Passion Renaissance. Artists’ legends in the 19th century

Raphael often fell in love, the shady Michelangelo dared to sulk to the Pope, and Leonardo breathed his last under the nose of the King of France (ill. 1 and 2)... The paintings on display at the Musée de Draguignan tell the anecdotes of history, and more specifically, the incredible lives of 16th-century artists as seen through the eyes of 19th-century artists, no doubt hoping to be splashed with the glory of their illustrious predecessors.

1. Francesco Gandolfi (1824-1873)
Raphaël and the Fornarina, 1854
Oil on canvas - 113 x 112 cm
Milan, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera
Photo: Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera Milano

See the image in its page

These works dedicated to the lives of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance belong to a broader pictorial production that developed in the first half of the 19th century: the troubadour vein, the "anecdotal genre" and then the "historical genre", to which the Lyon and Brou museums devoted a fascinating exhibition in 2014 entitled " The Invention of the Past" (see l’article). Vivant Denon himself was drawn to these representations of "persons whose historical lives make one wish to get close to them, so to speak, and to know their private lives [1]". These small formats, which belong neither to history nor to genre painting, are driven by a concern for veracity rather than truth. The artists stage episodes that are often invented, embellished or exaggerated, while taking care to reproduce period costumes and settings. Narrating the adventures of these sacred monsters should make them more real, yet these paintings feed the legend, building a mythology through deliberately narrative images that arouse the viewer’s emotion. This chapter belongs to the history of art history: as visitors move through the rooms, they realize that the perception of great artists and their works is not the same from one era to the next, and that the infatuation with the Renaissance in the first half of the 19th…