like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of
Descartes. Study without scholastic prejudice the Luxembourg of de
Brosses,[179] the portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the
Palais de Justice, by the same architect; the Palais Cardinal and the
Sorbonne of Lemercier;[180] the cupola of Val-de-Grace by Lemuet;[181]
the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by Francois Blondel;
Versailles, and especially the Invalides, of Mansart.[182] Consider with
attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on your mind and
soul, and you will easily succeed in recognizing in it a particular
beauty. It is not a Gothic monument, neither is it an almost Pagan
monument of the sixteenth century,--it is modern, and also Christian; it
is vast with measure, elegant with gravity. Contemplate at sunset that
cupola reflecting the last rays of day, elevating itself gently towards
the heavens in a slight and graceful curve; cross that imposing
esplanade, enter that court admirably lighted in spite of its covered
galleries, bow beneath the dome of that church where Vauban and Turenne
sleep,--you will not be able to guard yourself from an emotion at once
religious and military; you will say to yourself that this is indeed the
asylum of warriors who have reached the evening of life and are prepared
for eternity!
Since then, what has French architecture become? Once having left
tradition and national character, it wanders from imitation to
imitation, and without comprehending the genius of antiquity, it
unskilfully reproduces its forms. This bastard architecture, at once
heavy and mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the beautiful
architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere effaces the
vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a striking example of it? In
Paris, near the Luxembourg, the Condes had their _hotel_,[183]
magnificent and severe, with a military aspect, as it was fitting for
the dwelling-place of a family of warriors, and within of almost royal
splendor. Beneath those lofty ceilings had been some time suspended the
Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In those vast saloons had been assembled
the _elite_ of the grandest society that ever existed. In those
beautiful gardens had been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de
Sevigne, Moliere, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great
Conde. The oratory had been painted by the hand of Lesueur.[184] It had
been easy to repair and preserve the noble habitation. At the end of the
eighteenth century, a descendant of the Condes sold it to a dismal
company to build that palace without character and taste which is called
the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the same epoch there was a movement made
to construct a church to the patroness of Paris, to that Genevieve,
whose legend is so touching and so popular. Was there ever a better
chance for a national and Christian monument? It was possible to return
to the Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of that
there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of the Decline. What a
dwelling for the modest and holy virgin, so dear to the fields that
bordered upon Lutece, whose name is still venerated by the poor people
who inhabit these quarters! Behold the church which has been placed by
the side of that of Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if to make felt all the
differences between Christianity and Paganism! For here, in spite of a
mixture of the most different styles, it is evident that the Pagan style
predominates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in this profane
edifice, which has so many times changed its destination. It is in vain
to call it anew Saint-Genevieve,--the revolutionary name of Pantheon
will stick to it.[185] The eighteenth century treated the Madeleine no
better than Saint-Genevieve. In vain the beautiful sinner wished to
renounce the joys of the world and attach herself to the poverty of
Jesus Christ. She has been brought back to the pomp and luxury that she
repudiated; she has been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold,
which might very well be a temple of Venus, for certainly it has not the
severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the most vulgar copy. How
far we are from the Invalides, from Val-de-Grace, and the Sorbonne, so
admirably appropriated to their object, wherein appears so well the hand
of the century and the country which reared them!
While architecture thus strays, it is natural that painting should seek
above every thing color and brilliancy, that sculpture should apply
itself to become Pagan again, that poetry itself, receding for two
centuries, should abjure the worship of thought for that of fancy, that
it should everywhere go borrowing images from Spain, Italy, and Germany,
that it should run after subaltern and foreign qualities which it will
not attain, and abandon the grand qualities of the French genius.
It will be said that the Christian sentiment which animated Lesueur and
the artists of the seventeenth century is wanting to those of ours; it
is extinguished, and cannot be rekindled. In the first place, is that
very certain? Native faith is dead, but cannot reflective faith take its
place? Christianity is exhaustless; it has infinite resources, and
admirable flexibility; there are a thousand ways of arriving at it and
returning to it, because it has itself a thousand phases that answer to
the most different dispositions, to all the wants, to all the mobility
of the heart. What it loses on one side, it gains on another; and as it
has produced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all its
vicissitudes. Either every religion will perish in this world, or
Christianity will endure, for it is not in the power of thought to
conceive a more perfect religion. Artists of the nineteenth century, do
not despair of God and yourselves. A superficial philosophy has thrown
you far from Christianity considered in a strict sense; another
philosophy can bring you near it again by making you see it with another
eye. And then, if the religious sentiment is weakened, are there not
other sentiments that can make the heart of man beat, and fecundate
genius? Plato has said, that beauty is always old and always new. It is
superior to all its forms, it belongs to all countries and all times; it
belongs to all beliefs, provided these beliefs be serious and profound,
and the need be felt of expressing and spreading them. If, then, we have
not arrived at the boundary assigned to the grandeur of France, if we
are not beginning to descend into the shade of death, if we still truly
live, if there remain to us convictions, of whatever kind they may be,
thereby even remains to us, or at least may remain to us, what made the
glory of our fathers, what they did not carry with them to the tomb,
what had already survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle Age,
what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral accident, what
subsists and is continually found in the focus of consciousness--I mean
moral inspiration, immortal as the soul.