Rutgers Art Review

The Journal of Graduate Research in Art History VOL. 31 Rutgers Art Review

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Cover Image: Augustin Pajou (1730–1809) and Louis Garnier (1639–1728). Parnasse François. Conceived after 1708 by Évrard Titon du Tillet (1677– 1762). 1708–1721. Medallions by Simon Curé and completed with additional medallions and statuettes by Augustin Pajou. Bronze, 260 x 235 x 230 cm. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY Staff &Thanks

Editors Special Thanks The editors would like to thank our faculty adviser, Sarah Blake McHam, for providing the Erin Fitterer Kirsten Marples thoughtful counsel and guidance necessary to Jeff Fraiman produce Vol. 31 of the Rutgers Art Review. Editorial Board We thank our indispensable editorial board Isabel Bartolome members, for their commitment to the process Todd Caissie and for their incisive critiques and productive Stephen Mack discussions of the submissions, as well as key Kimi Matsumura assistance during the proofreading process. Sophie Ong Kathleen Pierce We also express our gratitude to our esteemed Alison Van Denend outside readers. The role of outside reader can often be a thankless one, and we thank our readers for taking the time out of hectic schedules to review To contact the staff at submissions and provide invaluable feedback. Rutgers Art Review, email: We must thank our graphic designer, Susannah [email protected] Hainley, for her creativity and patience. To our authors, thank you for sharing your research with us and the Rutgers Art Review audience. Your patience during an at times seemingly interminable process was much appreciated. In This Issue

A Novel Nymphaeum: Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered 4 ALEXIS CULOTTA

Romanesque Sculpture: The Coiled 20 StrategiesMan in the of Archivolt Signification at Vézelay in ALICE ISABELLA SULLIVAN

Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 37 THADEUS DOWAD 4

A Novel Nymphaeum life of a man with nothing else to do.”3 To date, the analysis of these initial structures has Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural remained most general. Stefano Ray’s Raffaello 4 Commission in Rome architetto (1974) and the subsequent Reconsidered compendium of a similar title published by Ray, 5 offer the most complete published account of these ALEXIS CULOTTA Christophtwo structures. Frommel Though and foundational,others (1984) their analysis amounts to mostly measurements and preliminary observations, particularly in the case

Chigi’s riverfront casino. of Raphael’s first architectural project, that for fter illustrious Rome fell prey The perfunctory nature of this structure’s analysis is due in part to the lack of information on its “A withdrew, as the city collapsed. But design and construction. No ground plans or full where Agostinoto barbarian Chigi founded Furies, allhis the kingly gods palace, preliminary sketches for the structure survive; and restored a truly ancient splendor, gods and the building itself, which suffered the wrath of their consorts at once descended again from the heavens.” 1 So wrote Neapolitan humanist in a ruinous state by the late sixteenth century.6 Girolamo Borgia of sixteenth-century Sienese the Tiber’s flooding as early as 1514, was already banker Agostino Chigi’s Roman villa suburbana, Though the casino was rebuilt for its magnificent banquet of 1518, the next great flood of the now better known as the Villa Farnesina. A 1577Tiber onlyin 1531 fragments no doubt of inflictedwhat once more stood. damage,7 By the magnificent structure nestled along the banks followingleaving Frommel century to painter find in Gaspare Du Pérac’s Celio drawing wrote of scholarsof Rome’s search arterial for Tiber a better River, understanding the Farnesina of its of only the ruins of the casino along the banks enigmatichas been the patron, subject Chigi, of significant and the artistic study masters as of the Tiber.8 at work there. Deciphering the design of this celebrated riverfront casino is all the more problematic villa, however, too few have probed Raphael’s due to the lack of conclusive visual contributions.For all the words His that rendering have been of the spilled Triumph on the documentation. None of Raphael’s sketches, of Galatea (c. 1512–1513) in the loggia of the plans or even dimensions for the casino survive, same name tends to be glossed over in a review save for a few rudimentary cartoons. Indeed, of his work, and his design for the decorative much of what is presumed of the riverfront program in the adjacent Loggia di Amore e Psiche casino has been handed down through drawings (1518–1519) has often been discounted as the of Rome along the Tiber, all of which reveal the handiwork of his workshop.2 What has been most villa and its accompanying outbuildings with lacking is an examination of his role as architect of the villa’s stables and riverfront casino. These confounding factor in exploring this riverfront two projects represented the inaugural works of structurevarying inaccuracies is understanding and inconsistencies. how it functioned A final in his architectural career, one that John Shearman conjunction with the supposed accompanying lauded as exhibiting “a density of activity which subterranean grotto, highlighted in the epigrams would be startling enough in eight years from the written by Egidio Gallo and Blosio Palladio in A Novel Nymphaeum: 5 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

contemporaneous commemoration of Chigi’s commissions from 1514 on,13 few have survived fabled villa.9 Both Gallo’s and Palladio’s poems in sketches and even fewer still stand. bathing and boating pond lined with seating moment at which Raphael’s interests turned anddescribe accessible a grotto from serving exterior as a stairs, fishpond10 where, or toFurthermore, architecture it or, is impossiblefor that matter, to pinpoint archaeology. the One can turn, however, to John Shearman’s with tremulous leap, [and] straightway hide discussion of Raphael’s sketch of the Pantheon as Gallo describes, “the Nymphs flock together (U 164 Ar) to propose the initiation of Raphael’s in which they enjoy residing with busy song.”11 architectural interests as around the year 1506.14 themselvesThough Gallo in conjuresthe first moutha fantastical of the undergroundpond. . . . This reinforces Raphael’s early presence in lair with his prose, any hard evidence for its Rome, and it also positions this sketch as one existence has yet to materialize. architecture.15 Raphael had already begun such Despite these challenges, this examination explorationof the first examples through theof Raphael’s architectural pure elements study of will propose a novel reconstruction of the he wove into his paintings. The earliest known riverfront casino along with its relation to architectural drawing16 appears in a study for the supposed grotto below as a revival of the the Coronation of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino nymphaeum, an architectural type dormant (Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille), wherein a quickly drafted cortile overlaps with the bottom right- of Raphael’s development as an architect and hand corner of the page.17 Such architectural since ancient times. Following a brief discussion study would develop into the grandly painted Baldassarre Peruzzi on his production, discussion architecture of Raphael’s early works, as seen in willthe earlythen influenceturn to a detailed of architect analysis and antiquarianof the the famous Spozalizio della Vergine (1500–1504), riverfront casino. It will use scholarly knowledge but Raphael’s sketch of the Pantheon interior of similar structures, such as the relatively marks a pivotal moment, as Raphael began his contemporaneous nymphaeum at Genazzano — transformation from architectural painter to attributed to both Donato Bramante and Peruzzi architect through a concurrent study of — and the Casino del Bufalo, as well as the the antique.

Raphael’s design for this riverfront casino was Architectural design was, in the early years of drawnextrapolation from the of ancientFarnesina nymphaeum. data, to suggest In addition that the cinquecento, inextricably linked to study to showcasing the potential level of exchange of the antique, or in other words, archaeology. between Raphael and Peruzzi during their As Marcia Hall comments, “The Rome in which Raphael arrived in 1508 was already a massive several insights and hypotheses into the design of construction site.”18 The construction of which thistenures casino at the in an Farnesina, effort to thisilluminate research a portion also offers of Hall speaks is a quite literal one, as by 1508 Raphael’s contribution to the fantastical feel Rome was in the midst of the massive renovatio led by Pope Julius II. As Raphael’s sketch of the Pantheon illustrates, he gleaned inspiration Blurryof Chigi’s Beginnings Farnesina from the structures of antiquity, both extant and extinct. Raphael’s architectural career has suffered from little remaining evidence.12 Though he Raphael’s exploration of the antique and of was involved in a number of architectural architecture continued to punctuate his painterly A Novel Nymphaeum: 6 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

production in the years following. His inclusion, development of a similar waterwheel structure for example, of the Roman Torre de Milizie in for Chigi’s gardens. Saint George and the Dragon (1506), his quotation of an ancient Death of Meleager relief (the only examples of which were in Rome) in his design for of 1518,25 the Baglioni Entombment (1507), his miniature Debutingmonumental at the waterwheel first of Chigi’s aimed lavish to facilitate festivities rendition of the Forum Transitorium in the water movement according from to theFrommel, Tiber to Peruzzi’s both irrigate Esterhazy Madonna (1508), or his quotation of the gardens and replenish the fountains and, the Ciampolini Jupiter Madonna from contemporary reports, was a feat of del Baldacchino (1507–1508),19 all allude to his engineering. 26 While construction on this garden ongoing ruminations onin hisantique unfinished architecture that waterwheel had not yet begun when Raphael executed his Galatea, it is plausible that he was aware of Peruzzi’s designs and thus chose to Raphael’she carried expansion with him to from the artistVilla Farnesina. to architect and antiquarian was also encouraged by his growing companionship with Peruzzi, a relationship that is noteworthy because it provides the contextual basis for the forthcoming exchange between the two in the design of Chigi’s riverfront casino. Practically the same age, the two became close associates once in contact with each other, as attested to by Raphael serving as guarantor for a property rented by Peruzzi in Rome in late 1511.20 suggested that Peruzzi was already borrowing from Raphael’s Furthermore, artistic Mary approach Quinlan-McGrath in his design completed at approximately the same time as thisfor Chigi’s guarantorship, astrological21 and ceiling evidence in the exists Farnesina, to suggest that Raphael was, in turn, quoting Peruzzi in his depiction of the chariot of Galatea in the same loggia. Raphael gleaned his inspiration for this chariot from the basic concept of the carro derived from the literary precedents of Philostratus22 and Poliziano, yet, as Millard Meiss surmises, “he found them not quite what he wanted. . . . [and instead] gave the nymph a sort of super-shell. . . .[that was] unprecedented in the arts and in iconographic tradition.”23 The explanation for this paddle-wheeled contraption, which subsequently became absorbed into the iconography of Galatea,24 has never been further probed, however Fig. 1 Raphael, Madonna d’Alba, circa 1511. Sketch on its inclusion parallels Peruzzi’s concurrent paper. Inv. Pl. 456. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. A Novel Nymphaeum: 7 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered reference this engineering accomplishment architectural forms,28 encouraged Raphael to preemptively. This would suggest that Peruzzi and conceive of an initial architectural design that Raphael might have already enjoyed camaraderie was both unprecedented and unparalleled. at this stage in artistic production, a suggestion reinforced by the fact that Raphael includes Around 1513, roughly the same time as he another reference to Peruzzi’s contemporaneous commissioned Raphael’s Galatea, Chigi decided to add to his antique oasis by asking Raphael to notes, Raphael’s positioning of a seahorse in the design and build a porticoed enclosure along left-handwork within portion the loggia. of Galatea As Quinlan-McGrath was intended to his property’s riverfront.29 The result was an engage with the same beast included in Peruzzi’s rendition of in the spandrel on the opposite that, as folklore would have it, it would host an side of the room.27 Thus while this seahorse is a elaborateapparently banquet magnificent in the structure, summer ofso 1518 sumptuous that playful jab, the reference to Peruzzi’s waterwheel culminated in a procession of the dinner party to is undoubtedly a laudatory one, applauding the edge of the Tiber to dispose of all of Chigi’s his associate’s accomplishment while further silver serving pieces in the river, an extravagant tying this visual representation to the actual performance to reinforce Chigi’s endless wealth.30 gardens outside. In other words, the collaborative The exact date of the casino’s construction engagement between the two, both of whom remains elusive. Stefano Ray argues that the sought innovation in the midst of all’antica building in Raphael’s preparatory sketch for his

Fig. 2

Author’s Drawing of Ground Plan of Farnesina Gardens Reflecting Riverfront Casino. A Novel Nymphaeum: 8 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

Fig. 3 Émile Du Pérac, Nova Urbis Romae Descriptio, 1577. Map of Rome. © British Library Board/Robana/ Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 4 Antonio Tempesta, Plan of the City of Rome, 1645. Published by Giovanni Domenico de Rossi, Italian, 1619–1653; dedi- cated to Cardinal Camilio Pamphili. Etching with some engraving, undescribed state (printed from 12 plates). 41 5/16 x 94 ½

Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY. in. (105x240 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edward Pearce Casey Fund, 1983 (1983.1027(1-12)). © The Metropolitan

Madonna d’Alba (Musée Wicar, Lille) (Fig. 1) Pooling similarities across sketched depictions, was an early design of this casino,31 which one can surmise that the casino was likely nestled would place its design around 1511.32 along the bank of the Tiber nearly equidistant reinforcing this date is Egidio Gallo’s mention between the stables (not yet built) and the villa of the casino, or at least of its plans, in Furtherhis 1511 (Fig. 2) epigram,33 suggesting a feasible starting date century ground plan recreation.35 The casino concurrent with, or immediately in succession was connected, as implied to the in villaFrommel’s by a pergolated twentieth- to, the Galatea.34

walkway, an element reiterated by Frommel A Novel Nymphaeum: 9 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

and the remnants of which are visible in a detail If this orientation of the fragmentary casino of Du Pérac’s 1577 depiction of Rome (Fig. 3)36 seen in the Budapest sketch is accurate (its as well as Antonio Tempesta’s Pianta di Roma of architectural features accord with those described 1593 (Metropolitan Museum of Art (1983.1027, textually), one is faced with another conundrum 1–12) (Fig. 4). The casino itself consisted of open requiring speculation. This sketch shows a bay porticoes to both the river and the garden that of an open portico, open with an archway on created an entertaining pavilion, the archways of the left yet enclosed on the right. If the casino which were adorned with engaged pilasters of did indeed have two porticoes, one of which an unknown order.37 opened onto the gardens and the other the river, this would imply that the casino ran along, not Building on these general attributes, an undated sketch by Sallustio Peruzzi suggests that the suggests this alignment along the shores of the casino was capped with a unique pediment and Tiber.perpendicular43 In consideration to, the river’s of this edge. orientation, Frommel italso 38 A second level to would seem that this drawing illustrates the end the casino is reiterated in Ray’s analysis of the of the riverfront casino, from which the double perhapsaforementioned even a second sketch floor.at Lille. Ray goes further open portico would have extended southward to describe the structure as potentially having a along the riverbank. This assumption, supported by the singular archway of the structure included with a balustrade, on top of which was a second in Tempesta’s 1593 map, would suggest that the first level consisting of four bays each enclosed casino perhaps assumed a U-shaped structure and capped with an attic level decorated with that faced toward the villa.44 volutes.floor mimicking39 He also the suggests first yet the reduced that secondary in size level might also have included a navigable In other words, if one merges these architectural walkway to allow one to perambulate from side attributes of the riverfront casino with the to side in keeping with the dual open façades drawings of its ruins by Du Pérac, Tempesta, below.40 Ray comments, however, that the and the anonymous Budapest sketch, one can inclusion of a second level is problematic, and in envision a riverfront casino that assumed a shape an attempt to resolve this issue proposes that the akin to that of the villa, with two projecting bays extending from the riverfront on either end of the of the building’s foundation, or basement, serving casino. The casino loggia thus may have extended asfirst a servant’slevel seen area in the for Lille banquet sketch cooking is actually and part southward to meet the pergolated walkway, preparation.41 An alternate explanation for the remnants of which are again visible in the presence of two levels is that the secondary level Budapest drawing, that returned to the courtyard was actually designed to account for the large in front of the villa. This would leave ample room podium and to accommodate accessibility to the for the four-arch portico included in the Lille grotto below. If this were the case, the sketch; however, one may speculate that there access point to the underground grotto with the façade of the villa itself.45 Presuming a firstthe second level would level beinghave functioned the main entertaining as the central structuralwere five archways, similarity almost between precisely the riverfront replicating casino arcade which, by nature of its elevation, would and the villa, one could propose an extrapolation guarantee not only the best viewing point for the of stylistic design as well, a straightforward garden but also for the villa itself, as illustrated simplicity that is suggested in the Budapest in an anonymous sketch in Budapest’s drawing, including archways springing from Szépmüvészeti Múzeum.42 Doric piers to create the open-air portico, A Novel Nymphaeum: 10 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

to accommodate the functionality of Peruzzi’s garden waterworks, suggests collaboration between Raphael and Peruzzi, a sharing of ideas that arguably resulted in both one of the earliest Renaissance revivals of the nymphaeum type in Rome and the artful blending of the fantasy of the garden with the functionality of Peruzzi’s aquatic

engineering within the Farnesina grounds. which he attributes to Bramante,49 yields the Frommel’sground plan analysis of a central of the three-bay Genazzano structure, nymphaeum,

Attached to these central bays through columned archwaysflanked on was either a secondary end with exedraeset of three extensions. chambers, the central one of which also was augmented with an exedra. The entirety of the rear wall

Fig. 5 Nymphaeum Column — Genazzano, 1506–1510, of the nymphaeum was punctuated with small Bramante, Donato (1444–1514)/Mondadori Portfolio/ niches. The extant remains, including this inner- columned wall that separated the two halves

Electa/Francesco Tanasi/Bridgeman Images. of the structure, reveal paired Doric columns supporting pediments extending from either arch capped with a cornice decorated with dentil base, the inner arches decorated with equidistant molding running underneath.46 circular openings.

Ray’s closing remarks on this riverfront casino not only reinforce this proposed layout but also extend it by invoking parallels to the JamesFollowing Ackerman, Frommel, for scholars example, have describes proposed this other contemporary nymphaeum built at Genazzano designinfluences as “too evident inelegant in the in nymphaeum’s detail for the design. architect near Palestrina presumably for Pompeo Colonna of Saint Peter’s,” and thus proposes that it is (Fig. 5). As Ray remarks, “the Bramantesque borrowed from Raphael’s designs for a garden ‘nymphaeum’ . . . offers an intriguing indication loggia at the Villa Madama.50 The recent work of towards a potential solution that is both Piers Dominic Britton, perhaps most pertinent full-bodied and modeled with strength.”47 to this current analysis, draws parallels between Advancing Ray’s initial remarks, a comparison a sketch by Peruzzi (UA 529 Ar ) (Fig. 6) and the of this structure at Genazzano and Raphael’s designs for this nymphaeum. Though this drawing riverfront project suggests that Raphael perhaps most often associated with Peruzzi’s preparations incorporated a nymphaeum into his designs. for work at Saint Peter’s, Britton points out

Raphael himself has never been associated suggest ruminations on alternate structures. with the Genazzano nymphaeum; Peruzzi, on Hespecific cites, elements for example, included the two in theuppermost drawing plans, that the other hand, has been linked to its design which are direct quotations from the water court in some capacity.48 This connection, combined and nymphaeum at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli.51 with the necessity for Raphael’s casino’s design

Furthermore Britton isolates the plan located at A Novel Nymphaeum: 11 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

nymphaeum. Pushing this hypothesis further, and in consideration of Ray’s preliminary association between the Genazzano nymphaeum

Peruzzi’s peripheral ruminations in ink were notand intendedthe Farnesina for work casino, at Genazzano one could proposebut rather that

Whileat the Farnesina.this connection cannot be reinforced with a comparison of ground plans, it is nevertheless supported by a comparison of both the verbal descriptions of the casino and the Lille drawing (Fig. 1) with the Genazzano ground plan. Though Raphael’s sketch includes four bays to Genazzano’s three, the engaged pilasters that appear across Raphael’s façade are identical to those in the remnants of the nymphaeum.

mentions in Raphael’s sketch, which he attributes toFurthermore, supports for the an thickening upper-level of porch, lines that could Ray instead be perceived as the implication of an exterior curved wall, accommodating an exedra within, and further aligning this sketch with the nymphaeum’s design. What is perhaps most striking in connecting these two structures is a Baldassarre Peruzzi, (UA 529 Fig. 6 Architectural Sketches comparison between the ruin in the anonymous

Ar). Uffizi, Florence. elevation for the Genazzano nymphaeum. The the lower center of the sketch as not only quoting similarityBudapest drawingbetween and the Frommel’sbuilding in reconstructedthe Budapest another antique structure, that of the Basilica of sketch and what would be the equivalent portion Maxentius and Constantine, but also remarkably similar to the rear elevation wall of the Genazzano connection between the two structures nymphaeum. isof plausible.Frommel’s reconstruction suggests that some

Britton asks whether Peruzzi is studying from or designing for the Genazzano nymphaeum, a question whose answer is contingent on when casinoFurther design reinforcing is the thepotential presence connection of a nymphaeum with Peruzzi began as assistant on the design of thecomponent Muses and within allusions Raphael’s to Parnassus. Farnesina The Saint Peter’s. He cites the work of Meg Licht, who proposes Peruzzi was assisting Bramante for humanist contemplation. Drawing allusions as early as 1505.52 Setting aside the ongoing toFarnesina the sacred grounds waters were of Parnassus’ to be an ideal Hippocrene locale complication of chronology, Britton and Licht’s spring, the waters of the nymphaeum would analyses shed insight into Peruzzi’s potential recall that revered mount and thereby conjure role in the architectural revival of the antique imaginative imagery of the Muses who lived there. A Novel Nymphaeum: 12 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

Additionally, the notion of the nymphaeum 55 as the space where the nymphs could come Scholars have repeatedly accepted Gallo’s and bathe in its waters again furthers the apparentlydescription still as fact, identifiable56 however as onelate mustas the question 1880s. role of Chigi’s grounds in the congregation of the accuracy of his claims, particularly since mythological deities and entities. Creating no other accounts from the period reinforce this allusory connection would in turn be reinforced by the presence of antiquities, like nature of Gallo’s embellishments on the villa, it the Sarcophagus of the Muses, which during ishis plausible description. that Havinghis account established is more the fantastical flowery Chigi’s lifetime would have been kept there, than factual. There is in fact no evidence to thereby completing the fantasy. suggest such an extensive underground lair was ever constructed, a point reinforced by the few The potential connection between the nymphaeum designs and the designs for in period drawings, none of which suggest such vestiges of this grotto that have been identified several reasons. In regards to the nymphaeum, grotto’s existence is the downward slope of the theRaphael’s link offers Farnesina further casino support is significant to a date of for Tibera grandiose bank, whichstructure. would Further have madecomplicating any full-scale the grotto a noticeable intrusion on the shoreline and sixteenth-century, as originally argued by would have most likely created such a pitch as to creation within the first two decades of the have made the construction of the accompanying by reinforcing Peruzzi’s role as creator, rather riverfront casino impossible.57 thanFrommel assistant. and perhaps Most importantly, furthers Britton’s however, argument this sheds enlightening new perspective on the Thus it seems necessary to offer a wholly different interpretation of the riverfront grotto, not so much as a pleasure space but rather as a more Coincidingdesign and isfunction the revelation of Raphael’s of Raphael’s Farnesina casino. utilitarian access point for water supply to the already-established collaborations with Peruzzi villa’s cisterns, fountains, and garden irrigation on this architectural project as well as insight into how this casino functioned in conjunction with proposal by attributing the design of the grotto the grotto. Raphael’s design of a riverfront casino tosystems. Peruzzi, Frommel who was added deeply credence embroiled to this in that echoed the design of Peruzzi’s villa must have engineering the water supply to the villa grounds. been deliberate, perhaps in an effort to engage It would follow that, for such a feat of engineering, the architect who shared, and perhaps somewhat was employed. a more efficient, rather than aesthetic, design designinspired, for Raphael’s the casino flair is strengthened for antiquity. withThe notionthe Gallo’s words could, however, be read as knowledgethat Peruzzi that had Peruzzi some influence not only overdevoted Raphael’s a great indicating the presence of a nymphaeum, which deal of time to the design of Chigi’s gardens,53 was sometimes used interchangeably with but has also been solidly credited with the “grotto” to refer to an elaborate water feature creation of the supposed underground grotto,54 the next feature to merit reconsideration. a manmade cave. Known to antiquity simply asor thereflecting sanctum pond in whichsometimes the nymphs secluded resided, within Situated below the casino, the accompanying the concept of the nymphaeum was frequently grotto space, so lauded by Gallo and Palladio, misinterpreted by cinquecento is visible in Du Pérac’s illustration and was Alvarez posits, “the nature of the nymphaeum scholars. As Frank A Novel Nymphaeum: 13 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

[in the Renaissance] was . . . . a subject of resource of water. The Tiber, of course, was an controversy among scholars . . . at times frankly obvious source, however the fact that Chigi’s admitting bewilderment at the vague and often grounds went literally to the water’s edge meant contradictory literary evidence.”58 Pomponio Leto that any siphoning of the Tiber’s waters could not likened the nymphaeum to a source of water,59 interrupt the mood the gardens and the riverfront 60 casino conjured. similarin his eventual to an aqueduct, Antiquae as urbis did AndreaRomae ofFulvio, 1527 Thus, it seems as if one could envision the yetwhile avoided Fabio fullCalvo description illustrated of several their function. nymphaea61 Moreover, those structures that ascribed to the features of a nymphaeum, such as the water pools, byFarnesina Gallo as casino a metamorphic as having spacetwo “grottos.” where the The Gods were commonly referred to instead as grotta or “couldfirst, a ground-leveloccasionally setnymphaeum, aside their was weighty described cares fontana.62 Thus, perhaps Gallo is indeed referring on coming from the pure ether.”65 Below this to a nymphaeum, taking the form of an above- would have been a secondary “grotto” open to ground grotto-like space on the casino’s ground level, accessible from the gardens yet seemingly reserves. The oculus that Gallo describes, then, entering into an underground lair. wouldthe Tiber be andthe connectionthus filling betweenthe Farnesina’s the two water spaces,

This leaves room for an additional below-ground ground level grotto. If this oculus was adequately component to the casino, but it would seem that large,situated it would in the appearfloor of asthe it riverfront if was the casino’senclosure this underground space, perhaps viewable from of a wading pool upon approach, yet, when at its the above-ground nymphaeum, served a more practical purpose by creating a clandestine, and thereby seemingly magical, means by which the thatedge was visitors said couldto lead look down into to it the to viewgrotto fish was in also the probablywaters below. present, Furthermore, however its the use exterior was most stair likely be watered.. Such a practical component bolsters for periodic maintenance, not revelry. claimsvilla’s cisterns for a collaborative could be filled interaction and the betweengarden could Raphael and Peruzzi, a link strengthened by A rarely cited interpretation of the grotto as the Peruzzi’s engineering of Chigi’s garden fountains and perhaps this grotto component itself. 63 this reinterpretation of the underground grotto as notfigurative for pleasure entrance but to rather the Underworld for practicality supports within the overall scheme of the villa. As Shearman grounds were an additional source of spectacle. and Schwarzenberg proposed, the grotto was AThe Mantuan fountains ambassador once part inof attendancethe Farnesina at Chigi’s envisioned as the portal to Hades, in part in an 1518 festivities for Pope X described an effort to conjure a connection between the garden “underground fountain” that transported water feature and the proposed rendition of Psyche’s from the Tiber “with some ingenuity,” and visit to the Underworld that would have appeared on the interior of the Loggia di Amore e Psiche.66 monumental waterwheel, perhaps the same Thus, while amplifying the visual impact of the structureFrommel mentionsnoted by thePeruzzi’s ambassador, engineering at the ofsame a event.64 Remnants of other fountains suggest some regard to minimize the grotto’s role as an that the gardens were indeed dotted with such actualFarnesina, entertaining this interpretation space. While also Gallo’s works vision in aquatic features, which would have required a of the grotto as the play space of Nymphs would carefully crafted plumbing network and a vast no doubt attract Chigi’s visitors to enter, the A Novel Nymphaeum: 14 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

Fig. 7

Author’s Speculative Reconstruction of the Farnesina Casino. interpretation of this grotto as a stand-in for the grounds has never been speculated upon would Underworld, complete with Charon’s ferry, would seem wholly unappetizing, and thus the ability to while this underground grotto was predominantly merely peek in from above would undoubtedly ahave functional been a fittingspace, incorporationscaled for the transporthere. Thus, of satisfy anyone’s curiosity. water and not for leisure, it was nevertheless

Gazing through the oculus into the grotto from displaying two grottos also helps to explain designed to fit into the villa’s overall message. Gallo’sThis interpretation reference to ofthe the cave Farnesina being “improved casino with the viewer would be swept up as if peering into the help of a chisel.”67 This most likely alludes to Gallo’sthe riverfront resting casino,place of seeing the Gods. fish swim about, of ancient origin, inside the grotto. The Tiber Based on this various connections, one can sculpture,the presence for of example, sculpted whose figural presence groups, perhapswas noted offer a hypothetical reconstruction of Raphael’s in Chigi’s collection but whose location on the (Fig. 7). The lower level might

Farnesina casino A Novel Nymphaeum: 15 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

whose unrequited love for Galatea results in his either echoing the Genazzano nymphaeum or the transformation of Galatea’s true paramour, Acis, have appeared as a three- or five-bay structure, central bay would have been slightly enlarged as those standing near the riverfront nymphaeum. itFarnesina potentially façade, served set as on an an entry enlarged into thepodium. ground- The Raphael’sinto a flowing Galatea river, would would also have have been been visible visible, to level grotto that was perhaps extended with both frescoes appearing in the once-open loggia the addition of a rear exedra, akin to Peruzzi’s bays. Though Acis is conspicuously absent, he is sketch (Fig. 6). At the rear of this grotto might symbolically present in the babbling waters of have appeared Chigi’s ancient Tiber statue, in the Tiber audible to those who stood near the front of which a wading-pool like opening would riverfront nymphaeum and gazed back upon the have served as the viewing oculus unto the villa. Thus, as one gazed upon the villa as it once subterranean grotto below. Drawing comparisons stood, with loggia bays open to the garden and with the Lille sketch (Fig. 1), above this grotto as the waters of the Tiber lapped onto the shores entryway might have appeared an inset relief nearby, it would appear as if Acis was joining the panel, perhaps corresponding to the secondary characters of Polyphemus and Galatea to bring the façade level with additional niches for sculpture ancient story to life in a blur of temporal context. and a central decorative element, and on either side of the grotto entry would have appeared The completion of the riverfront nymphaeum additional niche sculptures. If an additional set of bays existed on either end, these might elaborate villa compound; on the contrary, in have provided another set of niches for the thewas years far from following Raphael’s he would final contribution design both toChigi’s the display of sculpture, or they could have equally stable complex as well as visual programs in functioned as portals to a rear extension running collaboration with Peruzzi that would remain along the riverfront that allowed for views of the Tiber. This rear porch would have allowed in 1520. This unusual riverfront structure is, for riverfront dining, however its presence however,unfinished a watershedat the time momentof his sudden in Raphael’s death career 68While this proposed plan is in that it both marks his arrival as an architect purely conjecture, it is worth consideration, as and foreshadows his innovative approach to isthe unconfirmed. fact remains that Raphael’s inspiration for incorporating antique design principles into the casino, potentially designed in tandem with contemporary architecture. His manipulations of all’antica associations with Peruzzi and thus contributed collaborationPeruzzi, represents with Peruzzi not only and his one first of architectural the to the noveltystyling of hiswere designs, no doubt both influenced artistic and by his commission, but could also represent his first architectural. Renaissance Rome. first revivals of the ancient nymphaeum in *** As much as this design process was one of architectural exploration of antique methods, so Alexis Culotta holds a Ph.D. in Art History from too was it a major contributor to the fantastical the University of Washington. She specializes in feel of Chigi’s property. It served as a continuation Renaissance and art and architecture of the opulence begun in the open loggia of the with a focus on the art of early 16th-century Rome. Sala di Galatea, wherein the mythological tale of She is currently a professor of Art History at the Polyphemus and Galatea plays out in the visual American Academy of Art as well as a lecturer at program. Sebastiano’s painting of Polyphemus, the Art Institute of Chicago. Additionally, Alexis A Novel Nymphaeum: 16 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered serves as a Staff Writer for the Italian Art Society Blog (http://italianartsociety.tumblr.com) and A.dinestra Angeli, sul La giardino”Villa Farnesina (Christoph a Roma Frommel, = The Villa “La continues independent research extending from her VillaFarnesina Farnesina,” in Rome in. MirabiliaC.L. Frommel, Italiæ, G. 12 Caneva, (Modena: and dissertation.

8. F.C. Panini, 2003), 2: 42).Die Farnesina, 33.

Endnotes 9. Cugnoni,Gallo and 107; Palladio’s Frommel, panegyrics were written between 1511–1512, the full text of each translated

1. Ingrid Rowland, “Some Panegyrics to Agostino Viridario Agustini Chigii Vera Libellus. Introduction, Chigi.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Latinin: Mary Text Quinlan-McGrath, and English Translation.” “Aegidius Humanistica Gallus, De Institutes 47 (1984); 195. As quoted from Borgia’s Lovaniensia – Journal of Neo-Latin Studies, Vol. 38 poems, B.A.V., MS Bard. Lat. 1903, fols. 99–100, Palladius, Suburbanum Agustini Chisii. Introduction, author by Giuseppe Cugnoni, Agostino Chigi il Latin(1989), Text 1–100; and English Mary Quinlan-McGrath Translation.” Humanistica ,“Blosius Magnificowhich were (Roma: published A cura without della Società identification Romana of di Lovaniensia, 39 (1990), 93–156. Storia Patria, 1878), 69–70. 10. Elsa Gerlini, Villa Farnesina alla Lungara, Roma 2. This is not to discount the recent work of both Bette Talvacchia (“Raphael and his Collaborators: 1988), 17. (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca Dello Stato, Raphael (London: Phaidon, 2007) and Rosalia 11. Gallo continues: “for under Jupiter runs the easy Varoli-PiazzaA Revolutionary (Rosalia Configuration,” Varoli-Piazza, in Bette Raffaello: Talvacchia, descentQuinlan-McGrath, into a cave, “Aegidius a cave worked Gallus,” by 5: art. 116–117, . . either 89; la loggia di Amore e Psiche alla Farnesina (Milano: Silvana, 2002), but rather to point out the long it is a grotto, or that which the Gods decided to be historiography prior to this recent scholarship that the spot among the bowels of the Earth, where they downplayed the importance of this commission. could occasionally set aside their weighty cares on coming from the pure ether. Within are sweet 3. John Shearman, “Raphael as Architect,” Journal of waters, which the wall itself receives from the the Royal Society of Arts, 116 (5141) (April 1968), 389. McGrath, “Aegidius Gallus,” 5: 132–141, 90–91). Tiber by the way of a double window. . . .” (Quinlan- 4. Stefano Ray, Raffaello architetto: linguaggio artistico 12. Ray reinforces this point: “Il nodo del problema e ideologia nel Rinascimento romano (Roma: sta nei documenti che, nell’insieme, sono troppo Laterza, 1974). frammentari e lacunose, e lasciano pertanto in ombra ampie zone dell’opera. Il disegni, in 5. particolare, sono molto pochi, non soltanto in Tafuri, Howard Burns, and Arnold Nesselrath, Christoph Luitpold Frommel, Stefano Ray, Manfredo Raffaello architetto (Milano: Electa, 1984). anche in sé per sé.” (Stefano Ray, “Il Volo di Icaro, “ rapporto ai disegni di figura che conosciamo, ma 6. Die Farnesina und Raffaello (Milan: Electra, 1984), 47). Peruzzis architektonisches Früwerk (Berlin: W. de Architetto Christoph Luitpold Frommel, in C.L. Frommel, S. Ray, and M. Tafuri, eds., The Villa in the 13. Life of Renaissance Rome. Princeton Monographs in please see: John Shearman, “Raphael as Architect,” Gruyter, 1961), 32; David Coffin, Art and Archaeology, 43 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton JournalFor more of onthe Raphael’s Royal Society significance of Arts, 116 as an (5141) architect, University Press, 1979), 87; Tizio, MS Chigi G.II.37, (April 1968), 389. 333v–334r. 14. Shearman, “Rome, Raphael,” 107–146.. 7. “Nella veduta di Du Pérac del 1577, si distinguono i resti di muri. La parete settentionale è chiusa, il 15. frammento del muro occidentale aperto da una few small and minor sketches only one drawing As Arnold Nesselrath reaffirms: “Apart from a very A Novel Nymphaeum: 17 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

after the antiques from Raphael’s early years is 24. Later versions by Marcantonio Raimondi, Pietro preserved, his perspectival views of the Pantheon.” da Cortona, and the circle of Annibale Carracci all (“Raphael’s Archaeological Method,” in A. Chastel, included this paddle wheel feature. Rafaello a Roma: Il Covegno del 1983 (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante,1986), 358). 25. Die Farnesina, 8; Cremona, 528; Ludwig von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste im Zeitalter der 16. This is not to exclude an ink sketch by Raphael RenaissanceFrommel, und der Glaubensspaltung: von der circa 1498 that depicts a series of architectural Wahl Leos X. bis zum Tode Klemens’ VII. (1513– pediments; this drawing however depicts 1534), Vol. 1 Leo X no buildings but rather mere architectural 1907), 152; Ludwig von Pastor, Geschichte der adornments, which Paul Joannides suggests were Päpste seit dem Ausgang(Freiburg des Mittelaltersim Breisgau: Herder, “variant designs for the pediment of a tomb or 1885–1933), vol. 28, 152. plaque.” (Paul Joannides, The Drawings of Raphael: (Freiburg, th with a Complete Catalogue (Berkeley: University of 26. A letter to Chigi from January 27 , 1519, from California Press, 1983),134). Antonio and Nicola Burchiella, presumably engineers themselves, talks of Chigi’s desire for 17. As illustrated in Joannides, Plate 4, Cat. 14v, 41, a fountain in the garden and the necessity to 137. mechanize water movement, either from drilling into the ground or pulling it from the Tiber, to feed 18. Marcia B. Hall, “Introduction,” In Cambridge it. (Ottorino Montenovesi, Agostino Chigi banchiere Companion to Raphael, ed. M.B. Hall. (NY: e appaltatore dell’allume di Tolfa. Archivio della Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4. Società Romana si Storia Patria, vol. 60 (Rome: 19. 1938), 121. 17. Frommel, “Raffaello e la sua carriera architettonica,” 27. 20. Giuseppe Morolli, “ Le Belle Forme degli Edifici 28. Quinlan-McGrath, “The Villa,” 315. Antichi”: Raffaello e il Progetto del Primo Trattato Peruzzi’s antiquarian and architectural pursuits, Rinascimentale sulle Antichità di Roma. For a significantly more in-depth discussion of Alinea, 1984), 24; Cristiano Tessari suggests that as his ongoing engagement with Raphael, please Peruzzi and Raphael might have met as Florence: early as the including his designs for the Farnesina, as well turn of the century (Baldassarre Peruzzi: il progetto Raphael’s Transformative Roles at Agostino Chigi’s dell’antico (Milan: Electa, 1995), 20). refer to my dissertation: “ ‘Finding Rome in Rome’:

21. 29. VillaThe attribution Farnesina.” of (December riverfront 2014).casino to Raphael was elements for the decorative format which Peruzzi As Quinlan-McGrath comments: “Although the chose were available in contemporary designs, no subsequently accepted by Geymüller (Enrico di one other than Raphael had ever combined them Geymüller,first proposed Raffaello by Gaspare Sanzio Celio studiato (Celio, come 128), architetto and with such robust vigor. . . . Peruzzi, like Raphael, con l’aiuto di nuovi documenti (Milan: Hoepli, Die Farnesina, dimension, classical grace and decorative life” 32–33). took stiff, mechanical figures and gave them heroic 1884), 38f) and Frommel (Frommel, Poems and The Paintings” (PhD Diss, University of 30. Added to this fable is that, prior to this lavish Chicago,(Quinlan-McGrath, 1983), 251). “The Villa of Agostino Chigi: The display of excess, Chigi had his servants line the riverbed with nets, allowing an easy retrieval of 22. Philostratus, Immagines II, 18, “Cyclopes,” trans. by goods the following morning. While the accuracy of

23. Millard Meiss, “Raphael’s Mechanized Seashell: in that it suggests that, while portions of the garden Arthur Fairbanks (London: W. Heinemann, 1931). this fable can be doubted, its presence is significant Notes on a Myth, Technology and Iconographic Tradition,” loggia apparently survived relatively unscathed, as The Painter’s Choice: Problems in the were obliterated in the flood of 1514, the riverside Interpretation of Renaissance Art (New York: Harper it was used for this party of epic proportions only and Row, 1976), 205–206. four years later in 1518. For more on the scope A Novel Nymphaeum: 18 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

39. Ray, “Opere per Agostino Chigi,” 119. quoted in note 7. of the 1514 flooding, please see Tizio’s summary, 40. Ibid. 31. Stefano Ray, “Opere per Agostino Chigi,” in C.L. Raffaello 41. Ibid. Architetto (Milan: Electra, 1984), 119. This 42. Inv. No. 1997. Though the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum Frommel, S. Ray, and M. Tafuri, eds., sketched structure bears visual similarity to the records this sketch as being titled, “View of a City,” painted architecture of Pinturicchio’s Incoronazione Cremona proposes this view reveals a portion of di Enea Silvio Piccolomini in the Piccolomini Library Chigi’s property by identifying the Ponte Sisto in Siena, where Raphael was also commissioned to work in 1502–1503 (as evidenced by a signed please refer to: Alessandro Cremona, Felices modello; Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Proceriumin the background. Villulae: ForIl Giardino more on della this Farnesina connection, dai Sources, 75). Chigi all’Accademia dei Lincei (Rome: Accademia 32. Though Ray seems quite certain of the link Nazionale dei Lincei, 2010). between this sketch and the riverfront casino, 43. Die Farnesina, 25. there is no documentary evidence that secures this suggestion. What this drawing does bear noticeable 44. Frommel,Unfortunately, Tempesta’s map is subdivided into similarity to, however, is a sketch of tower as dictated through Alberti and known to have been the seam of two sheets. Thus, while one bay of a published in Cosimo Bartoli’s 1550 translation of riverfronttwelve sheets, structure and the is visible,Farnesina this appears page division along De Re Aedifactoria (L’Architettura di Leon Battista cuts off any additional bays of the riverfront casino. Alberti trodotta in lingua fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli . . . con l’Aggiunta de Disegni 45. Also informative is the fact that, at the same time, Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550); illustrated in On the Bramante was almost complete with his work on Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. by (Florence: J. Rykwert, the Tempietto (a dating is based on Mark Wilson N. Leach and R. Tavernor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Jones’ assumption that the Tempietto was not Press, 1992), 259). While it is unknown if a similar complete until roughly 1514 (Mark Wilson Jones, sketch accompanied earlier editions of Alberti, “The Tempietto and the Roots of Coincidence,” such a connection could prove edifying, as it would Architectural History, 33 (1990), 1–28). There support later arguments for Raphael’s adherences Bramante merged an ecclesiastical message to Albertian principles in a harmonic exchange with with his interest in ancient structures, including Vitruvius and Peruzzi. quotations from numerous sources such as,, according to Jones, the Pantheon and Hadrian’s 33. villa at Tivoli (Jones, “The Tempietto,” 17–18), two essential sources for both Raphael and Peruzzi as 90–91.)From Quinlan-McGrath’s translation of Gallo well. Raphael’s knowledge of the Tempietto is no (Quinlan-McGrath, “Aegidius Gallus,” 5: 123–129, 34. Ray, “ Opere per Agostino Chigi,” 119. Santa Maria del Popolo, begun at approximately the doubt reflected in his designs for Chigi’s Chapel in 35. Die Farnesina, 25. same time, and thus it is possible that he modeled the design of Chigi’s riverfront casino as a reduced- 36. Frommel,Etienne Du Pérac and Antoin Lafréry, Nova Urbis scale emulation of his villa. Romae Descriptio (Rome: Antonius Lafreri, 1577). 46. With these design elements in mind, it seems one 37. could look to a later riverfront casino constructed Chigi,” 119. on the property, roughly in the mid-eighteenth Coffin, 97; reiterated by Ray, “Opere per Agostino century, that might have borrowed its design from 38. presenza di un secondo piano, piu stretto, che of the evolution of the Tiber embankment, As Ray comments, “La difficoltà maggiore sta nella ripete il primo.” (Ray, “Opere per Agostino Chigi,” pleaseRaphael’s refer original. to: Roberto For an Lanciani, expanded The discussion Ruins and 119). A Novel Nymphaeum: 19 Raphael’s Inaugural Architectural Commission in Rome Reconsidered

Excavations of Ancient Rome (New York: Benjamin 60. Antiquaria urbis (Rome, 1513), 40; Blom, 1897). Alvarez, 55. Andrea Fulvio, 47. Ray, “Opere per Agostino Chigi,” 119. 61. Alvarez, 54.

48. 62. Alvarez, 63. Britton, “A Peruzzi Drawing and the Nymphaeum atFor Genazzano.” more on this Notes link, in please the History see: Piers of Art, Dominic 19 (4) 63. Die Farnesina, (Summer 2000); also: Meg Licht, ed., L’Edificio 64. Frommel,Cremona, 528; Ludwig von8; Frommel,Pastor, Geschichte “La Villa,” der 42. a pianta centrale: Lo sviluppo del disegno Päpste, 152 Die Farnesina, 8. architettonico nel Rinascimento 65. ; Frommel, 49. (Florence, 1984). ‘Ninfeo’ in Genazzano,” Römisches Jahrbuch 66. Quinlan-McGrath,Shearman, “Die Loggia “Aegidius der Psyche Gallus,” in 5: der 134–136, Villa 90. fürChristoph Kunstgeschichte Luitpold ,Frommel, 22 (1969) “Bramantes 137–160. This attribution was subsequently questioned von Raffaels graphischen Stil,” Jahrbuch der by Christoph Thoenes (“Note sul ‘ninfeo’ di KunsthistorischenFarnesina und di Probleme Sammlungen der inLetzten Wein 60Phase (1964), Genazzano,” Studi Bramanteschi (Rome, 1974), 71; Schwarzenberg, “Psychen-Statue,” 118. 575–583) and Arnaldo Bruschi (Bramante (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 1048ff) and 67. still today remains debated. 68. Quinlan-McGrath,It is also possible that “Aegidius the upper Gallus,” level 5: of 133–134, the 90. 50. James S. Ackerman, “The Tuscan/Rustic Order: A Study in the Metaphorical Language of as it did for the Casino del Bufalo’s upper level Farnesina casino served as the dining pavilion, Architecture.” Journal of the Society of Architectural belvedere. As Christian recounts: “It is likely the del Historians, 42 (1) (Mar., 1983), 26. Bufalo entertained their quests in the upper loggia of the casino, which would have served as a dining 51. Britton,1. pavilion” (Christian, Empire, 282).

52. Licht, 93–94.

53. Die Farnesina, 8. Cremona also mentions another reference to Mantuan ambassador’s accountFrommel, of an “underground fountain” in the garden that transported water from the Tiber “with some ingenuity.” (Cremona, 528; Ludwig von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, 152).

54.

55. Frommel,Gerlini, Villa “La Farnesina Villa,” 42., 17.

56. See, for example, Gerlini, Villa Farnesina, The Villa, 97. 17; Coffin, 57.

58. Frommel, ‘La Villa,” 45. Nymphaeum: Its Origins and Its Development in RomeFrank andJoseph Vicinity” Alvarez, (PhD “The diss., Renaissance Columbia University, 1981), 49.

59. Pomponio Leto, “De vetustate urbis,” De Roma prisca et nova (Rome, 1523), 23; Alvarez, 55. Strategies of 20 Signification in symmetrically on each side of the central scene and surround the arc of the tympanum. Two Romanesque semicircular archivolts frame the main portal Sculpture sculptures: the inner depicts a cycle of the labors of the months and the signs of the zodiac set in The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay consists of carved foliage. alternating figured medallions, while the outer ALICE ISABELLA SULLIVAN Adolf Katzenellenbogen has characterized the sculptural program of the Vézelay narthex portals as “one of the most tempting and brittle iconographical enigmas of medieval art.”3 Indeed, for nearly two hundred years, scholars he sculptural program of the three narthex have studied these Romanesque sculptures in portals of the Abbey Church of Sainte- an effort to situate their imagery within larger TMadeleine at Vézelay was designed and theological frameworks and interpret aspects executed sometime in the early decades of the of their iconography in relation to theology and twelfth century (ca. 1104–ca. 1132) (Fig. 1).1 The contemporary monastic life and culture.4 The sculptures of the two side portals, organized sculptures of the central portal, which announce in two horizontal registers, are framed by the entrance into the sacred space of the church that extends beyond the carved façade, have themes central to Christ’s early life, such as the received the most attention. Scholars, however, Annunciation,floral archivolts. the The Visitation, right tympanum the Nativity, shows and have only discussed secondarily the inner cycle the Adoration of the Magi. The left tympanum of the labors of the months and signs of the illustrates events that took place after Christ’s zodiac that frames the central tympanum. This is resurrection, like the Supper at Emmaus and the arguably the earliest example of such a scheme in resurrected Christ among his apostles. The central

two side tympana, has in the center an enthroned Christtympanum, in a mandorla significantly (Fig. larger 2).2 Seated in scale in thantwo the groups around Him, the twelve apostles appear

outstretchedto receive the hands, tongues thus of firesignaling that emanate the descent in the ofform the of Holy straight Spirit rays that from gave the Christ’s fingers apostles of Christ’s the power and authority to go forth and preach the gospel to the world. On the lintel, directly below this main Pentecostal scene, two long processions showing people from different corners of the

of Saint John the Baptist stands erect before a crossworld and converge holds aon disk the withtrumeau a now-fragmentary where the figure Fig. 1 Interior of narthex, Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104–ca. 1132. Photo: Romanesque Archive, Visual Resources Collections, Department of History of eight large archivolt-like compartments — each Art, College of Literature, Science & the Arts, the University Lamb of God. From the outer edges of the lintel, of Michigan.

comprising a group of human figures — rise Fig. 2 Central narthex portal, Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104–ca. 1132. Photo: Romanesque Archive, Visual Resources Collections, Department of History of Art, College of Literature, Science & the Arts, the University of Michigan.

Fig. 3 Central portion of the archivolt, central narthex portal, Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104 –ca. 1132. Photo: Romanesque Archive, Visual Resources Collections, Department of History of Art, College of Literature, Science & the Arts, the University of Michigan. Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 22 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

Fig. 4 West portal, Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, Autun, ca. 1130. Photo: Romanesque Archive, Visual Resource Collections, Department of History of Art, College of Literature, Science & the Arts, the University of Michigan. the archivolt of church portals, and central to distinctive iconographical features and particular the discussion to follow.5 placement within the portal program, have posed problems to interpretation and, therefore, have The archivolt consists of twenty-nine full been inconclusively addressed in scholarship. medallions; a half medallion near the midpoint Since these creatures fall between the zodiac of the cycle; and two half-rosettes, one at the signs of and Leo, Simona Cohen and Judy beginning and one at the end of the sequence.6 them symbolically, suggesting that they represent zodiac in this cycle, they have given little attention theScott summer Feldman, solstice for example, “that symmetrically have interpreted divides toWhereas the medallions scholars thathave represent identified the the months signs of and the the signs of the zodiac into their diurnal and 7 What is more, within this nocturnal houses.”10 A roundel showing Annus, archivolt, three-and-a-half medallions interrupt theirthe cycle specific directly labors. in the middle (Fig. 3). These interrupts the labors and zodiac cycle in the roundels show the compressed and twisted body archivoltthe personification around the of western the year, tympanum similarly at the of a bird in a half medallion,8 and a dog, a man, Cathedral of Saint-Lazare in Autun, completed and a siren, each coiled into a circle, conforming around 1130 (Fig. 4). Marjorie Jean Hall Panadero to the circular formats of their respective has proposed that the circular creatures in the roundels. In this position, these three-and-a-half Vézelay roundels may be understood as symbols medallions stand directly above the head of the of eternity, perhaps inspired by the imagery of central enthroned Christ in the tympanum below.9 the snake biting its tail — a long established motif These peculiar carvings, because of their by the early twelfth century.11 Moreover, because Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 23 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay of their circular poses, their placement directly above the head of Christ, and the fact that they are three in number, Peter Low has advanced feast of Pentecost represented in the tympanum below,that these thus figures symbolizing may relate “the toeverlasting the important life of the resurrected Christian soul” anticipated and enabled by this holy event.12 The iconography of these roundels, however, suggests that the creatures may have been intended as symbols of vice. The three medallions, according to Low, show creatures “who have bound themselves into circles of eternal powerlessness under the force of the presence of the triune god below,” Fig. 5 Medallion with the coiled man, central narthex por- and, as a result of their sinfulness, are in a tal, archivolt detail, Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine, state of perpetual spinning, slipping, and even Vézelay, ca. 1104–ca. 1132. Photo: Holly Hayes. “stumbling” on the surface of the cornerstone or keystone, denoted by the space occupied by carved medallion in light of current approaches to Christ’s head.13 These varying interpretations the study of Romanesque sculpture — advanced attest to the enigmatic nature of these circular by scholars such as David Williams, Thomas E.

or may not have been so puzzling for their Kirk Ambrose, among others — that circumvent twelfth-centuryfigures for present-day audiences. viewers, which may A. Dale, Ilene H. Forsyth, William J. Travis, and do not impose a particular reading on any one Out of the three and a half medallions at the sculptedproblems motif. of identification14 This method, and rather,symbolism allows and apex of the archivolt cycle at Vézelay, the visual various interpretations derived from the formal vocabulary and placement of the medallion qualities and sculptural context of the carvings to with the coiled man is both peculiar and coexist, providing insight into the active viewing sophisticated in its conception (Fig. 5). This expected of the original audiences, as well as the carved motif is placed in a prominent location on intentions of Vézelay’s designers. These recent the central portal, although one subordinate in studies moreover have increasingly distanced the hierarchy of subject matter and peripheral in themselves from a dictionary approach to the relation to the sculptures of the main tympanum iconography of Romanesque architectural below. The coiled man relief shows a neatly sculpture and some of its more peripheral and clothed man with an impassive countenance. puzzling subjects, such as the coiled man in the He has a long, strong-boned nose, almond-shaped archivolt at Vézelay. eyes, and straight hair. His body is in a contorted, acrobat-like position, secured in place by the fact There are no textual sources that elucidate how that he is deliberately holding both his ankles contemporary viewers understood the motif of with his hands and is bringing his head to his feet. the coiled man at Vézelay. Therefore, the carving’s This circular pose and the regular folds in his formal qualities and sculptural milieu provide garments denote a state of perpetual motion. insight into its iconographical conception and This image of the coiled man elicits a multitude multi-layered meanings. These meanings, as will of readings. In what follows, I investigate this be revealed, are rooted in medieval discourses Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 24 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

centered on man’s sinful nature, body-soul and are more concerned with the lusts of the body are said “to have put off the image of the Creator all distinct yet interrelated issues greatly debated and have put on another image, one that looks at atdualities, the turn and of thescientific twelfth astrological century when thought this — the ground like an animal, one that is beastly.”18 sculpture was likely designed and executed for the main narthex portal at Vézelay. head positioned toward the ground, and in this caseA similar placed figure directly bent above back intoa wheel, a circle is depicted with its to The coiled man invites speculation because it the left of the text on a page from a Psalter from can be interpreted independently, as well as in Bury St. Edmunds.19 This early eleventh-century relation to other roundels in the archivolt cycle marginal image pictorializes verse 14 of Psalm 82 that reads: “O my God, make them like a wheel; and as stubble before the wind” and has been depictionsand to figures of the in thezodiac tympanum man or thebelow. microcosmic As I argue, interpreted as an image of victory over evil, more manthe motif often also represented finds analogies at the centerwith medieval of circular zodiacs. However, not one interpretation provided the church.20 Therefore, the circular form of the here for this particular sculpture of the coiled specifically,human body over with sinfulness the head positionedand the enemies toward of man may be claimed as authoritative over any the ground, present in the Psalter illustration, the other given the limited existing information we Vézelay medallion, and described in the writings have today about how Romanesque sculpted of William of St-Thierry, suggest the sinful motifs in particular, and medieval monumental sculptural programs in general, were designed, executed, mediated, and received. Thecharacter corrupt of thenature figures of the represented. coiled man is further accentuated when this motif is considered in Symbols of Vice and Virtue relation to the adjacent medallions containing the dog and the siren. In the context of the central Two formal aspects of the medallion with the portal at Vézelay, the dog and the siren were coiled man are noteworthy for they stand in intended as symbols of evil and sin, respectively. contrast to the prominent features of the central the coiled dog in the top medallion to the two man’s circular body and second the deliberate dog-headedFirst, the visual (cynocephalic) similarities creaturesand proximity with of positioningfigure of Christ of his in headthe tympanum toward the below: ground. first The the human bodies in the upper left archivolt-like early twelfth-century theologian and mystic compartment below suggest a negative meaning William of St-Thierry (1085–1148), to whom for the coiled dog (Fig. 6). In the tympanum Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) wrote his compartment, the Cynocephalus to the left Apologia, discussed this particular corporeal holds a sword in its left hand and brings its right position along with his theories about the human hand to its throat, while the one to the right body and soul. In his work The Nature of the Body unquestionably clutches its throat, suggesting and Soul, William distinguished man from beast perhaps the fact that it is mute.21 in that man could reason because he was cast point of view, their gestures indicate that they in the image of God, the Creator.15 As a result, are unable to understand or to employ From aspeech Christian man stands erect, “reaching toward heaven and in a clear or coherent fashion and thus resort to looking up.”16 This stance, according to William, violence toward what is unknown, such as the new teachings of Christ.22 The meaning of these rational soul.”17 Those who ignore the rational soul signifies “the imperial and regal dignity of the two figures is further elucidated, as Low has Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 25 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

shown, by verse 17 from Psalm 21 that reads:

council of the malignant hath besieged me. They have“For manydug my dogs hands have and encompassed feet.”23 In this me: instance, the dogs or dog-headed creatures are associated with Christ’s Jewish tormentors, and more generally with all Jews and other non-believers.24 A miniature from the ninth-century Khludov

surrounding and threatening Christ (Cod. 129, fol. Psalter shows figures with canine countenances 25 19v).In the The context accompanying of the central inscription portal at identifies Vézelay the figuresthen, the as coiled “the Hebrews, dog in the the archivolt ones called medallion, dogs.” because of its proximity to and visual correlations with the dog-headed creatures in the tympanum compartment below, is a motif that may have been intended as a symbol of evil.

The siren, on the other hand, one of the most common hybrids included in Romanesque sculpture, was regarded throughout the as a symbol of carnal pleasure (voluptas) and lust (luxuria), and was popularized by early Fig. 6 Cynocephali, detail of the archivolt-like compartment from the left, central narthex tympanum, Abbey Church Christian fathers such as Ambrose, Augustine, of Sainte-Madeleine, Vézelay, ca. 1104– ca. 1132. and Paulinus of Nola.26 Its essential meaning, as Photo: Romanesque Archive, Visual Resource Collections, Thomas E. A. Dale has elucidated, derives from Department of History of Art, College of Literature, Isaiah’s declaration against Babylon ( Science & the Arts, the University of Michigan. Isaiah 13:21–22): But wild beasts shall rest there, and their houses

dwell there, and the hairy ones shall dance there: shall be filled with serpents, and ostriches shall And owls shall answer one another there, in the houses thereof, and sirens in the temples of pleasure.27 As a symbol of carnal pleasure, lust, avarice, and the sin of deception, the siren was believed to lure the religious man away from God and his vocation.28 Moreover, in the case of the Vézelay siren, her naked upper body, with its stylized and pronounced rib cage and hanging breasts, is similar to the representation of the Panotii Fig. 7 narthex tympanum, Abbey Church of Sainte-Madeleine, Vézelay, Panotii ca. 1104–ca. female 1132.figure, Photo: detail ofJane the Vadnal. right lintel, central furthest from God, on the right lintel (Fig. 7). female figure furthest to the right, and thus Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 26 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

The siren’s negative connotations thus correlate As the central sculptures visualize, on one level, to those of the monstrous races represented the founding moment of the church at Pentecost, on the right lintel, which consist of people from lands beyond those of God’s original the witnesses of this miracle of transformation. chosen few.29 the peripheral monstrous figures represent less monstrous-looking from top to bottom and The coiled man in the central medallion could fromTherefore, the lateral these edges marginal of the figures lintel becometo the center less and also represent a symbol of vice. Scholars, in fact, as they approach the center and are symbolically have repeatedly described the Vézelay coiled welcomed into the church.33 Because of man as an acrobat.30 In this guise, the acrobat’s corporeal deformity as a result of his contorted this transformation and potential for redemption and unstable bodily position was believed to canassociations also extend, with though figures indirectly, in the tympanum to the dog below, and stand in sharp opposition to the stability of the siren in the archivolt roundels. As a result, monastic ideals.31 Twelfth-century monastic these carved motifs should not be interpreted writers, such as the Cistercian abbot Bernard exclusively as symbols of evil and sin for their of Clairvaux, often criticized the corporeal meanings are, in fact, more nuanced. deformities of acrobats and dancers for they stood “as a contrast for the intellectual acrobatics of the mind performed by monks.”32 Moreover, because the Vézelay coiled man is framed by the dog and siren, two motifs perceived as symbols of evil and sin, respectively, the coiled man too, as a result of his circular body and unstable condition, could be interpreted as a however, is that the coiled man is outwardly coiledsinful creature.and downward Significant facing and whereas worth noting,the dog and the siren are inwardly coiled and with their heads upright — distinctions that set the coiled man apart from the medallions with the dog and the siren.

In the context of the central portal the meanings of the framing roundels with the dog and the siren gain nuance. These two motifs derive their initial negative connotations from their distinctive in the tympanum below, such as the Cynocephali iconographies and visual associations with figures these peripheral deformed subjects present increatures the tympanum and the compartmentsPanotii female figure.and the However, lintel undergo a symbolic process of transformation Fig. 8 Beatus Vir— Sacred and Profane Music, St-Remigius Psalter, Reims, ca. 1125. Cambridge, Saint John’s College, that is visually attested to in the sculptural MS. B 18, fol. 1r. Photo: By permission of the Master and scheme of the main portal.

Fellows of Saint John’s College, University of Cambridge. Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 27 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

This is true for the coiled man as well. The the Vézelay coiled man has neat hair and meanings of this sculpture depend on its orderly garments, and his body maintains distinctive formal qualities, as well as on its a restrained position. central placement relative to the archivolt cycle and the sculptural scheme of the tympanum In the early decades of the twelfth century, when below. Although scholars have often described the coiled man may have been designed for the the coiled man as an acrobat, he is unlike main narthex portal at Vézelay, theologians such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of Saint-Victor found in visual representations from the Middle were discussing how the human body could representations of figures intended as acrobats function as a site for understanding the inner in Reims, a work contemporaneous with the life of the soul. Orderly exterior appearances could VézelayAges. For narthex example, sculptures, in a Psalter a page from contains St-Remigius a juxtaposition of sacred and profane music soul,” while corporeal deformities were believed (Fig. 8). Sacred music is depicted in the top tothus furnish reflect “metaphors “the harmonious for the nature soul’s ofpotential the godly register in the form of David playing the lyre. degeneracy,” as Dale has explained.36 Profane music is depicted in the lower register by A devout soul, therefore, was believed to manifest way of a monstrous-looking creature in the form of itself outwardly through disciplined and orderly a bear playing a drum. At the time this miniature movements of the body.37 In a sermon on the was created, sacred music was equated with the Song of Songs, for example, Bernard of Clairvaux “harmony of psalmody, the staple of monastic life,” explained that in order to understand the beauty while profane music had a particularly negative of the soul (decor animae) one must “observe connotation, expressed in this instance by the a man’s outward bearing, not because morality 34 In the originates from conduct, but because conduct lower register of the page, moreover, this central mediates morality….The beauty of actions is presencemonstrous of creature the demonic-looking is surrounded figure. by dancers visible testimony to the state of conscience….”38 and acrobats performing handstands. Because of Bernard continued: “When the motions, the their disorderly, off-balanced bodies, the acrobats gestures and the habits of the body and the especially were believed to represent “those who senses show forth their gravity, purity, and most deformed the image of God.”35 modesty…then beauty of the soul becomes outwardly visible.”39 These beliefs were echoed The particular representation of acrobats in by another contemporary theologian, Hugh of the Psalter differs from the coiled man in the Saint-Victor (ca. 1096–1141), who explained central medallion at Vézelay. Although both the in his major work on the cultivation of virtue, acrobats and the coiled man have their heads De institutione novitiorum, that the body (in toward the ground, the Vézelay coiled man appears to be looking directly at Christ below, state of the soul and imposed order on it: which consequently signals a stronger connection gesture,Just as carriage, inconsistency and speech) of mind reflectedbrings forth the to the divine. The acrobats in the manuscript irregular motions of the body, so also the mind is illumination, by contrast, have their heads furthest strengthened and made constant when the body is away from the upper register and thus from the restrained through the process of discipline. And little by little, the mind is composed inwardly to calm, when through the custody of discipline its therepresentation acrobats in theof the manuscript most sacred are figure depicted in the bad motions [emotions] are not allowed free play withpicture, disheveled namely, David.garments Furthermore, and twisted whereas bodies, outwardly. The perfection of virtue is attained Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 28 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

when the members of the body are governed and shoulder blades and sides, to the stomach ordered through the inner custody of the mind.40 and intestines, to the hips and buttocks, Outward appearances and movements of the body to the genitals, to the thighs, and to the knees.45 of man. In the case of the coiled man at Vézelay, althoughcan, thus, hisboth body reflect is in and a contorted condition position, the inner life parts of the human body represents This codification an important his orderly outward appearance — since he is medievalof the influence contribution of the heavenlyto astrological bodies thought. on the fully clothed, has shoes on both feet, has neatly In some extant examples, the zodiac signs are arranged hair, and assumes a restrained position — may attest to the devout conduct of his inner by the Zodiac Man represented in a fourteenth- being. Although his head is situated toward the centurysuperimposed manuscript on the now human in the body, Bodleian as exemplified Library, ground, his eyes are open and gaze downwards, Oxford (Fig. 9). In other examples, the human

with lines connecting the zodiac signs and Zodiacaldirectly at the Interpretations figure of Christ below. thefigure parts is found of the at body the centerthought of to the be circular under the zodiac

The deliberate placement of the coiled man at the fourteenth century, the highly contorted form of midpoint of the archivolt cycle of the labors of theinfluence human of body these within astrological the framing markers. circle By of the the the months and signs of the zodiac suggests his zodiac — such that the man’s feet almost touch associations with a microcosmic man.41 Images of the back of his head — was used to express these the microcosmic man show the correspondences zodiacal correlations.46 An Italian illumination from ca. 1400 shows a bearded man in such an encircled by the zodiac were frequent in the outwardly coiled position surrounded by the iconographybetween man of and the the Mithraic universe. mysteries Although42 and figures in zodiac signs (Fig. 10). Placed at the center of the ancient Jewish tradition,43 the earliest extant circular zodiac and presented in a coiled form, medieval example is a representation of the found in an eleventh-century manuscript now in the human figure in this guise embodies the thecircular Bibliothèque zodiac with Nationale, a human Paris figure (MS at Lat.the center7028, fol. 154r).44 Contemporaneous representations

Annus bysurvive the miniature in which Christthat introduces replaces the the figure Song ofof Songs inat the Biblecenter of of Saint the zodiac,Vaast in as the examplified collection of the Bibliothèque Municipale, Arras (MS 559, fol. 141v).

Didactic images of the microcosmic man visualize the body, such that each zodiac sign corresponds tothe a influenceparticular of body the planetspart: on various relates parts to of the ankles, Pisces to the feet, to the head and face, to the neck, to the arms and Fig. 9 Zodiac Man, MS Savile 39, fol. 7r, after 1387. Photo: shoulders, Cancer to the breast, Leo to the heart, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 29 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

of De rerum naturis by Rabanus Maurus (ca. 780– 856) in the Biblioteca dell’Abbazia, Montecassino. Here, a clockwise zodiac framing Annus illustrates the text of a chapter dealing with time (Cod. 132, fol. 135v), while a counterclockwise zodiac framing busts of Sol and Luna depict the sky (Cod. 132, fol. 118r).48

through the early decades of the twelfth century, commentariesBeginning in the on fifth verse century 14 from and Genesis continuing 1 —“ And God said: Let there be lights made in the

night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, andfirmament for days of and heaven, years” to —divide established the day aand strong the connection in Christian thought between notions of time and stellar constellations.49 This

half of the twelfth century, developed from these earlierredefinition commentaries, of time, formulated and took placeduring at the the first time

Fig. 10 Zodiac Man, MS Canon. Misc. 559, fol. 2r, ca. 1400. thewhen Latin-speaking a large number West. of scientific50 This conception astrological of Photo: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. textstime corresponds,from the Arab-speaking as Cohen has world explained, were flooding with the initial integration of the zodiac cycle as a time perfect image of unity, continuity, and perpetual cycle in religious iconography.51 recurrence, similar to the passing of time from year to year, often implied in representations of The labors and zodiac cycle at Vézelay is placed the zodiac.47 on the outer archivolt, at the edge of the temporal universe, and interspersed with medallions that In contrast to the coiled man at the center of represent the monthly labors, thus functioning the circular zodiacs, however, the Vézelay coiled as a representation of the passage of time on man is in a reversed position. That he is depicted earth. In surrounding the Christian imagery in the cycle in the archivolt runs in the opposite the progress of human history that is embedded directionbackwards than is justified the zodiacs by the present fact that in the the circular zodiac intympanum the divine below, plan for this salvation. earthly time This also cycle defines at Vézelay, then, enhances the overall meaning of represented in the archivolt at Vézelay, functioned the sculptural scheme of the central portal and asexamples. a representation Zodiac cycles of the that passing run clockwise, of time. as of the entire façade program.52 That the Vézelay Counterclockwise zodiacs, by contract, generally zodiac cycle in the archivolt runs clockwise is appeared in secular contexts and were intended as representations of the sky. This distinction the passage of time on earth, and second, it between clockwise and counterclockwise zodiacs validates,noteworthy at forleast two in reasons.part, why First, the coiled it symbolizes man at is visually articulated in an eleventh-century copy its midpoint was designed in a reversed pose, Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 30 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

which contrasts with the position of the circular Genesis 1:26–27.57 Unlike God, however, zodiac man in other extant examples (Fig. 10). man was made up of a material body and an firstimmaterial in soul. Yet, through his soul, especially Medieval thinkers regarded the relationship a devout one, made manifest through orderly between the macrocosm of the universe and movements of the body, man could potentially the microcosm of the human body as two achieve salvation. concepts inextricably linked.53 This macrocosmic- microcosmic analogy played an important role in the theoretical and practical framework of at Vézelay, then, if he were in fact intended the Christian Platonic world of the Middle Ages toFor represent the coiled in man its coiled in the form archivolt the human medallion in which interrelations and correspondences microcosm, he appears as an earthly, human-form between God and man, heaven and earth, doctrine and history were hotly debated. These discussions were rooted in Plato’s Timaeus from orderlyreflection outward of the divine appearance macrocosm and zodiacal embodied ca. 360 B.C. In his long monologue on cosmology, associationsin the figure ofsuggest Christ the below. temporal The coiled dimensions man’s of Plato fundamentally expressed the idea that man man’s existence on earth, which are paralleled by his potential eternal existence in heaven, achieved He proceeded to compare the motions of the through salvation. Therefore, the medieval bodyshould to reflect the motions as nearly of the as possibleintelligence the anduniverse. those concepteurs who designed the sculptural program of the universe, adding that man should learn for the narthex portals at Vézelay and who placed “the harmonies and revolution of the universe” the coiled man in the most central medallion of so that he may be able to imitate them through the archivolt around the main tympanum, and the soul.54 Medieval theologians and thinkers thus above the head of Christ, revealed through adopted Plato’s ideas that the physical world this motif a symbolic view of man and also of the and everything in it was modeled after a greater human world, of the microcosm — a view that spiritual reality and elaborated them further, exposed aspects of reality that challenged other eventually disseminating these ideas through means of understanding. their commentaries. Bernardus Silvestris (ca. 1085–1178), for example, a neo-Platonist Conclusion philosopher and poet of the twelfth century, dealt with the relationship between macrocosm (which The original intentions of Vézelay’s designers of he called the megacosmos) and microcosm. In his the narthex sculptures are, of course, not known. poem Cosmographia, Bernardus wrote that man Also unknown is whether the medallion with was created in “God’s true likeness,” of the same the coiled man and its adjacent roundels that elements as the universe, as a “second universe,” interrupt at the apex the archivolt cycle around “a spark drawn from the heavens.”55 A century the main tympanum were conceived and executed earlier, Remigius of Auxerre (ca. 841–908), a along with the rest of the portal sculptures, or whether they were a later addition designed classical Greek and Latin texts, also suggested that independently of the labors and zodiac archivolt man’sBenedictine rational monk soul and stands prolific midway commentator between the on sequence. Regardless, the placement of the irrational souls of beasts and the spirits of angels, coiled man carving at the center of the program in harmony with the world.56 However, that man was created as a second universe, a microcosm, medallion within the sculptural context of the all in the image of God the creator, was stated narthexis significant. portals It isand precisely its distinctive this placement formal qualities of the Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 31 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay that provide insight into its nuanced meanings iconographical peculiarities and its physically and its zodiacal associations. subordinate status relative to the main scenes around it. The readings provided here for the The readings provided here for the medallion medallion with the coiled man, grounded in its with the coiled man reveal that this carving and formal qualities and its sculptural milieu, as well its meanings are not transparent. The same as revealed in the context of issues debated in is true of the entire sculptural program of the the early twelfth century, at the time when this narthex portals, which has served as a topic sculpture was likely designed and executed for of scholarly debate for decades. The Vézelay the Vézelay narthex portal, have elucidated this narthex sculptures belong, in fact, to a complex, motif’s symbolic content while providing insight well-thought-out program, designed to engage into the original intentions of its designers. the faithful who would have regularly interacted with the carvings and who would have brought *** with them distinct levels of knowledge and understanding of scripture and contemporary Alice Isabella Sullivan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the debates. Since Vézelay served as a starting Department of History of Art at the University of point on one of the four pilgrimage roads to Michigan where she is completing a dissertation the Pyrenees, the route to the shrine of Saint titled “The Painted Fortified Monastic Churches James the Greater at Santiago de Compostela in of Moldavia: Bastions of Orthodoxy in a Post- Galicia, the audiences would have included not Byzantine World.” For the 2015–2016 academic only Vézelay’s lay public, monks, and clergy, but year she is a Chester Dale Fellow at the Center for travelers as well, such as pilgrims, who came from Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National all corners of the world. In this context, we can Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and a fellow of assume that the carvings of the narthex portals the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation. She were designed in such a way as to serve as a holds an M.A. from the Williams College Graduate vehicle for contemplation, eliciting multivalent Program in the History of Art, and a B.A. from and shifting interpretations among Vézelay’s Bowdoin College. wide-ranging audiences.

Until recently, scholarship that has dealt with iconographically enigmatic Romanesque carved Endnotes motifs, such as the Vézelay medallion with the This project began in an independent study supervised by

Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. I am coiled man, has often focused first and foremost Dr. Peter Low in Fall 2009 while I was a graduate student in the rather than examining, for instance, the varying grateful to Dr. Low for his support, encouragement, and careful strategieson issues of employed identification to express and symbolism, meanings through considerations of earlier drafts of this essay. This study has also the sculptures. This approach has yielded students and the other members of my ad hoc committee at divergent scholarly interpretations that have benefited from the critical comments of my fellow graduate divorced the carvings from their immediate and Williams — Dr. Marc Gotlieb, Dr. Marc Simpson, Camran Mani, and Jamie Lynn Rosenow. I would like to thank them larger contexts. This is true also of the medallion all for their helpful, constructive, and illuminating suggestions with the coiled man at Vézelay. This roundel belongs to an elaborate iconographical program, on earlier versions of this essay. Significant revisions were yet scholars have often dismissed it in their years in the doctoral program in the Department of History of undertaken during 2014–2015, during my fourth and fifth studies of the narthex sculptures because of its Art at the University of Michigan as a Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 32 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

Nave Sculptures of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing for carefully reading a draft of this essay and sharing with me Fellow. I thank my doctoral advisor, Dr. Achim Timmermann, his insightful observations and comments. I would also like to and Martine Jullian, “Calendrier roman, calendrier (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2006); thank the anonymous reader for the Rutgers Art Review for the gothique. Vers une nouvelle mise en ordre du temps,” generous and helpful feedback. Aspects of this project have Bulletin archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques been presented at the Fifteenth Annual Williams College and the et Scientifiques. Archéologie, histoire de l’art, époques Clark Art Institute Graduate Student Symposium in June 2010, médiévale et moderne 34 (2008): 35–52. and at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2011. 5. Marjorie Jean Hall Panadero, “The Labors of the Months

1. and the Signs of the Zodiac in Twelfth-Century French three narthex portals, see Peter Low, “Envisioning 1984), 18–93, esp. 23, 30–31. For a detailed description of the sculptures of Vézelay’s Facades,” Ph.D. dissertation (University of Michigan,

Portal Sculptures of Sainte-Madeleine de Vézelay,” Ph.D. 6. The sequence of whole medallions begins on the left Faith and Structuring Lay Experience: The Narthex with the roundel for the month of January and proceeds dissertation (Johns Hopkins University, 2001), 15–28. up to the medallion with the zodiac sign of Cancer. After the three-and-a-half medallions that interrupt the cycle, 2. For dating evidence, see ibid., 314–320. the sequence descends with the zodiac sign of Leo and represents the Trinity as it visualizes the filioque clause, continues until the last full medallion for the month of Peter Low has argued that this central figure of Christ December, on the bottom right. This last medallion is at the Council of Bari. This clause states that the Holy officially confirmed as part of the Nicene Creed in 1098, Spirit, denoted in the Vézelay sculptures by the rays of DESIGNAT IMAGO DECEMBRIS. Charles Porée, L’abbaye identified by the inscription: OMNIBUS IN MEMBRIS light emanating from Christ’s hands, proceeds from both de Vézelay medallion has been interpreted as January in light of (Paris: H. Laurens, 1922), 49. The first full the Father and the Son, and not just the Father. Low, 68–141. See also, Joseph Gill and Berard L. Marthaler, “Envisioning Faith and Structuring Lay Experience,” the last medallion in the cycle, identified as December. New Catholic Encyclopedia (Detroit: Gale, calendrier,” in Le Patrimoine de la basilique de Vézelay, Véronique Frandon, “Lœuvre romane: la voussure du 2003), V, 913–934. ed. Marcel Angheben “Filioque,” 66, 73. 3. Adolf Katzenellenbogen, “The Central Tympanum at (Charenton-le-Pont: Flohic, 1999), Vézelay: Its Encyclopedic Meaning and Its Relation to 7. The following studies have provided various Art Bulletin 26 (1944): 141. interpretations for the order of the medallions that represent the months and their respective labors: 4. theRecent First publications Crusade,” on the Vézelay narthex sculptures Source 3, no. 3 (1984): 1–7; Panadero, “The Labors Joan G. Caldwell, “The Four Seasons at Vézelay,” include: Low, “Envisioning Faith and Structuring Lay Enlivening Scripture in the Main Portal at Vézelay,” Experience;” ibid., ““You Who Once Were Far Off”: The Art Bulletin 85, no. 3 (2003): 469–489; ibid., ““As iconographiqueof the Months and du the calendarier Signs of the et des Zodiac,” saisons 44–46; du a stone into a building”: Metaphor and Materiality Véronique Frandon, “Du multiple à l’Un: Approche portail de l’église abbatiale de Vézelay,” Gesta 37, no. in the Main Portal at Vézelay,” Word & Image 22, no. 3 (2006): 260–267; ibid., “Innovation and Spiritual Value in Medieval Monastic Art: The Case of the Main Narthex1 (1998): Portal 83; Low, at Vézelay: “Envisioning Art and Faith Monastic and Structuring Self- Narthex Portal at Vézelay,” The Journal of Medieval Image,”Lay Experience,” Ph.D. dissertation 24–25; Judy (University Scott Feldman, of Texas, “The Austin, and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012): 657–698; Emma 1986), 106–108. Scholars disagree in regard to some Simi Varanelli, “‘Diversi, non adversi’: L’interpretazione del timpano della Pentecost di Vézelay, un unicum nel example, has argued that the third medallions from panorama dei modelli medievali della cominicazione theof the left enigmatic and the right, ‘additions’ as a result to the of cycle. their Frandon,ambiguous for visiva,” Arte Medievale 1, no. 2 (2002): 55–75; Christian imagery, can be interpreted, respectively, as either

at Sainte-Madeleine de Vézelay,” unpublished M.A. thesis Ann Zeringue, “Evaluation of the Central Narthex Portal (Louisiana State University, 2005); Kirk Ambrose, The “Dudepictions multiple of àthe l’Un,” months 77–83. of February and November, or as representations of two seasons. Frandon, Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 33 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

8. The half-medallion with the bird remains, by and large, only those who “produce the fruits of the kingdom,” the most enigmatic carving of the entire sculptural meaning the gifts of faith and devotion to God, will avoid program at Vézelay. cornerstone is thus “a stone that makes them stumble” this “stone of stumbling.” For the non-believers the 9. It is possible that these sculpted roundels that interrupt and “a rock that makes them fall.” The placement of the labors and zodiac cycle at Vézelay were not part of the original conception of the central portal sculptures. central Christ, and consequently on the surface of the They may have been a later addition. However, the the three circular figures directly above the head of the lapis angularis (or corner stone) and their suggested iconography and placement of these medallions perpetual motion, stresses their sinful conditions. were carefully conceived relative to the surrounding sculptures, whether or not this occurred in the early 14. Recent studies that stress the multivalent character twelfth-century or at a later date. of Romanesque sculpture include: David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in 10. Medieval Thought and Literature (Montreal: McGill- Arte Medievale 4, Simona Cohen, “The Romanesque Zodiac: Its Symbolic no. 1 (1990): 51; ibid., Transformations of Time and Function on the Church Façade,” “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms in (Leiden: Queen’s University Press, 1996); Thomas E. A. Dale, Temporality in Medieval and Renaissance Art the Cloister of St-Michel-de-Cuxa,” The Art Bulletin 83,

Vézelay,” 116. As the three medallions are placed on the Brill, 2014), 110; Feldman, “The Narthex Portal at at Moissac: Schapiro’s Legacy,” Gesta 41 (2002): 71–93;no. 3 (2001): William 402–436; J. Travis, Ilene “Of Sirens H. Forsyth, and Onocentaurs: “Narrative the Baptist on the trumeau below, they may also relate central axis and thus also above the figure of Saint John A Romanesque Apocalypse at Montceaux-l’Etoile,” Artibus et Historiae 23, no. 45 (2002): 29–62; Kirk approximately six months before Christ’s birth. to the Feast of John the Baptist which falls on June 24, Ambrose, “The ‘Mystic Mill’ Capital at Vézelay,” in 11. Isodore de Seville in his Etymologiae discusses the Wind and Water in the Middle Ages: Fluid Technologies circular nature of the year using the symbol of a from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Steven A. Walton serpent biting its own tail. Referenced and translated in (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Panadero, “The Labors of the Months and the Signs of Renaissance Studies, 2006), 235–258; and ibid., The Marvelous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell 12. the Zodiac,” 96–100, 247. Press, 2013). 97–100. Also, the event of Pentecost was described as Low, “Envisioning Faith and Structuring Lay Experience,” having begun and ended in the same place (i.e. on the 15. William of St-Thierry wrote in De natura corporis et animae, Pat. lat., suggested that the dog, the man, and the siren could ad coelum extensa, et sursum aspiciens, imperialem first day) thus symbolized by the circle. Low has also vol. 180, 714B: “Erecta hominis figura symbolize the “eternity, and eternal unity, of the triune Hujusmodoi enim homines imagine Creatoris exuta, regalemque dignitatem animae rationalis significat…. 68–141. aliam induerunt imaginem terram respicientem, God” embodied in the figure of Christ below. Ibid., pecudalem, bestialem. Non enim secundum furorem 13. Ibid., 283–284. As Low has explained, 1 Peter 2:4–5 hominis ad Deum est similitudo….Haec et his similia ab elaborates on the concept of the lapis angularis, the irrationali humana sibi contraxit natura.” Translated in Christ as cornerstone metaphor found in Ephesians 2:11– Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms,” 408, n. 52–54. See also the translated and edited edition by Michel Lemoine (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988); and 22, in eschatological terms: “For it stands in scripture: chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will On the Nature of the Body and the Soul, trans. B. Clark in ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone/keystone not be put to shame.’ To you then who believe, he is Bernard McGinn, ed., Three Treatises on Man. precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone A Cistercian Anthropology that the builders rejected has become the very head 24 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), , The Cistercian Fathers Series, of the corner,’ and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, 101–152. and a rock that makes them fall.’ They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to.” This 16. et sursum aspiciens…” point is further elaborated in Matthew 21:42–44 where Ibid.: “Erecta hominis figura ad coelum extensa, Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 34 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

17. Ibid.: “…imperialem regalemque dignitatem animae ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton University

sources that equate Jews to dogs, see James Marrow, 18. Ibid.:rationalis “Hujusmodoi significat…” enim homines imagine Creatoris Press, 1999), 34–35 and fig. 12. For contemporary “Circumdederunt me canes multi: Christ’s Tormentors in exuta, aliam induerunt imaginem terram respicientem, Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early pecudalem, bestialem.” Renaissance,” Art Bulletin 59, no. 2 (1977): 174.

19. Psalm 82, Bury St. Edmunds Psalter, second quarter 26. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and of the eleventh century, Biblioteca Apostolica Phantasms,” 418–420; and Pierre Courcelle, “L’interprétation évhémériste des Sirènes-courtisanes http://www.oberlin.edu/images/Art315/10939.JPG. Vaticana, MS Reg. Lat. 12, fol. 90v. For an image, see: jusqu’au XIIe siècle,” in Gesellschaft-Kultur-Literatur, 20. Psalm 82:14. All biblical passages are reproduced after Rezeption und Originalität im Wachsen einer the Douay-Rheims Bible, accessed November 17, 2014, europäischen Literatur und Geistigkeit. Beiträge Luitpold Wallach gewidmet, ed. Karl Bosl (Stuttgart: Structuring Lay Experience,” 97, esp. n. 68; Robert M. Anton Hierseman, 1975), 33–48. http://www.drbo.org. Low, “Envisioning Faith and Harris, “The Marginal Drawings of the Bury St. Edmunds 27. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms,” Psalter (Rome, Vatican Library MS Reg. lat. 12,” Ph.D. 419, n. 110. dissertation (Princeton University, 1960); Elizabeth C. Temple, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066: A Survey 28. Ibid., 419. Dale cites Werner of St-Blaise (d. 1126), of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles (London: Liber deflorationum, PL, vol. 157, 848A–849B, at 849B; Harvey Miller, 1976), II, 100–102. Peter Damian (d. 1072), De perfectione monachi, 11, PL, vol. 145, 306C, cited in Courcelle, “L’interprétation 21. Katzenellenbogen, “The Central Tympanum at évhémériste des Sirènes-courtisanes jusqu’au XIIe Vézelay,” 144. a contemporary of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, De modo 22. siècle,” 44–45; and the Cistercian Thomas of Froidmond, bene vivendi, PL, vol. 184, 1285A–86B, at 1285D–86A; 23. LowLow, has““You discussed Who Once this Were Psalm Far verse Off,”” in 477. relation to the See also, Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), central tympanum at Vézelay. Low, ““You Who Once 104–115. dog-headed figures in the archivolt compartment of the 29. 24. InWere their Far works, Off,”” 477.Christian writers have referred Low, ““You Who Once Were Far Off,”” 478. On the right to Muslims and even Mongols as dogs because of represent the Panotii, people of India or Scythia; the next lintel, the figures furthest to the right, with the large ears,

The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought group consists of contemporary knights from Western their alleged impurity. See John Block Friedman, figures are the Pygmies, inhabitants of Africa; the final (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 67–69; David Gordon White, Myths of the Dog-Man the monstrous races, see: Pliny, Natural History 4.13.95, Europe. For the identification of figures that belong to (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 61–62; 7.2.30, 6.35.188, trans. Harris Rackham (Cambridge, MA: and Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews: Harvard University Press, 1942; London: W. Heinemann, Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton 1947), II, 192, 478, 526; and Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi University Press, 2003), 159–160, 204–206, 223–224. Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, 11.3.19, ed. Wallace M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), II. 25. Moscow, State Historical Museum, Cod. 129, fol. 19v. 30. See the sources listed in n. 4 above. “EВPAIOI OI ΛEΓΟMENOI KYNEC” Khludov Psalter, Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews, 285, n. 23. 31. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and On this image, see Kathleen Corrigan, Visual Polemics Phantasms,” 413. in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 48–49; Debra Hassig, 32. Ibid., 414. Bernard also wrote in a letter: “A good sort “Iconography of Rejection: Jews and Other Monstrous of playing it is which is the object of men’s ridicule, but Races,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 35 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

offers a beautiful spectacle to the angels.…In fact, what 42. else do seculars think we are doing but playing when of the mystic deity of procreation Phanes entwined by A Roman marble relief now in Modena shows the figure the serpent Chronos emerging from the cosmic egg while surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac (CIMRM what they desire most on earth, we fly from; and what [joculatorum] and dancers [saltatorum] who with their 695). See David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic they fly from we desire? In the manner of acrobats heads down and feet up, stand or walk on their hands Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World and thus draw all eyes to themselves. But this is not a (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), game for children or the theater were lust is excited by esp. 120–121. the effeminate and indecent contortions of the actors, it is a joyous game, decent, grave and admirable, delighting 43. An example is the sixth-century mosaic from the Beth the gaze of heavenly onlookers.” Bernard of Clairvaux, Alpha synagogue that shows a charioteer encircled by the twelve signs of the zodiac. Tim Hegedus, Epistola LXXXVII ad Ogerium, PL, vol. 182, 217B. Early Translated in Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, Christianity and Ancient Astrology (New York: Lang and Phantasms,” 414, n. 90. Publishing, 2007), 235.

33. 44. The contents of the manuscript are described in Augusto Beccaria, I codici medicina del periodo pre-salernitano 34. Low,Dale, ““You“Monsters, Who OnceCorporeal Were Deformities,Far Off,”” 480, and 481, 486. (secoli IX, X e XI) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Litterature,

de la femme au cours des Xe–XIIe siècles,” Cahiers de Phantasms,” 412; and Chiara Frugoni, “L’iconographie 45. This1956), relation 152–155; between and Clark, the signs “The of Zodiac the zodiac Man,” and 24. the Civilisation Médiévale 20 (1977): 177–188. parts of the human body was described in the earliest 35. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and astrological treatise , written by the Roman Phantasms,” 412. poet and astrologer Marcus Manilius sometime in the

36. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Manilius: Astronomica (Cambridge, MA: Harvard first century AD. For a critical edition, see G.P. Goold, Phantasms,” 408. University Press, 1977), esp. 118–119.

37. Ibid. 46. Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry: Its Sources and 38. Bernard of Clairvaux, Super Cantica Cantorum Sermo Meaning,”Harry Bober, “The Zodiacal Miniature of the Très 85.10–11, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, eds. Jean Leclercq, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Charles H. Talbot, and Henry Rochais (Rome: Editiones Institutes 11 (1948): 15. Cistercienses, 1957–1958), II, 314. Translated in C. 47. In the outermost archivolt that surrounds the central Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools tympanum at Vézelay, directly to the right of the zodiac and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 sign of Aquarius, a very small coiled man is carved in (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), the vegetal decorations. In contrast to the coiled man 111. in the center-most medallion, he is not fully circular for 39. Ibid. he is not holding his ankles with his hands, and he is also not clothed. He is depicted, however, in an analogous 40. Hugh of St-Victor, De institutione novitiorum, chapter position, with his head toward the ground and with 10, PL, vol. 176, 935B. Translated in Jaeger, The Envy neatly arranged hair. If the coiled man in the center- of Angels, 260. most medallion is in fact related to the passage of time denoted by the zodiac cycle in the archivolt, then one 41. explanation for the presence of the small coiled man Man, the Man of Signs (homo signorum), the Lord of the The microcosmic man was known variously as the Zodiac next to the zodiac sign of Aquarius (the sign that Signs (dominus signorum), the Anatomical Man, and begins the archivolt cycle) is that he marks the beginning the zodiacal melothesia of this time cycle. . For examples and sources see Astrology,” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and 48. Diane O. Le Berrurier, The Pictorial Sources of Charles W. Clark, “The Zodiac Man in Medieval Medical Renaissance Association 3 (1982): 13, ns. 2–6. Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Strategies of Signification in Romanesque Sculpture: 36 The Coiled Man in the Archivolt at Vézelay

Maurus’ De rerum naturis (New York and London: Saxl (London: Warburg Institute, 1957), I, 58–72; Leonard Barkan, Nature’s Work of Art: The Human Friedrich Body as Image of the World (New Haven and London: Yale Garland Publishing, Inc., 1978). For a more detailed 47; ibid., Transformations of Time and Temporality University Press, 1975), 8–46; Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny, explanation see Cohen, “The Romanesque Zodiac,” in Medieval and Renaissance Art, 102; and Véronique “L’homme comme symbole: le microcosme,” in Simboli e simbologia nell’alto medioevo (Settimane di Studio encyclopédies du Moyen Âge: l’exemple du De Universo del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo XXIII) Frandon, “Les saisons et leurs représentations dans les de Raban Maur (1022–1023),” in L’enciclopedismo (Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro, 1976): 123–195; medieval: Atti del convegno San Gimignano, 8–10 ottobre and Williams, Deformed Discourse, 108. 1992, ed. Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1994), 55–78. 54. Plato, Timaeus, trans. Benjamin Jowett, accessed November 19, 2014, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/ 49. timaeus.html. Genesis, see Panadero, “The Labors of the Months and For an analysis of twelfth-century commentaries on 55. Bernardus Silvestris, “Microcosmos,” chap. 12, in The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, trans. Winthrop 50. theI am Signs differentiating of the Zodiac,” here between 186–210. superstitious Wetherbee (1973; repr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 117. Middle Ages, the Church argued strongly against the astrological practices and scientific astrology. In the former and slowly accepted the latter. The works of 56. Edmund Taite Silk, ed., Saeculi noni auctoris in Boetii Albumasar (787–886), especially his guide books Consolationem Philosophiae commentaries, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome Great Introduction to 9 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1935), 335– Astronomy, Great Conjunctions, and Shorter Introduction to scientific astrology, such as 336; and Elizabeth Sears, to Astronomy, were particularly important and became The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycles (Princeton: Princeton into Latin. See Vicky Armstrong Clark, “The Illustrated University Press, 1986), 18–19. the first Arabic scientific writings to be translated ‘Abridged Astrological Treatise of Albumasar’: Medieval 57. Genesis 1:26–27 — “And he said: Let us make man to our Astrological Imagery in the West,” (Ph.D. diss., The image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the University of Michigan, 1979), 5–31; Max L. W. Laistner, “The Western Church and Astrology during the Early and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, Middle Ages,” The Harvard Theological Review 34, no. 4 moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own (1941): 251–275. image: to the image of God he created him: male and 51. After examining theories about time written in exegetical female he created them.” and philosophical texts prior to and during the twelfth century, such as Bede’s Hexaemerom (8th century) and Rabanus Maurus’s Commentaria in Genesim (9th century), as well as Honorius Augustodenensis’s Hexaemerom and Hugh of Saint-Victor’s In Solomonis Ecclesiasten, Homilia XIX and De proprietate quatuor temporum anni, Simona Cohen concluded that the labors and zodiac cycles on church façades were in fact intended as representations of the passage of time. See Cohen, “The Romanesque

52. Panadero,Zodiac,” 43–54. “The Labors of the Months and the Signs of the

53. SomeZodiac,” of 247.the more important critical studies include: George Perrier Conger, Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms in the History of Philosophy (New York:

and Microcosm in Medieval Pictures,” in Lectures, ed. Columbia University Press, 1922); Fritz Saxl, “Macrocosm 37

Before a quarter of eight in the morning, the king Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: was gone. Shortly after the Grand Chambellan had shouted the three “Vives” from the royal Louis XIV in Undying Bronze balcony and the castle began bustling with preparations for the funeral, one of the nobles present at the death, Philippe de Courcillon, THADEUS DOWAD on the king’s passing. In his personal journal, he writes,Marquis “The de Dangeau, king died retired this morning to his study at a quarter to reflect past eight. He yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out.”4 Thus a rather sobering end to a life hailed in poetry and prose as absolute and incomparable. The Sun King’s “The eminent virtues, the great deeds, and the considerable number of illustrious men of various states and characters of genius who appeared listlessimmortal thread flame, of it smoke seems, off extinguished a candlewick. not with under the reign of our Monarch, Louis XIV, shall the magnificent supernova of a star, but with the remain the source of great admiration in all the ages to come.”1 is a tinge of insecurity over the legacy of the monarch’sInflected in reign. the sobriety He seems of Dangeau’sto anxiously remarks wonder: – Évrard Titon du Tillet Le Parnasse François, 1732 king”will the5 and magnificence his state really of Louis’ live on France now thatsimilarly its sun go out like a candle flame? Will the “immortal Louis XIV died. He died in his private literal and symbolic permanence of Louis XIV had Obedchambern September at1, 1715,Versailles, the King the victim of France of a inhad fact suddenly begun to gone ferment out? Anxietyyears before over theboth king the had shown any sign of giving out. By the time leg. In his last hours, he was surrounded by a of his death, Louis was predeceased by most of congregationrather undignified of his affliction: closest courtiers, a fetid, gangrenous his great- his immediate family. His last surviving son, the grandson and heir, the Duke of Anjou, his wife, Dauphin, had died in 1711. Barely a year later, Madame de Maintenon, and the Cardinal de the Duke of Burgundy, the eldest of the Dauphin’s Rohan, who performed the last rights. They had three sons and then heir to the throne, followed his father. And Burgundy’s elder son, Louis, Duke words of farewell. To his highest attendants, of Brittany, joined them a few weeks later.6 Three heall gatheredexpressed at his the gratitude king’s behest for their for aservices few final heirs had passed in the three years before Louis’ and entreated them to serve the Dauphin with own departure. The Duke of Anjou, the future the same loyalty they had shown him. He also apologized for not being able to reward them great-grandfather’s death, and the seven years better.2 To his morganatic wife, who had hardly precedingLouis XV, was his justaccession five years would old mark at the a timeregency of his fraught with political subterfuge in the Parlement devotion; she would join him just four years later. and endless squabbles among the heir’s titular Andleft his lastly side to in his weeks, young he heir, affirmed he imparted his love perhaps and guardians.7 the most famous missive of his reign: “I am spent his sixty years on the throne yoking himself leaving you, but the state remains forever.”3 For a king like Louis XIV, who had a threat to his lineage was in no uncertain terms to the immortality of God and the French State, Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 38

a threat to the permanence of his very being. Indeed, it is at this moment of great uncertainty It jeopardized the absolute monarch’s very over the monarch’s futurity that a stream of ontology: for a man that exists both temporally artists took up the challenge to not only be the and divinely, any fractures or contravention to his authority imperiled the rhetoric of everlasting power he had so deftly crafted in life. Amongfirst to fashionthose to Louis’ take up post-mortem the call was image, the rather but to use their art to keep his eternal flame ablaze. Compounding this concern over Louis’ pedigree was a prevailing sense that with his passing, severalcurious capacitiesfigure of Évrard in his lifeTiton at court.du Tillet. The Like son of themany director of his fellowof the Royalblue bloods, Armaments Titon Manufacturefulfilled After all, how would it be possible to outdo the under Louis XIV, Titon began his career as an accomplishmentsFrance had entered achieved into a period under of the degeneration. reign of army captain before studying law and entering “Louis, the most perfect model of all kings / politics as an Avocat du Parlement.12 Titon On whose creation the Heavens expended all later ingratiated himself with the Duchess of 8 Charles Perrault, academician Burgundy, mother of the future Louis XV, and her and author of the celebrated panegyric, “Le high esteem of the young courtier allowed Titon theirSiècle treasures”? de Louis le Grand,” was just one of many contact with the wizening Louis XIV.13 Adding to his cachet at court was his highly regarded He realized that as Louis’ reign was the apogee erudition, particularly in regards to the arts. His Frenchmen who acknowledged this predicament. eldest brother held the title of Procureur du Roi as much as in politics — all that followed would et de la Ville de Paris, which placed him in charge inevitablyof France’s be greatness retrograde. — in Perrault’s the arts andpoem, sciences then, of overseeing the most important monuments to Louis XIV dedicated in Paris.14 Titon, like his of impending decline. Cultural historian Joan brother, had a particular interest in sculpture, a is as much a glorification of the king as an omen penchant no doubt inherited from their father 9 at the who had proudly presented an equestrian DeJeanturn of thehas eighteenthidentified this century, admission characterized as a crucial by statuette to Louis XIV in 1701.15 In the years elementa deep-seated of a “fin-de-siècle uncertainty mentality”over the possibility before Louis’ death, Titon travelled extensively of progress beyond Louis’ life. She notes that — to Rome certainly and perhaps to Switzerland, those witnessing the end of Louis’ reign were England, Holland, and Germany, as well.16 He “tainted by their position at the end of the line;”10 studied the great masterpieces, both ancient and for them, “progress was literally always already modern, and dedicated ample time to the study of over.” 11 Yet while DeJean is correct in diagnosing antique poetry. 17 a prevalent cultural angst, her study nonetheless omits a paralleling optimism, the hope that the preeminence of Louis’ rule could be preserved sophisticated knowledge of both sculpture and verse,Owing, Titon then, found to his himselfaffinity infor a the particularly king and stronghis was not necessarily an indication of his absence position at Louis’ death to undertake a project toutbeyond court his. “The death. state,” For some, after all,the “remains king’s passing forever,” many other artists were leaping feverishly to and the notion that Louis subsisted in the bodies complete. Titon’s contribution to this effort he created and governed in life stimulated a was the Parnasse François (Figs. 1 –2), a wildly widespread eagerness to demonstrate the king’s intricate bronze sculpture topped with an continued presence, the perseverance of his immortal self. surrounded by the great writers, poets, and enthroned figure of Louis in Apollonian guise, Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 39

Fig. 1 Augustin Pajou (1730-1809) and Louis Garnier (1639-1728). Parnasse François. Conceived after 1708 by Évrard Titon du Tillet (1677-1762). 1708-1721. Medallions by Simon Curé and completed with additional medallions and statuettes by Augustin Pajou. Bronze, 260 x 235 x 230 cm. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 40

Fig. 2 Augustin Pajou (1730-1809) and Louis Garnier (1639-1728). Parnasse François. Conceived after 1708 by Évrard Titon du Tillet (1677-1762). 1708-1721. Medallions by Simon Curé and completed with additional medallions and statuettes by Augustin Pajou. Bronze, 260 x 235 x 230 cm. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

connection between king and artistic triumph, his reign. Beyond simply glorifying Louis’ artistic allows Louis to live forever in the continued eminence,musicians whothis distinguishedtypify the prolific cadre artistic is critical output to of the work’s immortalizing ambitions. With their successes beholden to the magnanimity of their continuesachievements to reign of France’s much as artistic he had masters. in life. One finds that atop Titon’s Parnassian mount, Louis arts in general — become extensions of the king’s The original bronze model of the Parnasse gloriousmonarch, being, these and artists the — Parnasse and indeed, the French François, which stands at an imposing seven

in affirming the Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 41

leans against an urn that spills forth a stream of water. However, she is not the Castalian spring

counterpart, the nymph of the River Seine, whose waterstypical ofmake Parnassian Paris the iconography, true home of but the a arts.French In a similarly nationalistic spirit, the nine Muses have been replaced by the great poets and musicians of Louis’ kingship: Corneille, Racine, Molière,

and Lully, the latter holding a portrait medallion La Fontaine, Boileau, Chapelle, Segrais,19 (Fig. 3) Racan, Each

measuresof the famed between librettist eleven Quinault. and eighteen inches high.of the20 fifteen principal figures on the model

All around them float little winged flame- medallionsheaded genius and figures scrolls inlisting various the positions names of ofpoets andmovement musicians and not flight. quite Some so accomplished of these carry asportrait to

holdingmerit personification. up an inscription Titon and placed the other two ofpointing these little figures between Racine and Racan, with one

to it. It reads: “To the glory of France and the most Fig. 3 Augustin Pajou (1730-1809) and Louis Garnier Parnassusillustrious inFrench 1721. poets L. Garnier and musicians, executed it.”Titon21 (1639-1728). Parnasse François. Conceived after 1708 by du Tillet envisioned and elevated this French Évrard Titon du Tillet (1677-1762). 1708-1721. ostentatious work, then, is that it was not sculpted and a half feet high at its fullest extent, has byForemost the same among man thewho peculiarities conceived it. of The this Parnasse been held in the royal collection at Versailles François since Titon’s death. It represents a steep, craggy as 1708, and twelve years passed before Titon mountain springing with laurel, palms, myrtle, was actually first conceived as early and oak entwined with languid vines of ivy. form. Accompanying the sculpture was a series The peak is surmounted by a rearing Pegasus, offinally descriptive succeeded discourses, in giving simply the work titled sculptural Le beneath which sits the god crowned with Description. In this ekphrastic text, Titon lays out a laurel wreath and plucking at his lyre. In the in lucid detail the entire program for his piece, accompanying description, Titon informs us including a prolix explanation of its iconography, that the god represents none other than Louis XIV and that the Three Graces partway down and a 270-page liste alphabétique of the ninety the mountainside, dancing to the lyre’s tune, awriters complete and account musicians of eachto feature figure in and either attribute, personify three celebrated female poets of the monarch’s reign: Madame de la Suze, Madame mount; this ambitious task was naturally never Deshoulières, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry.18 realized.medallions Titon or full-figures would later along expand the the Parnassian Description into a comprehensive illustrated volume with

Below Apollo, to his left, a nude female figure Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 42

several engraved decorations to underscore its Beginning with a passage from the preface to prevailing themes: immortality, fame, and the the Description, Titon comments on the relation glory of the arts. Louis Garnier, the sculptor and between his own Parnassus and that of the bronze-smith responsible for the work’s actual Greeks. He writes, “in the end, they looked on construction, completed Titon’s piece sometime Parnassus as a site destined to immortalize between 1718 and 1721,22 those celebrated in the sciences and arts, above all the poets and the musicians, who after their artist since the work was added yet it tois difficultcontinuously to deaths should be placed there and crowned by byattribute many handsthis work up until to either Titon’s a specific death in date 1762. or 23 the hand of Apollo to form with this brilliant Still, the critical reception of the sculpture makes god and his nine sagely sisters the most perfect evident that Titon himself — and no less than poems and concerts.”25 he — was considered the true author of the was a site that, owing to the grace of its divine exquisite Parnasse. guardian, conferred immortality For Titon, on Parnassus those artists whose work merits such timelessness. Like the That Titon conceived of the work as a monument Graces and Muses they personify, these artists are to the departed king is stated expressly. In worthy to inspire greatness in artists across time; the preface to the Description, Titon makes no these are the men and women, like the Greeks mention of the project’s beginnings prior to the themselves, deserving of everlasting emulation. king’s death. Instead, he asserts with considerable aplomb that his Parnasse is not only intended as a memorial to his beloved king, but is in fact the to be awarded entry into Parnassus. On the one first such monument since the monarch’s death. hand,For Titon, the living,certain would-be steps were artist necessary must drink in order of He writes, “…I understand that a person who Castalia’s waters (or in this case, the Seine’s) to works only for the glory of departed Great Men be endowed with what early eighteenth-century cannot be to the liking of all the living, and he writers called “enthousiasme poétique,” 26 a sort must hope that posterity will not look down upon of fuel of emulation. The poet would then, like him for having sought to contribute something Pegasus, take off with his newfound wings to to the glory of his nation and of Louis the Great, heights of poetic genius. The second step was to be taken only after the poet’s death. Then, Titon have endeavored to consecrate a monument to explains, he will be miraculously transported back hisand memory.” to see that24 Thoughhe is the entirely first after untrue, his death Titon’s to to the mountain where he had received his initial remark nevertheless provides a telling glimpse inspiration. Apollo will crown him and invite him into how the artist envisaged the project. He to participate with the Muses in concerts of verse and song. never meant to die, or more accurately, to a king deadoffers only it as in the body first but monument immortal to in a essence. king who While was In this one detects a certain familiar ring. The the presence of the Muses, the nine children of image of a divine authority bestowing greatness the god of memory, certainly foregrounds the and ascendancy on an artist, transforming him mnemonic thematics of the piece, one cannot or her into a model to be followed, applies as help but wonder what stakes Titon has in being much to Apollo’s Parnassus as it does to Louis’ the first to memorialize a being that lives forever. Equally enigmatic is what the Greek Parnassus of artistic practices in the académies,27 Louis lends such an effort. France.developed Indeed, a system with of the criteria king’s for institutionalization the adjudication of praise and merit in artistic achievement. The Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 43

bureaucratic network attending the establishment God, functions much as he did in life: he is both of the academies placed Louis at the head of the the leader of a company of distinguished courtiers country’s entire artistic infrastructure. It was by and the divine overseer of a bucolic domain sans his favor (and by proxy, the favor of his appointed pareil. Embodied within Titon’s work, then, are secrétaires) that an artist reached the heights of both the temporal and divine lives of the king, his eminence, to a category worthy of imitation. The dual being preserved in Parnassian metaphorics.

Contrary to the typical court of noblemen, theallegorization Sun God, and of Louisthose in artists the figure who triumphedof Apollo, underthen, is his quite reign fitting. are present The Sun not King in celebrationhas become solely of academic artists. In turning attention of themselves, but of the god-king that elevated tohowever, the academic Titon’s history train of of figures Louis’ is reign, comprised Titon them to fame. impels a consideration of the Parnasse in relation the king’s pyramidal structure, Titon’s work presents Louis theto the Moderns. event that This came dispute to define — or as some have From the iconographic arrangement to its calledartistic it, legacy: all-out the “culture Quarrel war” of 30the — Ancients began in and He has created an ideal image of the king’s January, 1687 when Charles Perrault delivered his courtlyas the locus life within of France’s a timeless artistic Parnassian achievements. milieu. pleonastic poem Le Siècle de Louis le Grand before the Académie française, lauding the artistic and positioned at lower registers in reverence to theirHis personified divine host, Muses but orbit and neatlyGraces around are not him,only confreres over those of antiquity. Battle lines were literalizing the Sun God-King as the center of immediatelyscientific accomplishments drawn, as those of Moderns his modern arguing French their universe. Their organization thus evokes that the “classics” had at last been surpassed the structure of the Versailles court, which as began to square off with the latters’ trenchant Norman Bryson has shown, operated entirely in defenders, the Ancients. Yet this standoff was relation to the physical kingly body, the veritable much more than some petty esoteric quibble. “center of the nation’s strength.”28 Bryson notes, At stake was nothing less than the historical for example, that within Louis’ court “the marks of absolute favor are not titles or responsibilities but admission to the bedchamber, to witness and anstatus unabashed of Louis’ celebration France. As ofDan present Edelstein greatness, writes, assist at the most creatural acts.”29 Proximity to “What the Moderns brought to the Quarrel was the king, in other words, was commensurate with all monarchs, the Sun King Louis XIV.”31 However, courtly power and prestige, and the arrangement in returningnone-too-sly to theattempts issues toand flatter personalities the greatest of of the previous generation, Titon was deliberately distance to denote both distinction and deference onof Titon’s the part figures of his negotiatesentourage. thisYet whilesymbolic redolent of order to create a revivalistic monument in glory the court at Versailles, the Parnasse also appears going beyond the Quarrel’s partisan interestsless in like a world apart. The primeval bluff on which practices. Indeed, the Parnasse straddles the divideof the Frenchbetween arts Ancient as a set and of Modernunited, quarrel- categories on at least three distinct levels. In the most andthe constellation cascading falls, of figuresthe Parnassian stands seems mount to is exist general sense, Titon chose a modern monarch nothingentirely outshort of oftime. a paradise, With its a flowering mythological tendrils playground for Apollo’s chosen few. Accordingly, of Greece. Yet among these moderns number noand small modern tally poets of outspoken to represent Anciens the .divine Perrault’s figures

the figure of Louis, metamorphosed into the Sun Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 44

great rival Boileau, for example, is depicted quite their own. Indeed, the neoteric notion of genius prominently beneath the three Graces. In fact, (“génie”) is everywhere to be seen in the Parnasse. Boileau, famously referred to as the “législateur du Parnasse,” 32 was an early adviser on the project, Modern companions, genius was for them the and his sundry artistic writings are referenced necessaryIntroduced accompaniment into the Quarrel to by progress Perrault in and the his arts. consistently throughout Titon’s Description.33 It is In his poem Le Génie (1686), Perrault sought to replace Boileau’s emphasis on poetical rules with Boileau lauded in his satires, letters, and poems both personal, internal faculties and originality.40 alsounsurprising, featured onthen, the to Parnasse find so .many Corneille, of the Racine, artists To this end, he advocated such concepts as “enthousiasme poétique,” which — as mentioned all worthy of their Parnassian seat even without Boileau’sMolière, La designation Fontaine, Racan,— all feature Segrais prominently — certainly along Titon’s sculpture. in the latter’s writings, and Titon’s invocation of — is thematized in the magical flowing streams Boileau throughout his Dedication situates his This second aspect of the Parnasse’s modernity Parnasse — at least to some degree — under the relates directly to its third. Celebrating not the banner of the Ancients. Golden Age of some ancient past, Titon’s project instead orients itself towards the celebration of Yet there are nearly as many Modernes to be found a modern Age d’Or. Of course, it was Perrault, on the sculpture, as well. Boileau, for example, beyond all others, who looked upon the Sun never had anything but invective for Lully and King as an unexampled ruler, superior even to the accomplishments of Emperor Augustus (a Modern both in that Boileau disapproved of him concession Boileau was absolutely not willing to andQuinault. in that Indeed, Perrault the defended lyric poet him. Quinault34 Perrault, was a make).41 Perrault penned numerous discourses in support of his conviction, and his volume Les and diverse lyricism against the severity and Hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant repetitivenessin fact, went so of far Boileau’s as to pit own. Quinault’s35 As for original Titon’s ce siècle (1696–1700) is undoubtedly the most other Muse, Chapelle, Boileau had withdrawn relevant to the Parnasse. Not only is Perrault’s his support for him after 1668.36 Likewise, text referenced in Titon’s Description,42 but its Madame Deshoulières, pictured as one of the programmatic ordering of the great academicians of Louis’ reign into biographical studies and and Racine in the “cabale performanceGraces, figured of amongPhèdre the in 1677. adversaries37 Boileau of Boileauleveled a veritable campaign against” following another the of Titon’sfirst toportrait Titon’s engravings own program. presages the sort of deific Graces, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, an attack that pantheon of French intellectualism fundamental climaxed with a satirical dialogue that ridiculed In his writings, though, Titon does not quite go her two most popular novels, Cyrus and Clélie.38 as far as Perrault and the Moderns in touting Madame de la Suze, too, famously sympathized the superiority of their century. To be sure, with the Moderns’ case along with her fellow Titon and his work have no real stake in such Graces.39 settled with the signing of a resolution by Perrault However, Titon did much more than simply andpartisanship Boileau in since 1701, the bringing Quarrel the had debates largely tobeen a invent modern analogues for various aspects of temporary conclusion. Despite this reconciliatory the classical mount. He also celebrated a new concept of creativity that the Moderns claimed all gesture, the Quarrel would continue in a less bellicose fashion through the first decades of the Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 45

eighteenth century; however, the debate would sculptural form and continue practicing his kingly shift its attention to the merits of Homeric poetry, rites via the piece’s unusual programmatics. with little mind paid to the earlier issues of Louis’ artistic preeminence. Titon’s work ultimately Titon accomplishes this seemingly impossible contributes to neither of these exchanges; it task by focusing his work on a single gesture: the elevation of the artist to fame. However, this divine privilege — as much Louis’ as Apollo’s — aboutcomes Homer. far too Rather,late to leave it is precisely its mark theon the harmony first withiteration which of theTiton Quarrel incorporates and has Ancient nothing and to say but reenacted continuously. As suggested by its Modern topoi that constitutes the sculpture’s size,is not the simply sculpture represented was actually in the designed sculpted tofigure, host novelty both within and apart from the dispute. medallions over time, a transgressive temporal arsenal, the Parnasse is a retrospective and powera conceivably suited toendless its timeless accretion milieu. of figures In fact, and by For rather than being a weapon in a rhetorical 1732, the Parnasse was expected to hold an on both sides of the exchange into an integrated additional sixteen medallions and three bronze wholereconciliatory under the project, auspices bringing of Louis. figures As such, and ideasit statuettes — with the many others listed in Titon’s writings to be added later on.44 Some in a quite different enterprise: the Louis XIV Revival.occupies a significant and decidedly early position Marguerite Navarre, predate Louis’ reign by a century,of these figures,and several such others as Clément would Marot not die and until Yet, “revival” rings with a certain discordant decades after Titon’s own death. Stretching note. Historians of the period have certainly both backwards and forwards in time, then, the acknowledged the existence of a “Sun King revivalism” that emerged sometime in the mid- sculpture binds both SunFrance’s God-King artistic continues heritage to of Voltaire and the artistic ideologies of the Comte exerciseand its destiny his exclusive to the figurepowers of of Louis. crowning With theseeach d’Angiviller.eighteenth century,43 However, and a typified revival assumesby the literature a pause, artistsappended into figure, Parnassus. the He remains, in this effect, an intersession, or rupture between the event in question and its subsequent resurrection. artistic past, the leader of its present, and the guarantorvery much of alive; its future, he is the much inheritor as he wasof France’s in his first to revive the memory of Louis — and this earthly life. hardlyFor Titon, a few though, years adamantafter his deaththat his — piece there be is the really no interruption to speak of between the Nevertheless, in shifting his dominion — king’s passing and his appearance atop Mount his patrie Parnassus. Louis, in a sense, becomes contiguous continued performance of kingly power becomes with his own revival, a strange phenomenon that — from France to Parnassus, the not only renders the term “revival” rather inapt, but also helps explain the exigency of Titon’s thecontingent consistent on France’sproduction continued of great successes artists in in project. Appearing more or less at the moment the arts specifically. In other words, without of Louis’ death, the Parnasse functions less as to perform his singular privilege of inducting a revivalist monument per se than a bronze themFrance, into its the Apollonian Parnassian king realm. cannot To continue this effect, his power — along with his immortality and the logic of Titon’s sculpture, the king does not kinghood — becomes commensurate with reallyreceptacle die at for all. the Instead, king’s heimmortal was to survivesoul. Following in

France’s artistic power. As long as great artists Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 46

In its two-pronged program — to at once convey will continue to effectuate his rites as king. He unity and endurance, while allotting for future continue to be affixed to Titon’s sculpture, Louis changes — the work’s material serves a pivotal artists, and the sculpture, the veritable stage lives on in the continued greatness of France’s structural and symbolic functions for Titon. On seat for Louis’ enduring sovereignty. It is here in function. Indeed, bronze satisfies a variety of Parnassus,for this agglomeration where the mortal of figures, artists becomes meet their the with the court of Louis XIV. As historian Jonathan divine patron, that the privileges of Louis’ reign Marsdenthe one hand, has noted, no material the origins is more of most,identifiable if not are rehearsed ad infinitum. As it grows and lives, so Louis lives on, as well. can be situated in a wider desire to emulate the all, early collections of bronzes45 Accordingly, outside of France the In this regard, presenting a reconciliation of the turn of the eighteenth century marked a pan- magnificenceEuropean vogue of Louis’for bronze own. inspired in part by the spectacular collection Louis amassed and anQuarrel antagonistic becomes and of utmostideologically importance. fraught There set of is displayed so conspicuously at court. Yet Louis’ discoursesno benefit for — Titonhowever in presenting historically the accurate Quarrel that as predilection for bronze was no mere matter may be. Instead, Titon incorporates the opposing of personal taste, but constitutive of the king’s Ancient and Modern camps into a harmony, one symbolic character. Its weight and polished representative of the entire political spectrum luster connote at once endurance, stability, and of artistic exchanges facilitated by the academic wealth, and compared with the other sculptural institutions Louis established. Titon’s work, media, namely marble or ever-fashionable terra then, can be understood as a sort of sculpted cotta, it is remarkably robust. However for Titon, it was bronze’s malleability that he found so Ancients alongside their equally dogged Modern counterpartsexegesis on the skirts Quarrel: the knotty its pairing issues of ofdogged the itself,advantageous bronze offered to his program. a protean For character a sculpture that that of voices that comprised it. The piece suggests stone,is intended clay, orto evengrow painting and continually simply could reconfigure not. Quarrel while still acknowledging the plurality With bronze, cracks can be welded smooth, owethat whateverthe very capacity allegiance to hostthese such figures a debate held to of craggy rock can always be added to the mount. noneduring other the Quarrel, than their they king nonetheless — not to mention collectively Resilientfigures can yet be mutable, easily rearranged, bronze was and the more only tors their careers, their successes, and their fame material worthy to both house Louis’ undying after death. In reigning over such a harmonious spirit and serve as the bedrock of his new domain. society of otherwise adversarial artists, Titon’s Louis becomes the great reconciler, the god-king Nevertheless, the Parnasse’s material contains another story, one that complicates the image facilitated its resolution. The statue itself becomes of the sculpture painted thus far. In truth, thethat best not onlyevidence allowed to that the compromise:Quarrel to play not out but Titon’s bronze sculpture was not begun as an simply in its assemblage of Ancient and Modern autonomous artwork, but as a model for a much academicians, but in its elevation of Modern larger project: a colossal public monument subjects through an ancient Greek valence, the likely intended for either Paris or Versailles. work both shows and tells the consummation of Titon commissioned numerous paintings of his intended statue, including one in situ atop a dedicatory pedestal from Nicolas de Poilly the Quarrel. Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 47

patron, rather than a public reenactment of Louis’ Description. Poilly’s painting marks the earliest sovereign prerogatives. Before it was eventually conceptionfour years before of what he the had Parnasse even written was to the be: first an gifted to Louis XV a few years before Titon’s imposing life-size Parnassus on earth. Titon even death, the work had remained in its master’s had the painting engraved for the frontispiece home, cogitated upon in private by Titon’s of his 1732 edition of the Le Parnasse François. learned guests. frustrated his efforts to realize the monument as As much as the program of the Parnasse strives originallyHis inability conceived. to find a Throughoutwilling patron, the though, 1720s and to preserve the existence of the departed king, 1730s, Titon commissioned a handful of different the frustrated endeavor to complete the work as paintings and engravings to help market the originally envisioned begs a reconsideration of work to possible benefactors, from public works Titon’s scheme entirely. Rather than examining committees to individual aristocratic patrons.46 the work as a performance of absolutist power, In one such engraving, the Parnasse is pictured as the centerpiece of a sunken garden, its Atwhat least might two onestriking find indiscoveries positioning come the toproject light. as a harbinger of Enlightenment politics instead? acclaimpersonification Titon received of the River for the Seine images transformed and model contest the courtly spirit of Titon’s scene, its ofinto his actual proposed flowing project, water. he Yet never despite came the close wide assemblageFirstly, while of there grands is little hommes visual into evidence a constellation to of praiseworthy idols nevertheless looks ahead to XV himself. As the likelihood of a monumental a similar project undertaken just a few years later Parnassusto finding the diminished, adequate Titon funds, increasingly even from Louis turned to consecrate a secular, nationalist pantheon of his attention to the bronze model. He continued had come to see that he had, after all, realized a aFrench lay temple, cultural there heroes. existed Well a “pantheonbefore the ofconversion partadding of hisfigures goal: up the until model his haddeath, in atfact which become time the he paper”of Soufflot’s48 composed church of whatSainte-Geneviève would become into the monument.47 founders of a new national legend: Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire. Moreover, the beginnings of This other story encased in the work, then, this mythos can interestingly be traced to the very panegyric discourses of the Académie disposition. That a work such as the Parnasse, so française, of which Titon’s numerous writings quintessentiallybespeaks a significant baroque shift and in soFrance’s quintessentially artistic are a consummate example.49 But even more louisquatorzien fundamentally, it was the artistic, political, and years after the monarch’s death is rather telling. historical dialectics limned over the course of the It seems that the, failed grandiosity to find ofsupport the baroque, in the expressed perhaps most famously in the the Enlightenment narrative.”50 Titon’s weaving resplendence of Versailles, but above all else Quarreltogether that, of these in Edelstein’s dialectical words, strands, “precipitated visualized inhered in the glorious image of Louis XIV quite literally in the peaceful commingling of himself, had passed along with its greatest Ancients and Moderns atop his Parnassus, thus patron. Thus the plan of 1708–1721 for a betrays the very sort of synthetical thinking that “allowed Enlightenment actors to imagine and its patronage had transformed over the a future that drew heavily on an ancient past.”51 yearsmagnificent into a salonmonument conversation to baroque piece, monarchy an Therefore, though Titon’s Apollonian Louis sits Enlightenment meditation on the ideal ruler- quite comfortably at the head of his retinue, it is Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 48

piece marks not only the passing of Louis himself, transformed into a pantheon in which the king but the end of his political system along with him. hasironic no that real these place. same These figures men and will women be gradually on The work’s program and its history thus tell two whom the immortality of Louis hinges will actually come to displace him, and this move an object that sustains the monarch through a Parnasse into a grim portent, conceivablyvery different endless stories. execution On the one of hishand, absolutist one finds proleptically signaling the demise of the very powers, and on the other, a bold indication of the entitytransfigures it seeks the to commemorate. Is Titon’s end to the baroque extravagance and absolutist celebratory scene, then, in fact charged with the puissance emblematic of the same monarch’s reign. Yet might one of these interpretations

Apartunsettling from tenors the destabilizing of a forthcoming currents regicide? of the Recalling DeJean’s diagnosis of the profound Enlightenment, there is also a way in which anxietybe deserving kindled of moreat the credence end of Louis’ than reign, the other? it Titon’s program reveals the impossibility of Louis’ becomes tempting to couch Titon’s project absolutist agenda. If one follows the accretive within this idiom of progressive impossibility or, potential of the Parnasse to its logical conclusion, rather, as a part of a larger, insurmountable fear that the glory of Sun King marked the apex of over time inevitably produces a structure in whichthe continued physical addition distance of from figures the andApollonian medallions be degeneration. Yet, this anxiety was clearly Louis comes to mirror a historical chronology. notFrench so crippling progress; that all thatit prevented followed those would loyal simply to Louis from challenging the inevitability of this communally in reverence of the king becomes post-mortem decline. Unaware of the events insteadAn imagined one in world which in those which closest all figures to the exist kingly that would transpire just thirty years after his body share in greater glory than those further apart. The timelessness of the Parnassian setting beloved monarch to live beyond the barriers of his thus breaks down into a symbolic representation temporaldeath, Titon being, was and confident the Parnasse in the ,ability as extravagant for his of the passage of historical time, an outcome as it is complex, is fundamentally a monument to inimical to the portrayal of Louis as the absolute this earnest belief in the king’s eternalism. A hope in the absolutist dream, then, continued parallel the rhetoric of absolutism, these three temporal to DeJean’s prevailing fear, even as Titon’s work categoriescenter of France’s are understood past, present, to concatenate and future. in In the ultimately evidences the hopelessness of such a body of king;52 however, the realities of sculptural dream. in the same relation to the king as those added In this sense, the two stories of the Parnasse may beforespace prevent them. In its another appended ironic figures twist, from then, existing the ambitiousness of Titon’s project ultimately sheds work speaks to a real optimism in the perpetuity light on the constraints of Louis’ own absolutist not be as irreconcilable as first imagined. The ambitions. atof theLouis’ nexus France of two following historical his momentsdeath, while — thealso Therefore, as a result of both the anti-monarchical endforetelling of Louis’ the reign collapse and theof that beginning France. of Positioned the future it augurs and the absurdity of its expansive Enlightenment — Titon’s piece succeeds in program, the immortalizing ambitions of Titon’s voicing the many contradictory expectations Parnasse seem to collapse on themselves. In this and frustrations of its moment. Curiously, the regard — and only adding to its incongruity — the countervailing stories of Titon’s project in Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 49

fact accurately relay the two political currents immortality acquired a special meaning beyond a co- circulating at the time of its conception: one of the absolutist French court, the notion of kingly existence in the divine and temporal realms. As a king retrospective, the other progressive. In spite politically and rhetorically constructed as the apogee of of himself, then, Titon created a work that in its attempt to keep Louis alive, demonstrated became coterminous with the country’s future greatness. precisely why — whether in 1715 or later — French achievement, Louis XIV and his immortal being the king inevitably will and indeed must die. political authority hinged on the continuation of Louis, Accordingly, the endurance of French artistic and himself, hence the various attempts to demonstrate the *** perseverance of his kingly prerogatives following his death. I see Titon du Tillet’s Le Parnasse François as one

Thadeus Dowad is a second-year PhD student king, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: such attempt. For more information on the two-bodied in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley. A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, N.J.: His research focuses on comparative studies Princeton University Press, 1997); for more information of modern empire from the seventeenth to on the cultural anxiety following Louis’ death, see Joan twentieth centuries, with a particular interest DeJean, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the (Chicago: University of Chicago in photography, archaeological science, and Making of a Fin-de-Siècle Press, 1997). Franco-Ottoman relations. He received his BA in the History of Art from the University of 6. Dunlop, Louis XIV, 463. Pennsylvania and an MA from the Graduate 7. Program in the History of Art at Williams College. during the regency of Louis XV, see Charles Pinot Duclos, For a first-hand account of court and Parlement politics Mémoires secrets sur le règne de Louis XV: La régence et le règne de Louis XV Endnotes 8. “De Louis, des grands (Paris: rois Firmitle plus Didotparfait frères, modèle 1881). / Le ciel 1. All translations are my own unless stated otherwise. en le formant épuisa ses trésors” Charles Perrault, “Le “Les vertus éminentes, les hauts faits de ce Monarque et Siècle de Louis le Grand,” Parallèle des anciens et des le nombre considerable d’Hommes Illustres dans tous les modernes en ce qui regards les arts et les sciences (Paris: états et dans tous les caracteres de genie different qui ont 1688–97), 170. paru sous son Regne, feront l’admiration de tous les siècles 9. Joan DeJean, “Did the Seventeenth Century Invent Our à venir.” Évrard Titon du Tillet, Le Parnasse François, Dedié au Roi (Paris, 1732), épître p. 2. We May at Last Be Leaving Behind” in Critical Inquiry 22, Fin de Siècle? Or, the Creation of the Enlightenment That 2. Geoffrey Treasure, Louis XIV (London: Pearson no. 4 (Summer, 1996), 803. Education, 2001), 332. 10. Ibid., 805. 3. (New York: Saint Louis XIV 11. Ibid., 804. Martin’s Press, 1999), 466. Quoted in Ian Dunlop, 12. Judith Colton, The Parnasse François: Titon du Tillet and 4. “Le roi est mort ce matin, à huit heures un quart et demi, the Origins of the Monument to Genius (New Haven: Yale et il a rendu l’âme sans aucun effort, comme une chandelle University Press, 1979), 13. qui s’éteint.” Philippe de Courcillon, Journal de Marquis de Dangeau: 1713–1715, eds. Eudoxe Soulié and Louis 13. Ibid., 14.

14. Ibid., 15–16. 5. TheDussieux notion (Paris: of the Firmit “immortal Didot king” frères, or 1856),the “two-bodied 136. 15. Ibid., 16. discourses — in England, especially — and is therefore king” first emerged within medieval political theological 16. Titon mentions an Italian voyage on several occasions in certainly not unique to Louis XIV. However, in the context Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 50

the last edition of his Description du Parnasse François qu’elle est la première qui ait hasardé de consacrer après (Paris, 1760). Colton notes that two letters of Titon la mort de ce Monarque quelque Monument à sa mémoire.” contain information regarding other travels he made Titon, Le Parnasse François, 71. during this period. In one dated July 24, 1749, Titon claims to have travelled to Switzerland, Holland, England, 25. “…enfin ils regarderent le Parnasse comme un lieu destiné and parts of Germany. In another letter to Voltaire, dated à immortaliser les Personnes Celebres dans les Sciences July 1753, Titon states that he spent three years traveling et les beaux Arts, sur-tout les Poëtes et les Musiciens, qui Europe, though there is no mention of when or where he devoient après leur mort y être placés, et couronnés de la journeyed. Cf. Colton, The Parnasse François, 14, note 3. main d’Apollon pour former avec ce Dieu brillant, et ses neuf sçavantes Soeurs les Poëmes et les Concerts les plus 17. Colton, The Parnasse François, 14. parfaits.” Titon, Description du Parnasse François (1727), x–xi. 18. Titon, Le Parnasse François, 30. 26. Titon, Description du Parnasse François (1727), xi. 19. Ibid. 27. Louis XIV and his functionaries oversaw the founding 20. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier and Guilhem Scherf, Cast in of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture (1648), Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution the Académie de musique (1669), and the Académie (Paris: Musée du Editions, 2009), 354. d’architecture (1671), among others. The only académie to predate Louis’ rule is the Académie française, 21. “A la Gloire de la France et des plus illustres Poëtes et established by his father, Louis XIII, and his chief Musiciens François, Titon du Tillet a inventé et fait élever minister, Cardinal Richelieu, in 1635. ce Parnasse François en 1721. L. Garnier l’a executé.” In the of 1727, Titon speaks of this very Description 28. Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the inscription, but it is worded somewhat differently: “ A la Ancien Régime (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Gloire de la France et de Louis le Grand, et à la mémoire Press, 1983), 40. immortelle des illustres poëtes et musiciens François, Titon du Tillet a inventé et fait élever ce Parnasse François 29. Ibid. dédié à Louis XV. Roi de France et de Navarre. MDCCXVIII.” 30. Titon, Le Parnasse François, 47–48. The Ancients Strike Back,” in The Enlightenment: A See for example, Dan Edelstein, “Quarrel in the Academy: 22. Colton notes that while the inscription of the scroll states Genealogy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, that the work was completed in 1721, Titon speaks of 2010), 37–43. 1718 as the date of the Parnasse’s completion. Gaston Brière has tried to account for this discrepancy by 31. Ibid., 39–40. suggesting that the statuettes may have been ready by 32. This was a commonly used designation for Boileau 1718, while the rest of the work took three more years in the years Titon was working on the Parnasse. Cf. Louis Gabriel Michaud, Biographie universelle ancienne Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français (1928), to complete (Gaston Brière, “Le Parnasse Français” in et moderne (Paris: 1811–1828), s.v. Nicolas Boileau- 77–84). Cf. Colton, The Parnasse François, 22, note 26. Despréaux.

23. Two other bronzesmiths are known to have contributed 33. Titon’s fullest statement of his dependence on Boileau can be found in the 1760 Description (p. 41). He also casts to the final sculpture: Simon Curé (1680–1734) and notes that he sought Boileau’s advice in the 1743 of the construction of the Parnasse, see Colton, The Augustin Pajou (1730–1809). For a detailed summary supplement to Le Parnasse François (pp. 821–22) and , 107–116. Parnasse François in part 2 of the 1760 Description on the relationship of Titon and Boileau, see Colton, The 24. “…j’ai bien compris qu’une personne qui ne travaille que . For more information , 95–97 & 96, note 99. pour la gloire des Grands Hommes qui ne vivent plus, ne Parnasse François [sic.] peut pas être du gout de tous les vivans , et qu’elle 34. Charles Perrault, Les Hommes illustres qui ont paru [sic.] doit espérer que la postérité ne lui sçaura mauvais en France pendant ce siècle (Paris: 1696–1700), 1: gré d’avoir cherché à contribuer en quelque chose à la gloire de sa Nation et a celle de Louis le Grand, et de voir 81–82. Titon refers to Perrault’s discussion of Quinault Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 51

(Description, p. 286), and he repeatedly points to

le Grand,” first read aloud to the Académie française on as well (ibid., pp. 287–88). Cf. Colton, The Parnasse published an expanded defense of the monarch’s reign conciliatory statements about Quinault made by Boileau, January 27, 1687. From October 1688 to 1697, Perrault François, 97, note 105. and of the modern age more generally in his Parallèle des anciens et modernes 35. Perrault, Les Hommes illustres qui ont paru en France Ancients , 286–287. . For more information on the pendant ce siècle against Moderns, chaps. 1 and 4. historical arguments of the Quarrel, see DeJean, 36. Although Chapelle and Boileau had once been close 42. Titon, Description (1727), 111. friends, their friendship soured after 1668, perhaps incited by disagreements over Racine’s Les Plaideurs, 43. Representative texts of this period include Voltaire, which premiered in November. Boileau, thus, would have Siècle de Louis XIV (Paris, 1751) and D’Angiviller’s had little reason to insist on the inclusion of someone notes on the grands hommes in Procès-verbaux de for whom he had no real sympathy for nearly 40 years. l’Académie royale de peinture et sculpture, ed. Anatole Titon nonetheless includes Chapelle on his own list of de Montaiglon (Paris, 1888). Many aspects of the friends (Description, p. 141). On Titon’s relationship with revival in the Louis XIV period have been studied; Chapelle, see Jean Demeure, “L’Introuvable Société des however, I have been unable to locate a single study Revue d’histoire littéraire of the phenomenon in its entirety. Relevant literature de la France, 36 (1929), 170–180. Histoire littéraire ‘Quatre Amis’ (1644–1665) in du règne de Louis XIV (Paris, 1751) and Nicolas The “ ” broke out between rival includes Claude-François Lambert, 37. cabale de Phèdre Bricaire de la Dixmerie, Les Deux Ages du goût et du supporters of Racine’s Phèdre and those of the génie français sous Louis XIV et Louis XV (The Hague, contemporaneous Phèdre by the playwright Jacques Pradon. This rivalry was rather vitriolic, with champions and material culture include Calin Demetrescu, Le on both sides often appearing at one another’s 1769). More recent examples in the fields of visual Style Louis XIV (Paris: Amateur, 2002) and Nicolas performances to sabotage them with incessant booing Milovanovic and Alexandre Maral, Louis XIV: l’homme and hissing. Madame Deshoulières supported Pradon in et le roi (Versailles: Chateau de Versailles, 2009). this debacle, thus garnering the ire of Racine’s most vocal cabale, see 44. the introduction of , Phèdre, trans. Julie Rose Simon Curé and intended to incorporate in the sculpture backer, Boileau. For more information on the Among the figures Titon had cast by the bronzesmith (London: Nick Hern Books, 2001), i–xvi. include the poets Clément Marot (1496–1544),

38. Though Titon omits any mention of Boileau in his (1582–1646), Antoine Houdar de La Motte (1672–1731), Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), François Maynard accounts of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Boileau’s Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671–1741), Prosper Jolyot de antipathy for the novelist is well documented. Cf. Armand Gasté, Madeleine de Scudéry et le ‘Dialogue des 1709), Voltaire (1694–1778), Philippe Néricault (1680– Crébillon (1672–1778), Jean François Regnard (1655– Héros de Roman’ (Rouen, 1902) and Claude Aragonnès, 1749), Melchior, Cardinal de Polignac (1661–1742), Madeleine de Scudéry, rein du Tendre (Paris, 1934).

39. François Collin de Blamont (1690–1754), and Bernard musicians: Marin Marais (1656–1728), Élisabeth Jacquet Moderns, see Antoine Adam, Histoire de la littérature Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757); as well as four On Madame de la Suze and her affiliation with the de la Guerre (1665–1729), André Campra (1660–1744), française du XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1948–56), 3: 170–172. and André Cardinal, alias Destouches (1672–1749). 40. Titon also intended six special medallions to be added progressive genius vis-à-vis Boileau, see J.B. Bury, The for poets who composed verse in Latin: Gaucher de For more information on Perrault’s understanding of Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth Sainte-Marthe (1536–1623), René Rapin (1621–1687), (London, 1924), chaps. 4 & 5. Jean de Santeul (1630–1697), Jean Commire (1625– 1702), Charles de la Rue (1643–1725), and Jacques 41. Boileau and many of those in the Ancien camp considered Vanière (1664–1729). Cf. Bresc-Bautier and Scherf, Augustus a ruler of unsurpassable distinction, his only Cast in Bronze Description du Parnasse François of Louis’ superiority came in the poem, “Le Siècle Louis , 354. For the full table and description liste alphabétique, see equal being Louis XIV, himself. Perrault’s first statement of figures, see Titon, (1760), 21–44. For the original Parnasse e(s)t Patrie: Louis XIV in Undying Bronze 52

Titon, Description du Parnasse François (1727), 92–366.

45. Bronze Sculpture” in Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture Jonathan Marsden, “The International Taste for French from Renaissance to Revolution, eds. Geneviève Bresc- Bautier and Guilhem Scherf (Paris: Musée du Louvre Editions, 2009), 19.

46. frustrated search for a patron, see Colton, The Parnasse For a detailed description of Titon’s protracted and François, 20–51.

47. See the épître of Titon, Description du Parnasse François (1760).

48. The phrase “Panthéon de papier” is used by Jean Claude Bonnet in reference to mid-century efforts to establish

La Naissance du Panthéon: Essai sur le culte des grands a laicized cult of French genius. Cf. Jean Claude Bonnet, hommes

49. Ibid. (Paris: Fayard, 1998).

50. Edelstein, The Enlightenment, 45.

51. Ibid.

52. Louis’ kingship, see Bryson, Word and Image, 39–41. For more information on the temporal dimensions of Want to submit to the next issue?

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