Exhibitions
The Hidden God (Villa Medici, Rome, till 28 January 2001)
Religious revival
Martin Gayford
Famously, asked what in his opinion were the consequences of the French Rev- olution, Chou En Lai replied, 'It is too early to tell.' Among those still unfolding effects has been a lingering Gallic awk- wardness about the subject of religion the French state having been thoroughly and drastically secularised in the 1790s. That in turn has meant that French art has been examined from every conceivable angle except the devotional one. Conse- quently — rather amazingly — the major exhibition devoted to French religious art in the 17th century at the Villa Medici in Rome (The Hidden God) is a pioneering effort. Indeed, it is whispered that such a show would still be difficult to mount in France itself.
During the time of the Revolution, reli- gious images were removed from churches and put in museums instead. Afterwards, if they were returned at all, it was generally to the wrong place. As a result it is rare in France to see an altarpiece, as one often does in Italy, on the altar for which it was painted. From that point on those pictures have tended to be thought of not so much as Adorations, Entombments, or Annunci- ations, as Poussins, or Georges de la Tours. They belong in a narrative, in the secular temple of the Louvre, which is concerned with artistic style, not faith.
This exhibition — of which one of the curators was our own Neil MacGregor, director of the National Gallery — aims to put the great paintings back in their reli- gious context (to that extent it is a similar, though much more closely focused, endeav- our to the highly successful Seeing Salvation exhibition earlier in the year). It also aims to show that there was a specifically French sensibility shared by artists as diverse as Poussin and the Le Nain brothers — grave, restrained, calm, and introverted in com- parison with the theatrical brio of the Ital- ian baroque. This in itself is contentious.
The very idea of a French School was not mooted until 1699. Prior to Louis XIV, 17th-century France was a diverse and decentralised place. La Tour worked in independent Lorraine. Poussin, of course, spent much of his career in Rome. For good reasons: the splendid panorama of towers, temples and domes in the back- ground of his 'Exposition of Moses' from Oxford is not unlike the view from the Villa Medici itself — which is just about the best in Rome. (Napoleon, who got hold of this Renaissance masterpiece on the Pincian Hill for the French Academy, clearly had an eye for real estate.) Did this French sensibility really exist? In the exhibition Poussin's 'Lamentation over the Dead Christ' from Dublin — a sublime essay in emotion as intense as it is intro- spective — is placed next to a painting of a similar subject by Louis Lk Nain (perhaps helped by Mathieu). The brothers Le Nain, best known for their scenes of peasant life, normally belong in a completely separate category from the intellectual classicist Poussin.
But the juxtaposition — one of several between Poussin and the Le Nain, and Philippe de Champaigne — is completely convincing. The same calm, austere mood pervades both — very unitalian, even though the Poussin is clearly based on a 16th-century Italian predecessor by Sebas- tiano del Piombo. One conclusion of the exhibition is that Poussin, despite the Ital- ian sources of his art, emerges looking like a French rather than a Roman artist. Simi- larly, the dramatic lighting in Georges de la Tour's wonderful 'Dream of St Joseph' derives from Caravaggio; the meditative, Le songe de Saint Joseph' by Georges (le la Tour, Musee des Beaux Arts, Nantes gentle feeling, however, couldn't be more different from the violent emotional world of the Italian.
It is another contention of the exhibition — taking most of us into unfamiliar theo- logical waters — that the character of French 17th-century religious art was con- nected with the peculiarities of French 17th-century religion. France had emerged from the wars of the 16th century with a large Protestant minority who were tolerat- ed until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It was also, though officially Catholic, resentful of Papal authority — a huge and bizarre painting by Philippe de Champaigne for Notre Dame shows Louis XIII presenting the crown and sceptre of France directly to the dead Christ (`Le Voeu de Louis XIII'). Also there was the influential Jansenist movement (austere, intellectual, aristocratic, defended by Pas- cal from whose favourite Scriptural phrase, `le Dieu cache', the show takes its title) which was finally declared heretical and suppressed.
One of the coups of the exhibition is to reassemble five paintings from the Jansenist religious house of Porte-Royale — four of them by Philippe de Cham- paigne, whose own daughter became a nun at Porte-Royale. Another is to bring back together four paintings by Simon Vouet from the private chapel of a grand Parisian house, the Hotel Seguier.
Neither Vouet nor Champaigne is terri- bly familiar to British art audiences (indeed no. French 17th-century artists are, except for Claude and Poussin). This exhibition makes out a case for Philippe de Cham- paigne — despite the peculiar 'Vow of Louis XIII' — to be a truly great artist. Seventeenth-century religious art might sound a recondite subject. And it is true that a fair number of exhibits by minor artists, present to make points about reli- gious imagery, are from the aesthetic point of view what the French call staffage simply adding to the numbers. But there are also large numbers of great and cele- brated paintings, and in many ways the test of a good exhibition is to make you look at them in a different way.
The Hidden God provides an excellent excuse to visit Rome (an extra treat being the chance to inspect the interior of the Villa Medici, almost every internal surface of which was personally sponged and stip- pled by the painter Balthus when he was director of Academie de France a Rome).
Another inducement is the Botticelli exhibition at the Scuderie Papali al Quiri- nale. Admittedly, the centrepiece of this, Botticelli's drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy, will be coming to the Royal Academy next spring. But the exhibition in Rome is much more substantial, also including a fair number of major paintings from the Uffizi and elsewhere, and a great deal of other comparative material. In any case, an excuse is scarcely necessary to visit Rome in autumn, the perfect time of year.
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