Crazy people everywhere! It was faced with the proliferation of these figures in Northern European art, from the 14th to the 16th century, that two curators from the Louvre, Élisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, had the idea of their dedicate an exhibition. What did this sudden epidemic of troublemakers decked out in colorful clothing, donkey ears, cockscombs and bells mean?
Embodying all the disorders of the world (more than mental illness), they seem to have been the symptom of a moral and religious crisis, which attenuated after the Reformation, even if they resurfaced after the Revolution, as recounted in the Louvre, 327 works, including numerous foreign loans.
From “crazy for God” to crazy for love
Originally, the fool is the one who ignores God, this sinner with torn clothes, biting a fruit, depicted in the Psalter of Jean de France, Duke of Berry. The Mad Virgin also gives in to the tempter, as evidenced by two casts of statues from Strasbourg Cathedral. Conversely, Saint Francis of Assisi, in his radical simplicity, offers a model of “mad about God” copy.
From the end of the Middle Ages, the courtly novel warned against the excesses of passion. With humor, a goldsmith depicted old Aristotle ridden by the beautiful Phyllis. On an ivory box, it is the knight Tristan who appears as a madman, with a bell on his hood. And this costumed figure resurfaces in a garden of love, alongside a saucy couple, on a 16th century tapestry. The licentious fools then adorn napkin holders, confectionery molds and cups.
Even more fascinating is this armet (a small closed helmet) “with a crazy face” and ridiculous glasses that Emperor Maximilian Iis offered to Henry VIII of England. To make fun? No way. This mask, intended for festive tournaments, was a gift to seal an alliance. The entertaining vogue for fools had extended to the royal courts, even appearing in their tarot cards and chess games. The Louvre also presents portraits of famous court jesters, such as Triboulet, actor, writer and jester of René d’Anjou, or Kunz von der Rosen, the elegant advisor to Maximilian I.
Wild carnivals
In the rotunda of the Napoléon hall (recently covered to enlarge the exhibition space), the madmen run wild through sculptures of Moorish dancers or bagpipe players, fools in Latin referring to breath. Figures as if they came straight from carnivals or fool’s festivals in churches, which made it possible, briefly, to overturn the social order.
Around 1500, The Ship of Fools by Sébastien Brant, dazzling bestseller, then In Praise of Madness of Erasmus, hold up to society the mirror of these disturbances, without sparing the powerful or the clergy. Painters are not left out. If the famous Carnival and Lent Fight of Pieter Brueghel the Elder was unable to leave Vienna, The Ship of Fools by Hieronymus Bosch (at the Louvre) castigates religious people embarked with debauchees.
Hyeronimus Bosch, The Ship of Fools. / RMN – Grand Palais (Louvre Museum), Franck Raux
After the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants still tried to caricature their adversary as crazy. See this incredible goldsmith’s bench of the Prince-Elector of Saxony, whose inlaid decoration shows two nuns harnessed to a wheelbarrow carrying a man wearing a papal tiara!
Caring for the insane
Should the Louvre have stuck to this explosion of crazy figures? The rest of the history of madmen in art is only sketched in broad strokes. They disappear during the time of the Enlightenment, in Southern Europe in the guise of this punchline from the commedia dell’arte captured by Tiepolo or this Don Quixote, painted by Charles Coypel. Then they returned with the Revolution, when some people, like Goya, were worried about the confinement of the mentally ill. Here is the doctor Pinel removing the irons from the insane people of Bicêtrepainted by Tony Robert-Fleury, or this Monomane portrayed by Géricault, perhaps in connection with Doctor Esquirol.
Other artists take pleasure in showing the madness of sovereigns, like Charles VI (sculpted by Barye), or Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, painted by Füssli. Romanticism under the pen of Victor Hugo will revive the figure of the jester which will be taken up by Verdi in Rigolettowhile Courbet delivers a hallucinatory Self-portrait in a striped suit. As if it was now up to the artist to embody this subversive figure.
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And also at the Louvre: Watteau’s “Gilles” deciphered
This is one of the most mysterious paintings in the Louvrewho inspired many artists, including Picasso. THE Gilles even saw its attribution contested for its large format, unusual for Watteau, and the absence of any commentary on it in the 18th century.
Just restored, it offers a “exceptional quality of execution” well worthy of Watteaunotes Guillaume Faroult, curator at the Louvre. In a thrilling exhibition, it dates this Pierrotarms dangling, from 1719, just after the ban on the fair theater of which he was the standard bearer. At his feet, the smile of the valet Crispin from the Comédie-Française (and possible self-portrait of the painter) betrays the latter’s victory over his rivals.
As for the destination of the work? A serious hypothesis leads to a “little house” of pleasures, linked to the banker Louis Yon, where are mentioned in 1736 “3 paintings including a large Pierrot, all by Watteau”.
(1) Until February 3. The remarkable catalog brings together around fifteen authors around the Figures of the fool. From the Middle Ages to the Romantics (Louvre/Gallimard, 451 p., €45).