Ecouen & Chantilly

Feeling relieved: I finished writing my 8-page paper on the Young Turk Revolution early this afternoon, and on Friday, I took a 2-hour test, an in-class essay, in which we were expected to analyze "La Cour du Lion," a poem by La Fontaine which criticized the court of Louis XIV. That being done, I could enjoy a double-chateau weekend with my fellow EDUCO students.
I got up, if not early, than earlier than I would have liked, in order to trudge my way off to the Place Saint-Sulpice where we met our bus. I sat with Joe on the way out to Ecouen, which is under an hour's ride north of Paris.

Ecouen now houses the nation's museum of the Renaissance. Built in the first half of the 16th century, during the Francois I / Henri II phase of French architecture, the chateau was owned by Anne de Montmercy, constable of France, the second-richest man in France, after the king. Yes, "Anne" is a woman's name in French, too, but he was named after his aunt, Anne de Bretagne, the wife of Louis XII, whom you may remember from my post on Langeais, where Anne and Louis hooked up on Christmas half a millennium ago. In any case, this Montmercy character owned 120 castles across France, and this was just one of them, decorated in fantastic Renaissance style, and even more embellished with some of France's finest Renaissance art objects and artifacts. We had two guides, who led us through both castles; our guide was mediocre, but the other one, apparently, was nothing short of horrendous.

I was quite impressed with Anne's home-decorating style. There were ornamented cornices, frescoes depicting scenes from the Old Testament on every chimney, Corinthian columns, open scallop-shells around every corner, and carved fleurs-de-lys, crescents, rainbows, and other insignia throughout. Anne's personal symbol is an A and an M joined together by a sword, and his animal of choice is an eagle lacking feet and a beak (don't ask me why). Flanking one courtyard enterance were copies of two of Michelangelo's famous pieces, now known as the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, of which the originals are now a the Louvre. In fact, this is where the originals stood, from the time of Anne (who acquired them from Michelangelo, who had originally sculpted them for a papal tomb) until the time of the French Revolution. Even the floors were once richly, richly painted, with military and vegetable motifs, the yellows, blues, and greens standing out most prominently in the reconstruction in the center of one room.

But Ecouen is also a museum, and it contains, if you ask me, a greater wealth of art than the Cluny does (or maybe I just prefer the Renaissance to the Middle Ages? Beats me). Perhaps what most dazzled me was the collection of gilded-silver drinking vessels, purely for display purposes, which were never used. The masterpiece of the chateau was among these, a 16th-century German-manufactured cup in the shape of Daphne being transformed into a tree -- personally, I found it rather ugly and ostentatious. Really, however, the chateau housed art in every media known to Renaissance Europe. There was a large display of 16th-century Majolica-style plates, richly-painted ceramics in a style developed in Spain, and brought back from Italy by French artists. A few of these were even modest enough that I wouldn't mind having them in my house. One of the most famous pieces in Ecouen is the series of ten 16th-century Flemish tapestries depicting the story of David and Bethsabée. I tried very hard to get a good picture of this, but the lights were too dim (for the preservation of the tapestries, no doubt), so, unlike the other pieces I'm describing, you won't find pictures on FB. Something I found rather curious about the composition, however, was the far-left side of the first tapestry in the series, which was a separate "panel" if you will (what is a tapestry but a Renaissance comic book with insulation functions?), showing a man sitting and reading from a book -- reading the story of D & B, in other words, which the artist went on to vividly illustrate. Why choose to begin a composition this way? In any case, the tapestries were finely-made.

All of the chateau's masterpieces, it seems, were made in Germany. In addition to the cup, there was an impossible-to-photograph goldsmith's bench, owned by Auguste I, Elector of Saxony, which had very, very fine carvings down the length. Even more magnificent and ostentatious was the so-called "Ship of Charles Quint," made in Augsbourg around 1580, a clock in the shape of a great galley. Little figures of human beings were stationed around the deck of the clock-ship, including an enthroned Charles Quint in the center, many of whom nod their heads or otherwise move about when the clock is in motion, which it wasn't at the time we visited.

However, I found that by far the most interesting collection was the one which I found by myself, after or guided tour was over (done at what felt to me like a running-pace), in our thirty minutes of free time. Hidden away at the end of a wing is the Iznik collection of Ottoman ceramics, many of them created under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Beautiful floral swirls on white backgrounds characterize the 16th-century manufactures of the town of Iznik, for which the collection is named. The collection used to belong to the Cluny Museum, but was sold, and thereby dispersed, near the end of the 19th century. Only the diligence of the museum's curators managed to reunite the fabulous collection, over the course of the second half of the 20th century, of around 450 pieces now on display.

We packed back onto the bus: our next stop was Chantilly, known for its cream, its lace, its horses, and, yes, its castle, which was also owned by Anne de Montmercy and his descendants, including the Conde family and the Ducs d'Aumale. Chantilly is really a gem, from the outside, nearly as beautiful, in my opinion, as Chenonceau. The current edifice is mostly a 19th-century reconstruction of a 16th-century chateau nearly entirely destroyed in the French Revolution. The building is now the Condé Museuem (Musée de Condé), which, according to our guide, is the second most-visited art museum in France, after the Louvre (I have difficulty believing that it is more visited than the d'Orsay). First, of course, we had to have lunch at the chateau's kitchens. I'm not going to whine about it for too long, but I had some difficulty securing a vegetarian option; however, the conversation was good (and mostly in French), there was bottomless wine served, and the food itself wasn't bad.

After ungluing ourselves from our seats with difficulty, we took a tour of the castle-turned-museum, and then the gardens. When you enter, one of the first things that you see is an allegoric fountain statue of Louis XIV laying low (terrassant) the Fronde, the great rebellion (really a series of rebellions) the kingdom faced 1648-1653, during Louis's minority. It was the Grand Condé, once proprietor of this chateau, who led the most significant resistance to royal authority (he was unhappy that he and his military buddies hadn't received enough promotions and honors during the Thirty Years' War); there was a significant political reason, in other words, for this fountain's strategic placement!

The Chantilly Chapel, which I believe is part of the original castle (I could be wrong) is pretty amazing. It has a high-vaulted ceiling, with Anne de Montmercy's distinctive AM-Sword emblem. He also depicted himself and the rest of his family in stained glass. At the far end of the chapel is an unpretentious black urn, which contains the hearts of all of the Princes de Condé -- I don't know if it also contains alcohol, or what, but they're still there.

There is a nice collection of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century paintings in the Condé Museum. Many of them have Oriental themes, partially because the Duc d'Aumale went on campaign in Egypt with General Bonaparte, and, like the future Emperor, came back with an orientalist fascination. There are some famous portraits of the Cardinals de Richelieu and de Mazarin, a painting of Madame holding a portrait of Monsieur, many horse-themed tableaux (Chantilly is the French capital of horses), a great painting of an aging Moliere, and various depictions of the Grand Condé. There is a room of paintings depicting Louis XIV's campaigns, one of which I recognized from the cover of my copy of Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. There are also a few pieces of historical interest relating to the Grand Condé, including the chest he used when he was on campaign, the pink diamond he kept about his person, and the cabinet used to hold his mineral collection. The grounds of Chantilly were by no means the gardens of Versailles, but they were certainly very pleasant to stroll through, in the early evening. They were liberally strewn with larger-than-life marble statues of personae from the Grand Siecle, including Moliere, and, of course, Condé. It's only fair to mention here that our guide was far, far more knowledgeable about Chantilly than he was about Ecouen, and not only had more to say, but could also answer questions in a straightforward manner.

I also made it to the Louvre this weekend, just for about an hour, but it might have been the best hour I have spent there yet. I visited the Italian statuary collection, and saw the originals of the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, whose copies ornamented the courtyard of Ecouen. Really, the whole room, and the adjoining rooms, are full of good things -- the statures that once flanked the entrance to the Borgia's palace, a marble bust of a young woman with an elaborate lace collar (yes, Mom!), Cupid reanimating Psyche with a kiss, an enormous statue of Jupiter, etc. Many of these, amidst the other statues, were really 2nd-century Greek and Roman statues restored in the 16th and 17th centuries (taken from the collections of Mazarin, Richelieu, and others). It was extremely interesting to see how the people of the Renaissance and the Grand Siecle re-imagined the missing pieces of these statues. For instance, there is a truly incredible black marble statue from antiquity, representing an elderly fisherman; but its 17th-century owners thought that the subject was Seneca the Younger in his death throes (Seneca was commanded by Nero, I think, to commit suicide)! Likewise, the waist downward of a statue of a seated pharaoh with his hands on his knees was dredged up, dating from the 2nd millennium B.C.E., I think. The upper half was completed, and looks somewhat like other seated statues -- except it infinitely less detached from reality, and has so much more the semblance of a human being in time and space.

~JD

Sa Majesté Lionne un jour voulut connaître [One day his majesty the Lion wanted to know]
De quelles nations le Ciel l'avait fait maître. [Of which nations Heaven had made him the master]
Il manda donc par députés [He summoned his delegates]
Ses vassaux de toute nature, [His vassals of every kind]
Envoyant de tous les côtés [Sending from all sides]
Une circulaire écriture, [A circulatory letter]
Avec son sceau. L'écrit portait [With his seal. The writ explained]
Qu'un mois durant le Roi tiendrait [That for one month the King would hold]
Cour plénière, dont l'ouverture [An outside Court, of which the opening]
Devait être un fort grand festin, [Would be a very great feast]
Suivi des tours de Fagotin. [Followed by the tricks of Fagotin].
Par ce trait de magnificence [By this stroke of magnificence]
Le Prince à ses sujets étalait sa puissance. [The Prince spread forth his power to his subjects]
En son Louvre il les invita. [He invited them into his Louvre]
Quel Louvre ! Un vrai charnier, dont l'odeur se porta [What a Louvre! A real charnel house, whose odor wafted]
D'abord au nez des gens. L'Ours boucha sa narine : [Immediately to the noses of the people. The Bear plugged up his nostril]
Il se fût bien passé de faire cette mine, [He had just made this face] (?)
Sa grimace déplut. Le Monarque irrité [His grimace displeased. The irritated Monarch]
L'envoya chez Pluton faire le dégoûté. [Sent him to Pluto, to turn up his nose]
Le Singe approuva fort cette sévérité, [The monkey strongly approved of this severity]
Et flatteur excessif il loua la colère [And, excessive flatterer, he praised the rage]
Et la griffe du Prince, et l'antre, et cette odeur : [And the claw of the Prince, and the den, and this smell]
Il n'était ambre, il n'était fleur, [There no amber, there was no flower]
Qui ne fût ail au prix. Sa sotte flatterie [That wasn't garlic to it (?). His foolish flattery]
Eut un mauvais succès, et fut encore punie. [Had poor success, and he, too, was punished]
Ce Monseigneur du Lion-là [This milord the Lion]
Fut parent de Caligula. [Was kinsman of Caligula]
Le Renard étant proche : Or çà, lui dit le Sire, [The fox was close; and then, the King said to him]
Que sens-tu ? Dis-le-moi : parle sans déguiser. [What do you smell? Tell it to me, speak without concealment]
L'autre aussitôt de s'excuser, [The other immediately excused himself]
Alléguant un grand rhume : il ne pouvait que dire [Alleging a terrible cold: He could only say]
Sans odorat ; bref, il s'en tire. [Without sense of smell. In short, he withdrew]
Ceci vous sert d'enseignement : [This serves as a lesson]
Ne soyez à la cour, si vous voulez y plaire, [Be, at the court, if you wish to please there]
Ni fade adulateur, ni parleur trop sincère, [Neither a drab adulator, nor too sincere a speaker]
Et tâchez quelquefois de répondre en Normand" [And try sometimes to respond in Norman].

(Jean de la Fontaine, Fables, livre VII, fable 6).