A visual Journey into the Bible - Theartofpainting.be

The Deuteronomy Page: 24 / 334Bourdon remained however a Parisian painter, closely linked to the artistic sphere ofParis. In 1648 the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was founded.Bourdon was one of the twelve founding members, together with other famous Frenchpainters such as Charles Le Brun, Eustache Le Sueur, Laurent de La Hyre, JacquesStella and Philippe de Champaigne. He even became the Rector of the Academy ofPainting and Sculpture in 1655. Louis XIV took over the reign of France fromCardinal Mazarin in 1661. Bourdon died in Paris in 1671. The ‘Sacrifice of Jephtah’dates from around 1645, from right after his first major works that establishedBourdon’s fame in Paris. His first work in Paris to gain him renown was for thegoldsmiths of Notre Dame in 1643. This commission showed some of the tendency toreconciliation of French society late in the reign of Louis XIII, as a Protestant paintercould gain such acceptance from the Roman Catholic court of France, even thoughthere were occasional remaining strives between Protestant and Catholics. CardinalRichelieu had won France for Catholicism, it was time to tolerate what remained ofProtestantism. It proves also the great admiration and appreciation of his art by theParisian nobility and its well-to do merchant families.Sébastien Bourdon had married in 1642. He was famous, well settled. He paintedmany great paintings in this period. He was a Baroque painter, but he belonged to theFrench Classicist tradition of Simon Vouet (1590-1649) and Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). Bourdon had met Poussin in Rome and seen his paintings. Laurent de La Hyre(1606-1656), Jacques Stella (1596-1657), Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) wereall painters in the Classicist style of the Baroque period and their style perfectlymatched the stern, exacting, precise spirits of the times of the Cardinals Richelieu andMazarin, who governed France. The state needed to be put to order and the Cardinalswanted logic and rigour and this naturally showed in architecture and the arts. Frenchacademism brought the rigour also in the art of painting and although SébastienBourdon’s ‘Jephtah’s Sacrifice’ dates from a few years before the founding of theAcademy of Paris, Bourdon’s painting is an example – we would say a classicexample – of French academicism. So when you start looking at a Bourdon picture,start looking at the composition first.In the scene of ‘Jephtah’s Sacrifice’ an old temple priest leads forward Jephtah’sdaughter to the altar where she will be offered to Yahweh. Sébastien Bourdon usedthe left diagonal to depict an ascending line of drama. Below left, a friend of Jephtah’sdaughter kneels before the offering and weeps. Jephtah’s daughter looks at her fromhigher up and still further along the diagonal we find the priest. Bourdon also used theright diagonal of the frame. On the lower right we find another kneeling woman, amaidservant holding a silver platter with the water that cleans the offering. Thedirection of images grows then over the head of Jephtah’s daughter to the upper leftcorner. The priest’s head lies on the left diagonal; the head of Jephtah’s daughter lieson the right diagonal. The two kneeling women, the priest and Jephtah’s daughterform a very solid triangle or pyramid, the base of which is the entire lower border ofthe frame. This fundamental structure – the two diagonals and the triangle beneaththem – is the very robust composition of the scene. If that structure had been the onlyconstruction however, the composition would have suffocated the artistic and visualvalue of the painting. It would have been too strong a view, too strict, too austere.Copyright: René Dewil Date: October 2001