The Clément-Ader and Great Men Museum is offering, Saturday January 18, a conference hosted by Geneviève Bessis, honorary librarian of the city of Toulouse. It will evoke, with anecdotes and illustrations, the destiny and work of Raymond Lafage (1656 – 1684). The public will be able to discover, thanks to the research of Geneviève Bessis, the journey of this genius designer, with rebellious accents. Born in 1656 in Lisle-sur-Tarn, Raymond Lafage developed, from a very young age, an extraordinary passion and talent for drawing which took him from the workshop of Jean-Pierre Rivalz in Toulouse to the Royal Academy of Paris then to Rome where he won first prize from the prestigious Académie Saint-Luc. His works, marked by the baroque aesthetic, are inspired by mythology and in particular bacchanalia, biblical subjects and historical scenes. He is also a caricaturist with formidable lines. Very early sought after by collectors such as the financier and art lover Pierre Crozat, it was widely distributed by the best engravers. On November 5, 1684, he died accidentally in Lyon from a fall from a donkey at the age of 28 after a free and eventful life.
