Epic arts in Renaissance France 9780199687848, 0199687846

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E P I C A R T S I N R E N A I S S A N C E FR A N C E

Epic Arts in Renaissance France PHILLIP JOHN USHER

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Phillip John Usher 2014 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2014 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2013940965 ISBN 978–0–19–968784–8 Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

This book is dedicated to my best reader, my wisest critic, my intellectual soulmate.

Acknowledgements The pages that follow have benefited greatly from the advice, feedback, and encouragement offered by colleagues, friends, and family. My first debt was contracted—it is hard to believe—all the way back in 2006, when I gave a paper entitled ‘The Great Frustration: Epic and National Identity in Renaissance France’ at a conference held at the CUNY Graduate Centre. I thank that audience, which included Catherine Briand, Desmond Hosford, Francesca Sautman, Laurier Turgeon, and many others, for responding with questions and comments that showed the topic worthy of further exploration. In the following years, my research into Epic Arts found audiences at various venues, and I should like to thank my various hosts and interlocutors, especially Bernd Renner (for chairing a panel about Renaissance epic at which I spoke at the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) in 2007), Tom Conley (for welcoming me back to Harvard University to talk about Agrippa d’Aubigné in 2007), Patrick Bray and Maggie Flinn (with whom I coorganized a panel at the Modern Language Association in 2007, on which further work was presented), Liz Hill (for welcoming me to Columbia University’s Renaissance Seminar to talk about D’Aubigné in 2009), Eve-Alice Roustang-Stoller (with whom I co-organized a conference at Barnard College in 2009, where work on Dolet was presented), Elizabeth Emery (for giving Dolet another audience at Montclair State University, NJ, in 2009), and Sonia B. Velazquez, Ayesha Ramachandran, and Cynthia Nazarian (for collaborating on a panel about Renaissance epic at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in 2010). I should also like to thank colleagues who invited me to their institutions to talk about this project in its different forms, especially: Taddy R. Kalas for welcoming me to Augustana College in 2008; and everyone at Boston University for their valuable feedback in 2011, especially Irit Kleiman and T. Jefferson Kline. Various people contributed directly to the project taking its final form in print. I should like to thank Curtis Harris and Jennifer Notari for their help with locating funds for images and the RSA for awarding me a generous Samuel H. Kress Foundation Grant to defray the costs of ordering high-resolution images and securing publication rights; Linda A. Bell of the Barnard College Office of the Provost for offering additional funding for image rights; Madame Christina Hugot of the Château d’Ancy-le-Franc for graciously providing several images; Sarah Ortega for her dedication and intelligence in researching images and helping secure rights for their reproduction; Alan Stewart, without whom I would probably never have submitted the typescript to Oxford; Susan P. Johnson, whose intimate knowledge of Latin saved me on more than one occasion. Everyone at Oxford University Press made the review and publication process a true delight. Thank you especially, Jacqueline Baker, Rachel Platt, Elizabeth Chadwick, Shereen Karmali for being ideal editors throughout the whole process, and to Susan Frampton for giving the text its final proofread. Thank you to Hilary Walford for the most careful and dedicated copy-editing for

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which an author could wish. The feedback of the book’s two anonymous readers was intelligent, insightful, and constructive, helping me bring significant improvements to several sections of this book—thank you. It is a delight, after all this time, to be able to thank John O’Brien for sparking my interest in sixteenth-century literature almost twenty years ago and for continued encouragement; and Tom Conley for demonstrating how to think about literature from new, cartographic and visual, perspectives and for his unending support and friendship. It is an equal delight to thank students of Barnard College, Columbia University, and Boston University, and of Miami University’s summer programme at the Université de Bourgogne, with whom various ideas from this project were discussed. I am continually grateful to my past and present colleagues at Barnard College and Columbia University for providing the kind of intellectual environment that makes research and teaching a joy every day, especially Tomara Aldrich, Sam Bloom, Anne Boyman, Christopher Baswell, Antoine Compagnon, Peter Connor, Vincent Debaene, Madeleine Dobie, Kathy Eden, Rachel Eisendrath, Helene Foley, Pierre Force, Serge Gavronsky, Kaiama Glover, Peter Platt, Anne Lake Prescott, Isabelle Jouanneau-Fertig, Elisabeth Ladenson, Sylvie Lefèvre, Brian O’Keeffe, Laurie Postlewate, Emmanuelle Saada, Karen Santos da Silva, Joanna Stalnaker, Alan Stewart, Phil Watts, Caroline Weber, Loren Wolfe, and Nancy Worman. Finally, I must thank those without whom this volume would not exist and who give my work its meaning. To my parents, Susan and Dennis Usher, I express my deepest thanks for their love and encouragement in all I have ever undertaken— such unstinting belief and faith have made everything possible. I first dealt with certain aspects of Chapter 2 in ‘Narrating National Defeat: Recuperative Epic in Renaissance France’, Romance Studies, 28/3 (2010), 169–81. Parts of Chapter 4 received treatment in ‘Prophetic Architecture: Agrippa d’Aubigné in Paris’, in Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth (eds), Renaissance Futures (London: Routledge, 2009), 159–80.

Contents List of Illustrations A Note on Editions and Translations

Introduction 1. Homer, Virgil, and Lucan: Classical Epic and Renaissance Art The Rebirth of Epic Art Homer at Fontainebleau The Fireplace of Hell: Virgil at Oiron Lucan and the Civil Wars in Burgundy

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1 23 23 31 49 60

2. Dolet’s Fata: Celebrating François Ier in the Wake of the Battle of Pavia Monuments for the Second Ascension Galleries of Kingly Resemblances Foreign Perspectives Epic Victory at Marignano Epic Erasure of Defeat

75 79 84 99 108 111

3. Ronsard’s Franciade: From National Genealogy to Tragic Love Story The Birth of the Franciade Calliope at the Louvre Francus in Paris Beautiful Objects Francus’ Pictorial Afterlife

120 121 128 132 138 145

4. D’Aubigné’s Tragiques: A Wasteland of Graffiti Tensions: Incultus or trop beau? A Coat of Paint for the Palais de Justice The Devil’s Designs on the Louvre The Vatican versus the Canvas of Heaven Epic Perspectives and the Art of Delegation

160 165 171 181 190 199

Closing Remarks: From Epic Cassoni to Epic Coffrets Bibliography Index

202 217 245

List of Illustrations 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24

Benevenuto Cellini, Saliera (1543) Master of the Aeneid. Aeneas Departs from Carthage (1530s) Anonymous, The Reign of Jupiter (1555–60) Bernard Palissy, Allegory of Water (c.1575) Jean Mielot, Discord at the Wedding Feast of Peleus and Thetis (1461) Apollonio di Giovanni, The Adventures of Odysseus Apollonio di Giovanni, Dido and Aeneas Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus on Circe’s Island (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus Meets Hercules in the Underworld (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and Companions Blind Polyphemus (1635) Detail of Figure 1.6 Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and Companions Flee from Polyphemus (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus is Recognized by his Dog (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and the Servant (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and his Supporters Fight the Suitors (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus Recounts his Adventures to Penelope (1635) Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus Falls Asleep next to Penelope (1635) The Château d’Oiron The Galerie du Grand Ecuyer at the Château d’Oiron Noël Jallier, Prologue (c.1540) Noël Jallier, Combat Scene (c.1540) Virgil, Aeneid (1529), page from book 4 Noël Jallier, Virgil’s Hell (c.1540) Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Château Ancy-le-Franc (1576–9) Château Ancy-le-Franc in 2010 View of the Pharsalia Gallery at Château Ancy-le-Franc Rugiero de’ Rugieri, after Primaticcio, Ulysses and the Sirens South wall of the Pharsalia Gallery

2 6 7 14 24 25 28 34 34 38 39 40 42 43 45 47 48 50 51 52 54 57 58 62 62 63 64 65

List of Illustrations 1.25 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Peter Paul Rubens, after Leonardo da Vinci, Battle of Anghiari. Portrait of Etienne Dolet (1573) Plan of the Galerie François Ier Rosso Fiorentino, The Unity of the State Rosso Fiorentino, The Royal Elephant Rosso Fiorentino, The Vengeance of Nauplius Rosso Fiorentino, The Education of Achilles View of room at the Villa Margone, Italy After Maerten van Heemskerck, Allegoria delle vittorie di Carlo V After Maerten van Heemskerck, Battaglia di Pavia Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia; Defeat of the French Cavalry (c.1530) Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia; François Ier Vanquished (c.1530) Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia; Flight of the French after Defeat (c.1530) François Ier as Gallic Hercules at Henri II’s Royal Entrance (1547) Façade Henri II of the Louvre, Paris, in 2009 Ronsard’s Epic Muse. Detail of Façade Henri II of the Louvre, Paris, in 2009 Pharamond and Francus atop a triumphal arch (1572) Georg Braun, Lutétia, vulgari nomine Paris, urbs galliae maxima (1572) Toussaint Dubreuil, Clymène, Dissuaded from Poisoning herself, Writes to Francus Toussaint Dubreuil, The Toilette of Clymène and Hyante Toussaint Dubreuil, Hyante Greets Francus Toussaint Dubreuil, Hyante shows Francus the Valley Germain Pilon, clock on the Palais de Justice Philibert De l’Orme, capital of Ionic column (1576) Philibert De l’Orme, Ionic column (1576) Philibert De l’Orme, the ‘French’ Column (1576) Philibert De l’Orme, decorative bandeau above dedicatory letter (1576) Philibert De l’Orme, Allegory of the Good Architect (1576) Giorgio Vasari, Attempted Assassination of Admiral Coligny Giorgio Vasari, The Defenestration of Admiral Coligny Giorgio Vasari, King Charles IX Raising his Sword as a Sign of Victory Noah’s Ark in a Protestant Bible (1567) Paolo Veronese, The Battle of Lepanto (c.1572) Henri IV Mounted on his Horse in Voltaire, La Henriade (1728) Eugène Delacroix, Dante and Virgil (1822)

xi 69 76 90 92 92 93 93 102 103 104 105 106 107 123 130 130 133 136 151 152 155 156 181 184 185 187 189 190 192 193 194 205 206 211 214

A Note on Editions and Translations References to classical epics are signalled only by the name of the text, the numbers referring to book and verse (e.g. Aeneid 1:1–10). Unless otherwise stated, quotations are from the following Loeb Library editions: Homer, Odyssey, translated by A. T. Murray, revised by George E. Dimock (2 vols; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Homer, Iliad, translated by A. T. Murray, revised by William F. Wyatt (2 vols; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Virgil, Aeneid, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold (2 vols; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Lucan, Pharsalia, translated by J. D. Duff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). I have sometimes preferred to modify or replace these translations with my own. Bible quotations are from: Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. Roger Gryson (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2003), and The Bible: Authorized King James Version (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2008). Unless otherwise noted, all other translations are my own. Throughout, Latin is quoted directly from the various editions, meaning that the differentiation of u/v and i/j follows the respective editors’ choices.

Introduction Anyone who has visited the châteaux of France’s Loire Valley can tell you: not only is their architecture frequently heroic, echoing through grandiose doorways, intricate façades, and decorative reliefs the grandeur we know from the temples and triumphal arches of Antiquity, but the paintings, tapestries, and sculptures that they house frequently feature gods and heroes familiar from classical epic—from Achilles and Aphrodite to Zephyrus and Zeus.1 For modern-day travellers with a love of Homer or Virgil or Lucan or of their early modern descendants, the palaces of Renaissance France are magical places, which localize and animate, in full colour and in three dimensions, our readings of epic.2 As the sixteenth century unfolded, the heroes and themes of epic (and more generally of mythology) came to be, I state with only slight exaggeration, everywhere—in paintings and frescoes, in decorated galleries, in sculptures, on ceramics, on enamel plaques, and even on the plates and pitchers placed on royal tables. Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71), an Italian artist who spent five years working for François Ier (r. 1515–47), even made a gold, ivory, and enamel salt cellar (or saliera) for the king, which depicted the relationship between the sea and the earth, via the figures of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Demeter, goddess of agriculture (Figure 0.1).3 Whence sprang a paradox—or so it seemed— and the origins of the present book. On the one hand, mythology in general, and epic in particular, were clearly ubiquitous in Renaissance art; and modern-day visitors can still get this impression simply by walking through those palaces that survived both random fires and the French Revolution. Yet, on the other hand, many of the French epic poems actually composed during this period, most often 1 Many studies detail the rebirth of classical forms in sixteenth-century France. For the architectural context, see Frédérique Lemerle and Yves Pauwels, L’Architecture à la Renaissance (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 201–33. On the Renaissance collecting of classical forms (e.g. statues imported from Rome), see Jean Adhémar, ‘The Collection of François Ier’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 30 (1946), 4–16; C. Malcolm Brown, ‘Major and Minor Collections of Antiquities in Documents of the Later Sixteenth Century’, Art Bulletin, 46 (1984), 296–507; Margaret McGowan, The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), esp. chs 3–4. 2 The French term château, for which there is no satisfactory English equivalent, has a range of meanings—it can refer, for example, to both a medieval defensive castle and an Italianate Renaissance palazzo, two very different kinds of architectural (and social) structure. When referring to Renaissance châteaux, I will generally use either the French term or the English word palace, a choice seemingly justified by its use to name buildings such as Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. 3 Although an allegorical portrait rather than a specific scene from classical epic, the saliera nevertheless partakes of epic: Poseidon is obviously omnipresent in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid (as Neptune); as for Demeter, Homer calls food the ‘gift of Demeter’ (Iliad 13:322), both Homer and Virgil (who calls her Ceres) talk of her as a friend of peace (Iliad 1:500; Aeneid 4:58).

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Figure 0.1. Benevenuto Cellini, Saliera (1543), depicting the relationship of the earth and the sea via the figures of Poseidon and Demeter. Gold, enamel, ebony. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Inv. 881. (Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.)

adapted from or in one way or another inspired by their classical models, have been forgotten by all except a few specialists. And the few epics of the period whose titles are perhaps at least recognized by a wider audience—Ronsard’s Franciade or D’Aubigné’s Tragiques—do not enjoy the kind of reputation so firmly established for the epic-inspired art on display at Fontainebleau and elsewhere. Whereas Louis Dimier once asserted that French artistic taste was invented at Fontainebleau, a view more recently expounded by André Chastel,4 the epics fashioned in France at the same time clearly did not have the same lasting impact on French literary taste. Such then, in its most imprecise form, is the thought that gave rise to the present project. How did it come to be, I wondered, that visitors flock to the Loire Valley palaces and to the Louvre and other museums to see epic art produced in Renaissance France, yet few ever pick up and read those contemporary literary epics without which the obvious predilection for the heroic in the arts would seem either quirky or purely pedantic? And even more pressingly: should not the fascination for epic in the sister arts have direct counterparts in contemporary literary production? 4 André Chastel, ‘French Renaissance Art in a European Context’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 12/4 (1981), 102.

Introduction

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Such questions rapidly evolved as it became apparent just how many epics Renaissance France did actually produce—more than 200, in fact. Scholars Klára Csű rös and Denis Bjaï recently produced a (probably nearly exhaustive) inventory of epic works, going chronologically from Valerand de la Varanne’s De inclyta Caroli octavi Francorum Regis in agro Fornoviensi Victoria . . . Carmen (1501), an author (slightly) more famous for his heavily Virgilian epic poem about Joan of Arc, De gestis Joanne virginis (1516), up to Nicolas Geuffrin’s La Franciade, ou Histoire générale des rois de France (1623), a sequel to Ronsard’s Franciade (1572).5 Moreover, there are many traces in sixteenth-century French literature of a longing for epic, both in arts poétiques and in literary texts themselves.6 Joachim du Bellay’s Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (Defence and Glorification of the French Tongue) (1549), a veritable manifesto for the renewal of French letters—ironically inspired by a foreign model, Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo delle lingue (1542)7—announced that a French epic ‘fera hausser la Teste [à ton pauvre Langaige]’ (‘will allow your poor language to raise its head proudly’) and bestow on the vernacular such glory as to make it equal ‘aux superbes Langues Greque, et Latine’ (‘to the stately Greek and Latin tongues’).8 Jacques Peletier du Mans, another associate of the Pléiade, made similar statements in his Art poëtique (1555): ‘L’œuvre héroïque est celui [sic] qui donne le prix, et le vrai titre de Poète’ (‘A work of heroic poetry is what will decide the poet’s worth and true title’).9 Du Bellay’s other writings are also textured by this 5 Klára Csű rös and Denis Bjaï, ‘Le Long Poëme narratif à la Renaissance: Tableau chronologique’, Nouvelle revue du seizième siècle, 15/1 (1997), 185–214. See Valerand de la Varanne, De inclyta Caroli octavi Francorum Regis in agro Fornoviensi Victoria . . . Carmen (Paris: J. Moeart, 1501) [BnF Rés M–YC–930(4) and Gallica] and De gestis Joanne virginis, France egregie bellactricis, libri IV (Paris: J. de la Porte, 1516) [BnF Rés M–YC–8ß51(1)]. A biographical sketch of this author is available in James K. Farge, Biographical Register of Paris Doctors of Theology (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980), entry no. 269. On his Joan of Arc epic, see Dumitru Murarasu, La Poésie néo-latine et la renaissance des lettres antiques en France (1500–1549) (Paris: Gamber, 1928), 63–9. Nicolas Geuffrin, La Franciade, ou Histoire générale des rois de France, depuis Pharamond jusques à Louys le juste . . . mise en vers françois par le sieur Geuffrin (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1623) [BnF 8–L40–2 and Gallica]. 6 For overviews of such a longing for epic, see Françoise Charpentier, ‘Le Désir d’épopée’, Revue de littérature compare, 4 (1986), 417–26. See also the preamble—titled ‘Préambule: Le Désir d’épopée’— in Bruno Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée: La Poésie épique en France de 1572 à 1623 (Geneva: Droz, 2004), 19–29. 7 On this irony, see the dated but still useful study by Pierre Villey, Les Sources italiennes de la Défense et Illustration de la langue française de Joachim du Bellay (Paris: Champion, 1908). For more recent comment, see also Ignacio Navarrete, ‘Strategies of Appropriation in Speroni and Du Bellay’, Comparative Literature, 41/2 (Spring 1989), 141–5. 8 Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse, ed. Jean-Charles Monferran (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 139. 9 Jacques Peletier du Mans, ‘De l’œuvre héroïque’, in Francis Goyet (ed.), Traités de poétique et de rhétorique de la Renaissance (Paris: Librairie générale française, 1990), 305. On the place of epic in Renaissances arts poétiques, see Jean-Charles Monferran and Olivia Rosenthal, ‘Le Poème héroïque dans les arts poétiques français de la Renaissance: Genre à part entière ou manière d'illustrer la langue?’, Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, 100/2 (March–April 2000), 201–16. Monferran and Rosenthal note that ‘les chapitres consacrés à l’œuvre héroïque semblent . . . jouer un rôle particulier dans la disposition des arts poétiques: ils servent moins à délimiter les contours d’un genre qu’à préciser la mission du poète, et plus exactement, à définir la bonne manière d’illustrer la langue’ (‘the chapters dedicated to the epic poem seem . . . to play a particular role in the organization of arts poétiques: their purpose is less to define a genre’s contours than to delineate the poet’s mission and, more exactly, to define the right way of illustrating [i.e. making famous] the [French] language) (p. 201).

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longing for epic:10 his most famous sonnet, known to all French schoolchildren, begins ‘Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage . . . ’ (‘Happy is he who, like Ulysses, has made a fine journey . . . ’);11 he attempted to write a short epic, the ‘Monomachie de David et de Goliath’ (‘Monomachia of David and Goliath’) (1552);12 he translated books 4 and 6 of the Aeneid;13 and his Antiquitez de Rome (1558)—which Edmund Spenser translated as the Ruins of Rome—owes a great debt to the desperation of Lucan’s Pharsalia.14 Moreover, in sonnets 157–9 of the Regrets, Du Bellay connects literature with architecture by proposing to build a textual palace to house Homer, Virgil, Petrarch (who penned the epic Africa), and Ronsard—‘Chacun aura sa forme et son architecture, | Chacun ses ornements, sa grace et sa peincture’ (‘Each will have his own form and architecture, | Each his own ornaments, his own grace and painting’).15 Given this huge corpus and the palpable longing for epic in the writings of Du Bellay and his contemporaries, the terms of the original paradox—epic art versus epic literature—called for an investigation that would question the very formulation of what first felt like a paradox. What if, I wondered, the gap that seems to exist between epic châteaux and epic texts was a product of later ages? Or of some misunderstanding? The aim, scope, and method of the enquiry that follows began to come into focus when I started to look at the initial puzzle from a new perspective, one from which questions of canonicity and of the success or failure of literary epic appeared suddenly less important than the very concrete connections that, in the process of reading and reflecting, had begun to appear between specific epic texts and individual realizations in the sister arts. The more I read French Renaissance epic, the more epic art and epic literature seemed to grow from and 10 See Phillip John Usher, ‘Victor est quisquis patriam tuetur: Du Bellay and the Elusive French Epic’ (unpublished typescript, 2007), and Marc Bizer, ‘From Lyric to Epic and Back: Joachim Du Bellay’s Epic Regrets,’ Modern Language Quarterly, 71/2 (2010), 107–27. 11 Joachim du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: Cornély, 1908–34), ii. 54. Much has been written about the meaning of this sonnet. See George Hugo Tucker, ‘Ulysses and Jason: A Problem of Allusion in Sonnet 31 of Les Regrets’, French Studies, 36/4 (1982), 385–96. Thanks to Philip Ford’s edition of Jean Dorat’s Mythologicum, ou, Interprétation allégorique de l’Odyssée, 10–12 et de L’hymne à Aphrodite (Geneva: Droz, 2000), Marc Bizer has been able to offer an updated analysis of the sonnet in his ‘A Source of Du Bellay’s Most Famous Sonnet: “Heureux qui comme Ulysse” ’, Romance Notes, 42/3 (2002), 371–5. 12 The ‘Monomachie’ has been called (with some exaggeration, I would suggest) the ‘only significant attempt at writing an epic, albeit a very short one, by a member of the Pléiade before the publication of Ronsard’s Franciade’ (Thomas M. Greene, The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Continuity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 252). 13 On Du Bellay’s translations/adaptations of the Aeneid, see Geneviève Demerson, ‘Présence de Virgile chez Du Bellay’, in Ian D. McFarlane (ed.), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani: Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Binghamptom, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1986), 319–30. See also Corinne Noirot-Maguire, ‘The Politics of Translatio: Du Bellay and the Death of Palinurus’, in Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach (eds), Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2012), 189–212; and Todd W. Reeser, ‘Du Bellay’s Dido and the Translation of Nation’, in the same volume, pp. 213–35. 14 Frank McMinn Chambers, ‘Lucan and the Antiquitez de Rome’, PMLA 60/4 (December 1945), 937–48. See also the chapter on Du Bellay in Jean-Claude Ternaux, Lucain et la littérature de l’âge baroque en France, citation, imitation et création (Paris: Champion, 2000). 15 Joachim du Bellay, Œuvres poétiques, ii. 118. See also Jean Balsamo, ‘Le Poète et l’architecte’, in Yvonne Bellenger (ed.), Du Bellay et ses sonnets romains (Paris: Champion, 2009), 61–75.

Introduction

5

respond to similar concerns, opportunities, and constraints. The more, too, they seemed to respond to each other aesthetically. And the more both appeared to be the product of, and to make sense within, communities in which writers and artists shared (or hoped to share) patrons, in which readers were also cultivated consumers of art, and in which artists relied upon the translations, commentaries, and original writings of contemporary authors. In other words, it became increasingly evident that the relationship between epic art and epic literature in Renaissance France could be better grasped if approached not as a puzzle, an enigma, or a discrepancy, but rather as a constantly renegotiated exchange, defined by the complex interactions between the various members of interpretive communities. Such is the approach adopted here. My goal, then, is not to address a décalage or gap between literature and art by, for example, affirming the existence of, or creating, an epic canon, nor is it to understand why French epic supposedly failed or fell short of expectations. It is, rather, to reinscribe literary epics within those exchanges with art that presided over their composition and early reception, with the general hypothesis that such an enterprise will afford new readings somewhat liberated from the demands made by comparison with modern literary taste. For a first glimpse at the kinds of connections I will be seeking out here, it is useful to begin with a trip to the Renaissance room at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two example artefacts will help define the contact zones between epic literature and the sister arts that interest me. On one wall of the room, the visitor sees a selection of French enamel plaques, executed in the 1530s, which recount—in an episodic structure not dissimilar to that of a comic book—Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy (Figure 0.2). As I have discussed elsewhere, the enamels, largely based on the woodcuts designed by Sebastian Brant for a German edition of Virgil’s Opera (published in Strasbourg in 1502 by Johannis Grüninger), retell Aeneas’s story in a manner that closely corresponds to the ways in which readers understood Virgil’s epic at the time.16 In other words, standing in the Metropolitan Museum, one is looking not just at a visual representation of Aeneas’s story as everyone now knows it from paperback editions of Virgil’s classic, but a visual representation of Aeneas’s story as it was understood in France in the early 1530s, which, in a nutshell, means as an allegory for the life of a good Christian. When we look at the image reproduced in Figure 0.2, we should see—if we are to aspire to gaze in a way comparable to that of early modern viewers—not just Aeneas leaving Carthage and abandoning Dido, but also a Christian leaving behind his lustful ways and returning to the path of virtue. Images such as this one assume and indeed refer to an interpretive community and to specific incarnations of epic texts. Both the Aeneid, as it was available to the French in various editions and translations in the 1530s, and the enamels produced in Limoges partake in a shared hermeneutic and aesthetic enterprise.17 The plaques take on their full meaning only in the light of 16 See Phillip John Usher, ‘The Aeneid in the 1530s: Reading with the Limoges Enamels’, in Usher and Fernbach (eds), Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance, 161–87. 17 On the various editions and translations of Virgil, see Alice Hulubei, ‘Virgile en France au XVIe siècle’, Revue du XVIe siècle, 18 (1931), 1–77, and Valerie Worth-Stylianou, ‘Virgilian Space in

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Figure 0.2. Master of the Aeneid. Aeneas Departs from Carthage (1530s). Painted enamel on copper plaque, partly gilt. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Rogers Fund, 1925 (25.39.4). (# The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.)

what Virgil’s text, as it was then available, meant to contemporary readers. Likewise, viewers of the enamels—for example, of the ghastly (and specifically Christian) Mouth of Hell by which Aeneas’ catabasis in book 6 is illustrated—would take back to their reading of Virgil’s text lessons learned from the images. Productions in the sister arts as they relate to epic texts, as this series of enamel plaques underscores, are never just illustrations or echoes of an abstract and Renaissance French Translations of the Aeneid,’ in Usher and Fernbach (eds), Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance, 117–39.

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unchanging text. In fact, there is no such thing as a timeless and deterritorialized artistic ‘version’ of a work of literature—such ‘versions’ are always, so to speak, appropriators or purveyors of specific ways of reading the texts upon which they draw. And, similarly, the production of translations and adaptations of classical epic took place within communities familiar with epic not just through texts, but also via the various sister arts. Still in the Renaissance room at the Metropolitan, the visitor can see a magnificent marble representation of The Reign of Jupiter (Figure 0.3).18 Measuring approximately 30 x 48 centimetres, the sculpture shows a bearded Jupiter, the king of the pagan gods, who sits on his Olympian throne, thunderbolt in hand; to his right, Mercury is in flight, accompanied by his herald’s staff (called a caduceus). From Jupiter’s rocky ledge-like throne water flows down into the fountain below—perhaps to echo the fountain of Fontainebleau. Zodiacal signs (Gemini and Sagittarius) are on each side. Most importantly, the depicted scene

Figure 0.3. Anonymous, The Reign of Jupiter (1555–60). Marble. Metropolitan Museum, New York City. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Coudert Brothers, 1888 (88.3.85). Image provided by Academic Publishing (IAP). Reproduction of any kind is prohibited without express written permission in advance from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

18 Renaissance and Baroque Europe Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, ns 55/2 (Autumn 1997), 33.

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recalls again, among other things, Virgil’s Aeneid, in which Jupiter sends Mercury down to remind Aeneas of his mission to found Rome, causing him, as just noted, to abandon Dido and sail to Italy, a scene repeated in French adaptations of the Aeneid like Ronsard’s Franciade (1572), to which I shall return in Chapter 3. The tone of this marble relief is clearly less allegorical, more about Aeneas’ (and most likely the French king’s) mission as the leader of a nation or gens (people, race, tribe)—a change in line with the general tendency, as the century progressed, away from editions of Virgil accompanied by voluminous allegorizing commentaries. Just as the enamel plaques might have been on the wall of a French lord or the marriage chest of a young rich couple, so this marble would probably have been part of daily life at Fontainebleau and the epic’s story would here have been perceived as having less to do with Christian virtue than with kingly mission. It is not hard to imagine that a visitor to the palace might return home with a renewed idea of the contemporary relevance of the Aeneid and of the growing public expression of a call for French epic. Again, the sister arts appropriate, problematize, and make public, rather than just reproduce, the epic. They offer a specific reading of epic—and, conversely, ask something of the translators and writers of epic. Viewing the Limoges enamels or this marble depiction of the king of the Olympians re-creates, in miniature, the experience that sixteenthcentury visitors must have had when walking through Renaissance dwellings: epic was all around and its heroes were now part of shared (and evolving) understandings of epic. François Rabelais’s Quart livre (1552) testifies to the fact that the kinds of intuition I am exploring here—about the connections between epic texts, artistic objects, and interpretive ventures—were already perceptible in, and indeed central to, the culture of sixteenth-century France. In the second chapter of Rabelais’s work, Pantagruel and his companions, who have voyaged to a New World on board a great ship called the Thalamège, land on the Island of Medamothi, ‘belle à l’œil et plaisante à cause du grand nombre des Phares et haultes tours marbrines, des quelles tout le circuit estoit orné, qui n’estoit moins grand que de Canada’ (‘beautiful and pleasing to the eye because of the great number of lighthouses and high marble towers, which decorated the island’s shoreline’ which was no smaller than Canada).19 For sale near the port are ‘divers tableaulx, diverses tapisseries, divers animaulx, poissons, oizeaulx, et aultres marchandises exotiques et peregrines’ (‘various paintings, various tapestries, various animals, fishes, birds, and other exotic and foreign merchandise’).20 Frère Jan, Panurge, Epistemon, and Rhizotome all buy paintings. Pantagruel, who has Gymnaste do his shopping for him, purchases instead a tapestry: ‘la vie et gestes de Achilles en soixante et dixhuict pieces de tapisserie à haultes lisses, longues de quatre, larges de trois toises’ (‘the life and deeds of Achilles, in seventy-eight pieces of tapestry, four toises long by three toises wide 19 François Rabelais, Œuvres complètes, ed. Mireille Huchon (Paris: Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1994), 540. For a recent study of the Island of Medamothi within the context of the Quart livre, its overlap with Jacques Cartier’s Relations, and the question of spatial palimpsests, see Phillip John Usher, Errance et cohérence (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010), 59–92. 20 Rabelais, Œuvres complètes, 540.

Introduction

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[approximately 8 x 3 metres]).21 Made of Phrygian silk and embossed with gold and silver, the long tapestry tells the story of Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War and the greatest warrior of Homer’s Iliad. As Rabelais describes it, Pantagruel would have seen in his newly acquired work of art the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the birth and youth of Achilles, the latter’s exploits as a warrior, his death, and finally the appearance of his ghost, as well as the sacrifice of Polyxena (whom Achilles was to marry had he not died). It is as if Pantagruel finds on this distant island an object originally manufactured for Fontainebleau. Perhaps even manufactured at Fontainebleau, for in 1540 François Ier had set up a weaving workshop within the palace grounds for the production of tapestries based on the Galerie François Ier (which I discuss in Chapter 2) and which indeed depicted, among many other things, the Education of Achilles.22 This particular literary trace of a fascination for epic art is all the more eloquent in that it problematizes the connection by foregrounding the literary origins of the tapestry: Rabelais tells us the textual sources of the tapestry (Statius Papinius, Homer, Ovid, Quintus Calaber, and Euripides). The episode on the Island of Medamothi testifies not just to a fascination for epic-themed decoration, but also to an awareness for the inherent connection between literature and what I have been and will be calling throughout this work, using a long-existing term most thoroughly explored by Jean H. Hagstrum, the ‘sister arts’.23 The episode on the Island of Medamothi is not a chance occurrence. It points to a constellation that connects epic literature with both history and the sister arts. About forty years before Rabelais published the definitive edition of the Quart livre, another French author, Jean Lemaire de Belges, published a rather remarkable book called the Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troyes (Illustrations of Gaul and Singularities of Troy) (1511), which, via a kind of specious etymology popular at the time, made Paris, son of Priam, the founder of Paris, the city.24 Lemaire’s work sought to articulate and legitimize a correlation between early modern France and classical antiquity via the fiction of a Trojan genealogy. At an early point in the text, Lemaire puts words into the mouth of Mercury to convey that his enterprise, which charts its course between truth and fiction and between history and mythology, is also inherently, as with Pantagruel’s tapestry of Achilles, about connecting words to productions in various domains of the fine arts. Lemaire has Mercury complain about earlier generations of French writers who ‘ont tousiours erré iusques icy’ (‘always, until now, made errors’), how they did not satisfy ‘la dignité de lhistoire [sic]’ (‘the dignity of the history’) they were trying to tell, the history in question being, of course, that of both France and the French. The heart of his criticism was, however, that: Rabelais, Œuvres complètes, 541. Jean Jacquart, Francois Ier (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 319. For a reproduction of Rosso’s Education of Achilles in the Galerie François Ier, see Henri Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance en France (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), 80. 23 Jean J. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 24 See George Huppert, ‘The Trojan Franks and their Critics’, Studies in the Renaissance. 12 (1965), 227–41; and Judy Kem, Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye: The Trojan Legend in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994). 21 22

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Toutes peintures et tapisseries modernes de quelque riche et coustengeuse estoffe quelles puissent estre, si elles sont faites après le patron desdites corrompues histoires, perdent beaucoup de leur estime et reputation entre gens sauans et entenduz (all modern paintings and tapestries, however rich and expensive their fabric, if they take as models the aforementioned corrupted stories, lose a lot of their value and reputation amongst learned and cultivated people).25

In other words, Lemaire argues for the interdependency of painting, tapestry, history, and literature. Given his subject matter, epic narratives obviously occupy a privileged position in such an alignment.26 It is just such interdependency that lies at the heart of what follows. The present study, then, situated at the intersection of several disciplines, grew from the puzzlement, intuitions, and perspectives discussed so far. Each of its four chapters explores a specific set of interconnections between epic literature and the sister arts in early modern France. As already noted, there were many epics published in sixteenth-century France, and only a tiny handful can be considered in the present study—this book makes no claim to be anything like exhaustive. For the sake of clarity, I will first map what is included before attempting to make clear how I arrived at this particular selection of texts. After seeking out the origins of epic art in the painted panels of marriage chests (cassoni) in fifteenth-century Italy, Chapter 1 discusses the subsequent trend, in Italy then in France, of epic galleries. I then study in detail three such sixteenthcentury galleries located in different regions of France, each of which appropriates an important classical epic. A first section looks at the Homeric Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau just outside Paris; a second section focuses on a gallery largely indebted to Virgil’s Aeneid at the Château d’Oiron in western France; and a third section deals with a gallery at the Château d’Ancy-le-Franc in Burgundy that takes up Lucan’s Pharsalia. As well as offering a first map of epic art and interpretive communities around Renaissance France, this chapter sets the scene, and indeed performs much interpretive groundwork, for what follows by analysing the dialogues between the three tenors of Ancient epic and the artists and patrons who found enough contemporary resonances in their narratives to want to live (quite literally) within them. The remaining three chapters, ordered chronologically, turn to epics written by French authors in Renaissance France. Chapter 2 takes up a neo-Latin epic and its French adaptation, Etienne Dolet’s Fata (1539) and Les Gestes (1540). It shows an author eager to document his competition with the sister arts within the context of a France and a French king dealing with the consequences of military defeat at the Battle of Pavia (1525). I argue that Dolet creates an epic—or rather two epics—that position themselves in Jean Lemaire de Belges, Œuvres, ed. Auguste Jean Stecher (Louvain: J. Lefever, 1882–4), i. 4. In making such a connection, Lemaire is echoing Alberti, who in 1435 recommended that painters, in order to succeed in their art, acquaint themselves with poetry, a concern sounded a century later by Ludovico Dolce in his Aretino (1557). See Margaret McGowan, Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 63. 25 26

Introduction

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relation to both the politics (François Ier’s second ascension) and aesthetics of Fontainebleau (painterly allegory echoed in epic simile). I further suggest that Dolet’s epics take on their full sense only when reinscribed within the context of artistic representations of the Battle of Pavia realized within the Imperial circle of Charles V. Dolet keeps his promise, in a sense, and shows his epic to be capable of something that French art could not do. Chapter 3 traces the production and reception of Ronsard’s Franciade (1572), beginning with the initial announcement of the project in 1549, in the wake of Henri II’s arrival on the throne. The chapter subsequently traces Ronsard’s connections to the new Louvre, whose façades, designed by Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon, perhaps alluded to Ronsard’s epic, and discusses finally the Franciade’s presence at the royal entry of Charles IX and the epic’s afterlife at one of Henri IV’s palaces. In such readings, both Dolet and Ronsard are seen to be in competition with France’s artists and at the same time desirous to mimic certain royal aesthetic choices. Both arguably align themselves not just with the political power of the French monarchy, but with the artistic forms frequently associated with that power—Dolet’s epic project might be described as being bellifontain (that is, in the style of Fontainebleau); Ronsard’s project, much more complex in its interactions with art, could be termed (as we shall see) at once classical and mannerist, architectural and painterly. Chapter 4 turns to a very different situation and deals with the horror of France’s Wars of Religion (1562–98), by reading the textualization of Parisian architecture and of other artworks in Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques. In this final chapter, a new form of connection between epic and the sister arts emerges in which the text appropriates artistic structures and surfaces in order to destroy them—something like the way graffiti covers and disfigures existing structures. Unlike the classical or Renaissance epics studied in the first three chapters, here epic seeks not to imitate art or the artist, but to dislodge them and to rewrite the history of art in order to affirm a specific (Calvinist and apocalyptic) vision of the future. The book’s conclusion extends the tableau by enquiring into possible directions for further research and by turning attention to other periods of French literary history. This study’s trajectory requires a few explanations to elucidate why it was chosen, what has been left out, what it takes for granted, and how it builds on existing scholarship. To begin, then: why this trajectory? The most obvious limits are chronological. I have selected a corpus that traces a historical arc from François Ier’s triumphalism and the renewal of French art and literature that followed the disaster at the Battle of Pavia (here, epic art and literature complement each other even as they compete), up to a Protestant perspective on France’s bloody civil wars (at which time epic asserts its power to destroy art). The present study thus begins in the late 1530s because a number of roughly contemporaneous developments in art and literature point towards a growing rapprochement between epic art and literature. In the wake of the Battle of Pavia and as part of François Ier’s second ascension, French art (architecture, painting, and so on) underwent a sudden renewal, in particular via the importation of Italian and more generally Ancient models and archetypes, an evolution that in turn gave rise to a sudden flourishing in France of epic-related art, such as the various galleries discussed in Chapter 1—the Homeric Galerie d’Ulysse, for example, was begun c.1541. At around the same time, the publication of Dolet’s

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Epic Arts in Renaissance France

verse Fata (1539), followed by his own French prose translation Les Gestes (1540), signalled, as detailed in Chapter 2, a distinct evolution towards what would soon be a central goal of the Pléiade: the illustration of the French language and of French monarchy via the production of a classically inspired literary epic. Dolet’s epic is also, as far as I am aware, the first French epic to signal, self-consciously and explicitly, its own competition with other art forms. My end point is marked by the publication, in 1616, of D’Aubigné’s Tragiques—but this text was mostly written at the end of the sixteenth century, so the date of 1616 can be taken in many ways cum grano salis. My end point is really slightly earlier, with the Wars of Religion, which closed with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. I end with the Tragiques because they constitute a key point in epic’s relationship to the arts, in which the text asserts its power over art, in order to reconfigure existing artworks. Were I to study more fully the early seventeenth century, the writings of César de Nostredame, the son of the more famous Michel, might suggest themselves for analysis,27 as might Nicolas Bergier’s Poeme Heroique sur une antique piece de tapisserie, en laquelle est representé le voyage du Roy Charles VII. en sa ville de Reims (1613)28 and Jean Fermeluy’s Poeme spirituel contenant l’histoire de la vie, mort et miracles de sainct Roch (1619),29 two epic texts based on tapestries and thus, as one commentator phrased it, direct ‘rivals’ of the sister arts.30 Had I included discussion of Nostredame, Bergier, Fermeluy, the arc traced here, from royal triumphalism to the destruction of official art, would probably curve back upon itself, as these texts seemingly seek models and authority in art rather than attempt to destroy art. Such a statement reminds us that the present investigation is just one volume of a vaster and as yet unwritten history of epic and art in France—I shall return to the long history in my conclusion. Even within such fixed chronological limits, difficult choices had to be made. As this is the first book-length study focused entirely on the connection between epic art and literature in Renaissance France, I deemed it important to include extended discussion of the most obvious candidates—that is, those epics that, despite everything, are the least forgotten. Still, other obvious candidates were not retained and such choices deserve some explanation. One key criterion that deserves 27 César de Nostredame, Le Songe de Scipion, poème héroïque et très excellent, de César de Nostredame, gentilhomme provençal, dédié à . . . Charles duc de Savoye (Toulouse: Impr. des Colomiez, 1606) [BnF Rés YE–2077 and Gallica] and, by the same author, Pièces héroïques et diverses poésies, de César de Nostredame, gentilhomme provençal (Toulouse: par la vefve de J. Colomiez, 1608) [BnF Rés YE–2072 and Gallica]. The latter (Pièces héroïques . . . ) includes the Rimes spirituelles discussed by Cave in relation to paintings of the nativity. See Terence Cave, ‘César de Nostredame: Poet & Painter?’, in his Devotional Poetry in France c.1570–1613 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 266–85, and, by the same author, ‘Peinture et émotion dans la poésie religieuse de César de Nostredame’, Gazette des Beaux Arts (January 1970), 57–62. 28 Only published in 1628 in Recueil de plusieurs inscriptions proposées à mettre sous les statues du roy Charles VII et de la pucelle d’Orléans qui sont élevées sur le pont d’Orléans des l’an 1458 et de diverses poesies faites à la louange de la pucelle, de ses freres et leur postérité qui se trouvent à la fin (Paris, 1628) [Arsenal 8–H–7896], an (augmented) re-edition of Charles Du Lys’s Recueil de plusieurs inscriptions (Paris: E. Martin, 1613) [BnF 4–LN27–527(A) and MFILM 4–LN27-527(A)]. 29 Jean Fermeluys, Poëme spirituel contenant l'histoire de la vie, mort et miracles de saint Roch, avec plusieurs odes et prières chrestiennes et devotes (Paris: publ. by the author, 1619) [BnF YE–7577 and Arsenal 8–BL–15408, 8–BL–15409, and 8–BL–15410]. 30 Denis Bjaï, ‘Le Long Poème narratif à la Renaissance: Essai de présentation’, Nouvelle Revue du XVIe Siècle, 15/1 (1997), 25.

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mention here is that the epics retained for analysis in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are all, in a broad sense, historical—and this clearly determines the kinds of relationship such texts entertain with the sister arts: Dolet deals with the reign of François Ier, Ronsard with the mythical history of France (as a pre-history of the reign of Charles IX), and D’Aubigné with the Wars of Religion. Other kinds of epic are not considered here. I have not included discussion, for example, of epics that might be termed scientific or encyclopaedic. Had I done so, I would probably have found different kinds of connections with the sister arts—probably of a more theoretical type. Such connections deserve study on their own terms and call out for their own book-length analysis. For example, in the 3003 verses of Scève’s posthumously published Microcosme (1562), the individual reconnects with the universe after the solitary idealism of La Saulsaye (1547)31 and the poem is, in this sense, worldly— but this worldliness is arguably not the result of any extended concrete connection to the sister arts. Although it is true to note that some passages of the Microcosme are ‘d’une puissance digne de Michel-Ange’ (of a power worthy of Michelangelo),32 there is, as far as my preliminary investigations have suggested, no more concrete connection between the poem and the painter. Similarly, when Scève discusses the five orders of architecture,33 he does so primarily to determine ‘entre l’homme et sa demeure un rapport presque physiologique’ (‘between man and his dwelling an almost physiological relationship’).34 For similar reasons, I have left aside discussion of Du Bartas’s La Sepmaine. Although often read in the light of definitions of the baroque,35 a term that straddles literature, art, music, and philosophy, La Sepmaine is—again, to the best of my knowledge—not connected with any major realizations in the sister arts. For sure and as Nelly Finet has observed, Du Bartas’s epic is both (a) painterly in its frequent use of enargeia and appeals to the visual and (b) close in terms of subject matter to the paintings of (again) Michelangelo.36 But the connections are at once less precise and more theoretical than 31 Scève’s epic presents, as a recent editor noted, ‘le miracle d’une activité dépouillée des défauts propres au negotium et riche . . . de toutes les profondes exigences de l’otium’ (‘the miracle of activity relieved of those faults specific to negotium and enriched by the fundamental demands of otium’) (Enzo Giudici, ‘Introduction’, in Maurice Scève, Microcosme, ed. Enzo Giudici (Paris: Vrin, 1979), 28). 32 Giudici, ‘Introduction’, 29. 33 Scève, Microcosme, 3.725–6. 34 Albert-Marie Schmidt, La Poésie scientifique en France au seizième siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1938), 159. Although it would probably lead in directions different from those advanced in the present book, it would of course be of great interest to reread Scève’s verses on the architectural orders in dialogue with, for example, Sebastiano Serlio’s I sette libri dell’architettura (first volume published in 1537) or with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola’s Regola delli cinque ordini d'architettura (1562), translated into French only in the seventeenth century. See Maria Walcher Casotti, ‘Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola: Regola delli cinque ordini d’architettura’, in Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Trattati, ed. Elena Bassi (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1985), 499–577; Frédérique Lemerle, ‘Les Versions françaises de la Regola de Vignole au XVIIe siècle’, Monte Artium, 1 (2008), 101–20. 35 See, inter alia, Bruno Braunrot, L’Imagination poétique chez Du Bartas: Eléments de sensibilité baroque dans la Création du monde (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, Department of Romance Languages, 1973), and Claude-Gilbert Dubois, ‘Itinéraire et impasses de la “vive représentation” au XVIe siècle’, in La Littérature de la Renaissance, Mélanges offerts à Henri Weber (Geneva: Slatkine, 1984), 405–25. 36 See also Micheline Hugues, ‘La Représentation des eaux du Déluge de Léonard de Vinci à Milton’, Revue de Littérature comparée, 70/2 (1996), 137–61.

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Figure 0.4. Bernard Palissy, Allegory of Water (c.1575). Glazed faience. (# RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.)

concrete: ‘aucun document ne [fait] allusion aux peintures de Michel-Ange comme source d’inspiration de Du Bartas’ (‘no document [makes] any allusion to the paintings of Michelangelo as a possible source for Du Bartas’).37 Even though, more than Scève’s Microcosme, La Sepmaine did entertain a relationship with some contemporary realizations in the sister arts, as seen both in the presence of woodcuts in the sixteenth-century editions and, for example, in Allegory of Water (Figure 0.4), a painted clay plaque (c.1595) now at the Louvre Museum and which contains, around its edges, verses from the poem,38 it is arguably not the case that the Sepmaine depends to any great extent, in intent or reception, on such connections.39 Nor is Le Fèvre de la Boderie’s La Galliade (1578) analysed here. The text’s encyclopaedism coincides with a relationship between art and epic that is 37 Nelly Finet, ‘Du Bartas et la peinture’, in James Dauphiné (ed.), Du Bartas 1590–1990 (Montde-Marsan: Editions InterUniversitaires, 1992), 288. 38 Scève, Microcosme, 3.19–40. 39 The plaque is titled in the Louvre catalogue as follows ‘Plaque ornée d’une allégorie de l’Eau inspirée d’une gravure de Sadeler d’après Maarten de Vos’ [OA 3363] and can be seen in Room 30, Case 4, on the first floor of the Richelieu building.

Introduction

15

characterized more by attempts to situate other art forms within larger structures of human existence and knowledge than by direct (complementary or oppositional) connections. As its full title makes clear—La Galliade ou de la révolution des arts et sciences—this epic weaves together genealogy, geography, and various arts and sciences (astronomy, history, architecture, magic, music, and poetry). The second circle culminates in a catalogue of French and Italian architects, including Sebastiano Serlio, Jean Goujon, Pierre Lescot, Jean Martin, and Philibert De l’Orme.40 Goujon is included for his sculptures on the façades of the Louvre (‘Tousjours tesmoignera du Louvre la fabrique, | De combien ton ciseau fut heureux en pratique’ (‘That structure known as the Louvre will always bare witness | To the talent of your chisel when it sets to work’))41 and Lescot, the architect of the new Louvre wing, is recalled in that role as being the ‘honneur de Paris’ (‘pride of Paris’);42 Jean Martin is celebrated for bringing together architecture and the French language;43 for De l’Orme, La Boderie recalls that he constructed ‘le bastiment de Saint-Mor des fossez’ (the building of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés),44 the palace built for the Cardinal du Bellay (destroyed at the end of the eighteenth century). The epic’s second circle is not without comparison, then, with Jacques Androuet du Cerceau’s Plus excellents bastiments de France (1576–9) in its gathering of French buildings—albeit in miniature. Still, what interests La Boderie and what predominates in that circle is rather philosophical and religious. As one commentator noted, the second circle is ‘une sorte de Vitruve christianisé’ (a kind of Christianized Vitruvius).45 The project that subtends La Galliade—connecting art forms (including music and the visual arts) to divine archetypes46—would find a natural extension in La Boderie’s translation of Francesco Giorgi’s L’Harmonie du

40 Guy Le Fèvre de La Boderie, La Galliade (1582), ed. François Roudaut (Paris: Klincksieck, 1993), 2:1449–552. 41 Boderie, La Galliade, 2:1467–8. 42 Boderie, La Galliade, 2:1470. 43 Boderie, La Galliade, 2:1474–6. 44 Boderie, La Galliade, 2:1478. 45 Gabriella Repaci-Courtois, ‘ “Art mécanique” ou “art contemplatif ”? Les Humanistes français du XVIe siècle et le statut des arts visuels’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 54/1 (1992), 52. As Repaci-Courtois notes: ‘Le second cercle de la Galliade est conçu comme un hymne à l’industrie humaine, comprise philosophiquement comme la réplique terrestre de la Création, pratiquement comme le corpus normatif qui préside au métier. Ces deux dimensions, qui relèvent l’une de la cosmologie neo-platonicienne, l’autre de la rationnalité classique, entretiennent un rapport constant et dynamique qui fait du récit, dans son originalité, une sorte de Vitruve christianisé. Les correspondances entre les formes de l’art et le “patron du ciel”, ici, sont plus que des métaphores, puisque l’interprétation même du modus operandi de l’artiste en découle’ (‘The Galliade’s second circle is conceived of as a hymn to human industry, understood philosophically as Creation’s terrestrial response, and practically as the normative corpus that stands over the profession. These two dimensions, which depend respectively on Neoplatonist cosmology and on classical rationality, enjoy a constant and dynamic relationship that turns the narrative, in its originality, into a kind of Christianized Vitruvius. The correspondences between art forms and the “celestial blueprint”, here, are more than just metaphors, since the interpretation itself of the artist’s modus operandi depends on it’). See also Carla Zecher, ‘Pagan Spirituality and Christian Passion: The Music of the Spheres in Sixteenth-Century French Cosmological Poetry’, French Forum, 18/3 (September 1993), 297–317. 46 The topic of harmonia mundi in relation to La Boderie is central to François Roudaut, Le Point centrique: Contribution à l’étude de Guy Le Fèvre de la Boderie (1541–98) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992).

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monde (1579).47 These encyclopaedic poems—Scève’s Microcosme, Du Bartas’s La Sepmaine, La Boderie’s La Galliade—would indeed all lend themselves to study from the point of view of epic’s relationship to the sister arts, corroborating the close ties between these related domains. Such a study would surely be different from, but complementary to, the present one by turning to a more abstract, theoretical, and less historical and concrete set of relationships than those studied in the present book. The radically different nature of such poems and connections means they deserve a monograph of their own. The analysis that follows owes, of course, a great deal to existing scholarship, even when it establishes points of demarcation. As suggested above, my original puzzlement, concerning the wildly different reputations of epic art and epic literature of the French Renaissance, gave way to the realization (a) that the two domains belonged, in fact, to the same communities of writers, artists, readers, and patrons, and (b) that numerous concrete connections existed between specific literary epics and actual productions in the sister arts. It is this turn towards an interdisciplinary perspective—and the decision to allow this perspective to influence the analysis and fundamental understanding of the literary text—that distinguishes this study from its predecessors. Instead of asking why literary epic failed or why France never gave birth to a French Homer, I select specific epics in order to examine them as products of (and for) communities for whom writing and reading were activities inherently connected to the non-literary. As will become clear from chapter to chapter, from such a perspective the original enigma of opposed reputations starts to look quite different when both literature and art are considered together. Questions such as whether a given epic remained unfinished, how readable a given epic now appears, whether any particular author merits to be called the French Homer reveal themselves—at least, such is my contention—as secondary, for the notions of failure or success are redefined by the various connections established. Ronsard’s Franciade, for example, may (to some) seem unreadable, or its unfinished nature may mark it as ‘failed’—but if Ronsard’s purpose was to compose an epic that could rival art and insert itself into a context that is not purely literary, then such questions (readability, inachèvement) seem less pertinent from my perspective. To be the French Homer was, perhaps, to do just what Ronsard did actually do. Although studies of French Renaissance epic often attend to issues that are not purely literary (historical context, and so on), they rarely if ever allow non-literary considerations to alter either the reading process or the ways we conceive of and write literary history. The studies of Peter Michio Hagiwara (1972), David Maskell (1973), and Siegbert Himmelsbach (1988)48 all make valuable contributions to our 47 André Chastel, ‘Problèmes de l’architecture à la Renaissance’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 13/3 (1951), 361–72. 48 Siegbert Himmelsbach, L’Epopée ou la case vide: La Réflexion poétologique sur l’épopée nationale en France (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988). Himmelsbach studies the genre’s rise to prestige and prominence; he then turns to look at why epics failed, with a first focus on author shortcomings, a second focus on problems related to public reception of texts, and a final analysis of the socio-historical and the political. In the final analysis, he attributes the failure of Renaissance French epic to an

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understanding of Renaissance French epic, especially as concerns the relationship (that is, the complete décalage) between theory and practice, but their judgements are the very ones that shaped my initial puzzlement, with statements about the ‘relative failure of the sixteenth-century epics’49 or about how texts were ‘clumsy’, and so on.50 Recent studies by Klára Csű rös (1999) and Bruno Méniel (2004)51 have renewed enquiry, especially by identifying and classifying the period’s extensive epic corpus and by problematizing its varietas and éclatement (shattering, diversity). The two studies are invaluable, but they do not resolve, despite occasional passing mentions of non-literary arts, the paradox with which this book began. They tend, rather, to confirm the idea that literary epic failed: Csű rös begins her study by stating that she plans to investigate ‘l’écart, le fossé, et l’antagonisme surprenant entre la qualité et la quantité de ces productions’ (‘the gap, the gulf, and the surprising antagonism between the quality and the quantity of epic output’)52 but concludes in the final pages, somewhat anticlimactically, that Boileau was probably right in his Art poétique: ‘les Français ont échoué’ (‘the French failed’).53 The final conclusion to Méniel’s study is not entirely different: ‘Sans doute [les poètes épiques] comprennent-ils obscurément qu’une époque se termine et pensent-ils qu’il n’y a, pour la civilisation qui s’achève, de tombeau plus grandiose’ (‘Perhaps [the epic poets] had some vague understanding that an era was ending and perhaps they thought that, for the civilization that was dying, there was no more grandiose a tomb [i.e. than their poems]’).54 Research on seventeenthcentury French epic—especially that of Richard Sayce—has paid more attention to epic’s relationship to art, providing a further impetus and precedent for the present work.55 Comparatists, too, have made passing mention of French epic, frequently with the result of highlighting the poor reputation of French epic compared to those of its neighbours.56 The studies of Thomas Greene, David Quint, and Tobias incompatibility between literary production and the expectations of readerly communities. Ultimately, in Himmelsbach’s reading, it is the (increasingly bourgeois) French society that is to blame for epic’s failure. 49 Michio Peter Hagiwara, French Epic Poetry in the Sixteenth Century (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), 232. 50 David Maskell, The Historical Epic in France 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 73. 51 Klára Csűrös, Variétés et vicissitudes du genre épique de Ronsard à Voltaire (Paris: Champion, 1999); Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée. See also the two journal issues dedicated to Renaissance French epic: Revue de Littérature Comparée (1996); Nouvelle Revue du XVIe siècle (1997). 52 Csűrös, Variétés et vicissitudes, 9. 53 Csűrös, Variétés et vicissitudes, 379. 54 Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 505. 55 See especially Richard A. Sayce, The French Biblical Epic in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). I return to Sayce’s work in this book’s Closing Remarks. 56 One can think of the Italian tradition, which stretches from Dante’s tripartite La Divina Commedia (1308–21), telling of the poet’s journey through hell, purgatory, and into paradise; of Petrarch’s Africa (begun in 1338, published posthumously in 1501), which tells the story of Scipio Africanus and the Second Punic War; of Ariosto’s Arthurian romance-epic, the Orlando furioso (1516–32), a continuation of Boiardo’s unfinished Orlando innamorato (1495); and later of Trissino’s neo-classical Italia liberata dai Goti (1547–8), which recounts the campaigns of Belisarius in Italy; and finally of Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme liberata (1580), a fictionalized account of the First Crusade; of England and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (1590–6) and, slightly later, of

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Gregory have, over several generations, brought much to our understanding of epic continuity and to the shapes that epic was to take in Renaissance Europe, but only passing mention is ever made in such studies of French epic—at most, Agrippa d’Aubigné is given a chapter and Ronsard and Du Bellay a polite (and sometimes rather impolite) nod.57 The present study owes a great deal to previous studies of French epic, especially in terms of points of detail about specific epics. But it is their collective negative assessment that led to my seeking a new (interdisciplinary) perspective from which to read. My methodological debt is thus less to direct predecessors than elsewhere, in studies too numerous to analyse in detail here. On the horizon is certainly the work of the likes of Rensselaer W. Lee, Ernst H. Gombrich, William J. Thomas Mitchell, and Murray Krieger.58 Even more important for the shape of what follows is the work of Frances Yates on sixteenth-century French academies and on the Valois tapestries in the Uffizi gallery, which has demonstrated just how varied and indeed fluid were the connections between literature and the sister arts (a term Yates herself uses).59 In a wide-ranging chapter on the complementarity of poetry and painting within the French academies, Yates states that for ‘the Renaissance mind, Painting and Poetry are sister arts, using the same range of imagery and symbols to conceal the same truths’.60 This simple, yet fundamental, statement has informed every page of the present study. In support of this argument, Yates discusses among other figures the poet Pontus de Tyard, who ‘acted as humanist expert and interpreter to Painters as well as to Poets’.61 Her chapter concludes with mention of how shared images enriched ‘commerce between poets, artists, Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667–74); of Spain and Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569–89), about the Spanish conquest of Chile; of Portugal and Camões’s Os Lusíadas (1572), the story of Vasco da Gama’s journey from Portugal and around Africa and finally to the Indies. 57 For France in the period that interests me here, Thomas Greene discusses only Agrippa d’Aubigné in any detail (The Descent from Heaven, ch. 9), although his eleventh chapter does discuss ‘Saint-Amant and French Neo-Classicism’. David Quint, in a book as ground-breaking as Greene’s, of whom he was a student, also touches only on d’Aubigné in any depth for this period in France, in a chapter on ‘Epics of the Defeated: The Other Tradition of Lucan, Ercilla, and d’Aubigné’, in his Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), ch. 4. Tobias Gregory keeps his sights firmly set on Italy and England, with mention of Petrarch, Vida, Ariosto, Tasso, and Milton (From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006)). 58 Rensselaer W. Lee, ‘Ut pictura poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting,’ Art Bulletin, 22 (1940), 197–269; Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut pictura poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967); Ernest H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London: Phaidon, 1972); Lucy Gent, Picture and Poetry, 1560–1620 (Leamington Spa: Hall, 1981); William John T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); William John T. Mitchell, ‘What Do Pictures Really Want?’, October, 77 (Summer 1996), 71–82. Murray Krieger, ‘The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoön Revisited’, in his The Play and Place of Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 105–28, and Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). For a useful introduction to Krieger’s ideas, see Gwen Raaberg, ‘Ekphrasis and the Temporal/ Spatial Metaphor in Murray Krieger’s Critical Theory,’ New Orleans Review, 12/4 (1985), 34–43. 59 Frances A. Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London: Warburg Institute, 1947), and The Valois Tapestries (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1959). 60 Yates, The French Academies, 132. 61 Yates, The French Academies, 135.

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architects, musicians, moving about their appointed tasks with a homogenous culture’.62 The equally important work of Margaret McGowan has also shaped my understanding of the connections between literature and the arts in this period. Her Ideal Forms in the Age of Ronsard, which studies forms of praise, discusses how poets situated themselves in terms of other art forms and other related topics. McGowan begins her discussion of ‘art and poetry parallels’ by noting that in the period 1540–70 ‘abundant were the links—both practical and theoretical—that drew together French poets and those artists who work in paint and marble or who designed jewels and enamelled luxury goods’.63 Having underscored that the links were concretized in the idea that classical and Renaissance theorists saw both poetry and art functioning mimetically by selecting elements from nature in order to move the mind, she also suggests that the common system of patronage secured that relationship, such that the ‘social conditions of poets and painters at court in midsixteenth-century France positively encouraged [a] competitive spirit’.64 One immediate consequence that McGowan identifies is that competition led both poets and artists to an ‘increased awareness’ of the nature of the respective arts.65 Many other studies and scholars could be cited for having shaped, either directly or indirectly, the present work: Philip Ford, in addition to his work on Renaissance epic,66 has offered an extensive study of Ronsard’s Hymnes that is at once literary and iconographical, focusing in particular on the analogy between painting and poetry in Ronsard’s writing, emphasizing the centrality of Neo-Platonist principles and of mythology;67 Roberto Campo has studied the relationship between poetry and painting in the context of the works of Ronsard, concluding (unsurprisingly) that Ronsard generally found more merit in poetry than in painting;68 the recent work of Catharine Randall, of quite a different stamp and with quite a different focus, has evidenced how Marguerite de Navarre, in the Heptaméron (1558), ‘draws on genre painters’ techniques for treating objects, applying their approach textually and using words in the way they use images’, such that the text’s ‘artifactual components add a theological dimension to narrative’;69 Cynthia Skenazi has forged the concept of the ‘poet architect’ for the period 1504–60, with a focus on connections between poetics and politics,70 offering insights on Jean Lemaire de Belges, Clément Marot, Gilles Corrozet, Joachim du Bellay, and Ronsard. Skenazi’s work, indeed, has informed the present study (especially Chapters 2 and 3), 62

63 Yates, The French Academies, 51. Yates, The French Academies, 151. 65 McGowan, Ideal Forms, 58. Yates, The French Academies, 57. 66 See especially Ford (ed.), Mythologicum, and, by the same author, De Troie à Ithaque: Réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2007). 67 Philip Ford, Ronsard’s Hymnes: A Literary and Iconographical Study (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997). 68 Roberto Campo, Ronsard’s Contentious Sisters: The Paragone between Poetry and Painting in the Works of Pierre de Ronsard (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). Geoffrey R. Hope’s review of Campo’s book suggests that the polemical nature of Ronsard’s preference is perhaps overstated (Sixteenth Century Journal, 31/1 (Spring 2000), 295–6). 69 Catharine Randall, Earthly Treasures: Material Culture and Metaphysics in the Heptaméron and Evangelical Narrative (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007), 5. 70 Cynthia Skenazi, Le Poète architecte en France: Constructions d’un imaginaire monarchique (Paris: Champion, 2003). 64

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plotting as it does the ‘émergence, au cours de la première moitié du seizième siècle, d’une poétique de l’édification qui s’intègre dans des stratégies plus vastes de formation d’une identité culturelle et monarchique française’ (‘emergence, within the first half of the sixteenth century, of a poetics of construction that is part of a wider set of strategies aimed at creating a French cultural and monarchic identity’),71 with particular emphasis on how convergences between poetry and architecture partake in the ‘défense et illustration d’un art national’ (‘defence and illustration of a national art’)72 or, as Skenazi rephrases towards the end of her study, in the formation of ‘un visage de la nation’ (‘a face for the nation)’.73 To summarize: the present study thus takes some of its impetus from the kinds of large questions asked by Lee, Gombrich, Mitchell, and others and draws many specific insights about the context of the French Renaissance from recent work on Renaissance epic and (especially) from the work, in closely related domains, of Yates and McGowan, in order to tackle the literary history of a specific genre from an interdisciplinary point of view not, except in passing, adopted by Hagiwara, Maskell, Himmelsbach, Csűrös, Méniel, Greene, Quint, or Gregory. Still within the confines of the Introduction, two points about terminology must be made. First, the modern French word for epic—that is, épopée, did not exist in the sixteenth century; it would not come into usage—as a noun—until 1623.74 Whereas a medieval epic would have been called, in France, a chanson de geste (or cantus gestualis), a text we now identify as ‘epic’ would have been referred to in the sixteenth century as poesie heroique (‘heroic poetry’), as a grand œuvre (a ‘grand work’), or as a long poëme (a ‘long poem’), somewhat vague terms that point nevertheless, when taken together, to the fact that an epic is usually a long narrative poem that tells of heroic deeds in a universe set under the gaze of the gods. In 1533, Guillaume Télin defined ‘heroic poetry’ as that which evokes ‘les faicts et gestes des nobles et gens heroiques’ (‘the facts and deeds of nobles and of heroic persons’); more specifically, such poetry tells the story, he says, of individuals who live public lives (‘ceulx qui ont expose leur vie jusques a la mort pour la liberte et bien de la 71

72 Skenazi, Le Poète architecte en France, 20. Skenazi, Le Poète architecte en France, 11. Skenazi, Le Poète architecte en France, 301. Studies by Roy Eriksen and Mariel Cunin are also close relatives of the present study. The former focuses on the importance of classical rhetoric and architectural theory for Renaissance literature, with reference to authors such as Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. The latter asks questions about the relationship between Shakespeare and the architecture of his time. See Roy Eriksen, The Building in the Text: Alberti to Shakespeare and Milton (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), and Muriel Cunin, Shakespeare et l’architecture (Paris: Champion, 2008), 486. See also my review of Cunin’s book in Sixteenth Century Journal, 41/4 (Winter 2010), 1211–13. 74 The Latin term epopoeia (ultimately derived from Greek Šðïò, meaning ‘word’ or ‘story’) was already used by Scaliger in his Poetics and had already given birth to the Italian word epopea. The first author to use the term in French was Jean Chapelain (1595–74): ‘il serait ici comme besoin de dire ce que c’est que poésie, de combien d’espèces il y en a, et quelle est la nature de chacun d’icelles, principalement de celle que les Grecs appellent épopée et à laquelle nous n’avons pas encore trouvé de nom’ (‘there is need, here, to say what poetry is how many kinds of poetry there are and what is the nature of each of them, especially in regards of the kind the Greeks calls epic [épopée] and for which we have yet to find a name) (Lettre sur l’Adone, in Opuscules critiques, ed. A. Hunter (Paris: STFM, 1936)). Before this, Du Bartas had used the adjective épique in his preface to La Judith (1574). 73

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chose publicque’ (‘those who risked their life, right up to death, for the freedom and well-being of the nation’).75 This is a fair albeit partial definition (one would need to mention the presence of divine action), which could be applied to most epics.76 These various terms were used interchangeably in the sixteenth century and I shall subsume them all under the English word epic. Secondly, I should like to comment on the word art. As when talking about French epic, talking about French Renaissance art involves a certain amount of what might be called excavation, insofar as France had no Botticelli and no Titian, no Raphael and no Michelangelo.77 Some of the most celebrated artworks of sixteenth-century France are anonymous; and many of the period’s artists, working and living in France, were Italian, such as Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio, or Leonardo da Vinci. The point is not that the French Renaissance was beholden to Italy—the traditional story of the period that grew up around the historiographies of Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy) (1860) and Die Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien (The History of the Renaissance in Italy) (1867)—but rather: (1) that the artists of the French Renaissance are generally less known and less studied than their Italian counterparts, and (2) that the reputation of French Renaissance art, as Henri Zerner has remarked, has suffered from a widespread tendency for the word ‘art’ to be understood as referring primarily to ‘painting’.78 And, indeed, the French Renaissance—despite the crowds of tourists at Fontainebleau—produced very few celebrated painters or paintings, the primary exceptions being the Italian-born artists already mentioned (Rosso and Primaticcio made their names in France); as well as Jean Cousin the Elder (c.1500–60), most celebrated for the stained-glass windows of Vincenne’s Sainte-Chappelle and as the first French artist to paint in oils, especially in his celebrated painting Eva Prima Pandora (1550), now in the Louvre museum—and the only painting attributed to him with any certainty;79 his 75 Guillaume Télin, Bref sommaire des sept vertus, sept ars liberaulx, sept arts de Poesie (Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1533) quoted in John E. Clark, ‘An Early Sixteenth-Century Art Poétique by Guillaume Télin’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 31 (1969), 137. It could be argued that Télin’s ‘chose publique’ purposefully echoes Latin res publica, hence my non-literal translation of the term as ‘the nation’. 76 Gregory Tobias’s definition of epic is a useful one to keep in mind: ‘Epic tells of mortal deeds in a supernaturally inflected world’ (From Many Gods to One, 2). 77 In fact, the need for ‘excavation’ is deeper and not merely a metaphor for the fact that most French Renaissance artists are unknown to the general public and probably to many students and scholars of art history, but a very real problem, mandate, and hope. In their introduction to a recent collection of articles that raises the question of France’s place within Renaissance art, Henri Zerner and Marc Bayard note that ‘L’historien moderne est obligé de reconstituer les données à partir des archives. Or, pour compliquer les choses, la Révolution en a beaucoup détruit, d’où la fragilité des hypothèses’ (‘The modern historian is obliged to collect and reconstitute data from archival sources. The wave of destruction brought by the French Revolution makes things much more complicated, hence the fragility of hypotheses’) (Henri Zerner and Marc Bayard, ‘La Part de la France dans l’art de la Renaissance’, in Henri Zerner and Marc Bayard (eds), ¿Renaissance en France, renaissance française? (Paris: Sogomy Editions d’art, 2009), 9). 78 See Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 6. 79 Jean Cousin the Elder has not attracted much critical attention of late. For older studies, see Jules Guiffrey, La Famille de Jean Cousin peintre et verrier du seizième siècle (Paris: n.p., 1881), Jean Lobet, Quelques preuves sur Jean Cousin, peintre, sculpteur, géomètre et graveur (Paris: Loones, 1881), and Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Etude sur Jean Cousin (Paris: A. F. Didot, 1872). As Henri Zerner has shown

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son Jean Cousin the Younger (c.1522–95), whose Last Judgment can also be seen at the Louvre; and the portrait painters Jean Clouet (1480–1541), celebrated by Ronsard in his famous ‘Elégie à Janet’;80 and his son François Clouet (c.1510–72); and a few others, like Noël Jallier, or Antoine Caron. But while there were French painters in the sixteenth century and while visitors to the Louvre should marvel at the works of the Cousins and the Clouets with similar delight as if before betterknown Italian works of the period, French Renaissance art was never primarily about painting. And even the better-known painters occupied themselves with various media.81 To talk of French Renaissance art, then, is to talk not just of painted canvasses, but also of frescoes, etchings, engravings, enamel plaques, prints (estampes), woodcuts, sculptures, tapestries, and architecture, as well as (perhaps) music. It is to talk, indeed, of the ‘sister arts’, a notion inherited from classical antiquity and which affirms ‘the essential kinship of literature with painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, and [which] sanctions the use of inter-art analogies by those who would discuss, formally or informally, individual products of the artistic imagination’.82 The two most recent and most useful general studies of French Renaissance art—Anthony Blunt’s Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700 and Henri Zerner’s already mentioned L’Art de la Renaissance en France—do just that. The current study aims to situate itself within a similar wide understanding of the inherent inter-relationship—sometimes complementary, sometimes competitive—between art forms.83 As a more public reality than the literary counterparts with which they dialogue, the paintings, frescoes, sculptures, and other products of the sister arts studied here had—and, I argue, should still have—the power to change how we read and how we approach literary history. With this general goal in mind, then, let us turn to the first chapter and to fifteenth-century Italy, at which point epic is, for the first time since late Antiquity, taken up as a subject by the sister arts. (L’Art de la Renaissance, 227–30), however, much of what has been written about Cousin is fictitious and dates from the earlier writings of the ‘French Vasari’, André Félibien (1619–95), Louis XIV’s official chronicler of the arts and the author of the Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes, ed. René Démoris (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1987). The best and most up-to-date study of Jean Cousin the Elder is in Henri Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 246–54. 80 Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, coll. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1993–4), i. 152–6. See also Campo, Ronsard’s Contentious Sisters, 169–98. 81 As Henri Zerner notes in regard of Jean Cousin, ‘[il] répare et peint une statue, brosse des décors de théâtre et de fêtes et établit des projets de toutes sortes pour les tapissiers, les vitriers, les orfèvres, les armuriers’ (‘he repairs and paints a statue, paints theatre sets or festival decorations and pursues projects of all kinds for tapestry-makers, glaziers, goldsmiths, armourers’) (L’Art de la Renaissance, 265). Chapter 8 of L’Art de la Renaissance develops and expands this idea of Jean Cousin’s career spanning various art forms and media. 82 L. M. Findlay, ‘Aspects of Analogy: The Changing Role of the Sister Arts Tradition in Victorian Criticism’, English Studies in Canada, 3/1 (1977), 51. 83 See also Hagstrum, The Sister Arts, and, by the same author, Articulate Images: The Sister Arts from Hogarth to Tennyson, ed. Richard Wendorf (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); as well as So Rich a Tapestry: The Sister Arts and Cultural Studies, ed. Ann Hurley and Kate Greenspan (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1995).

1 Homer, Virgil, and Lucan: Classical Epic and Renaissance Art TH E R EBIRTH O F EPIC ART The Trojan War began at a wedding when Eris, the goddess of chaos and strife, threw down the apple of discord, causing the festivities to come to an abrupt end (Figure 1.1).1 Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite squabbled over the apple; Paris abducted Helen; Agamemnon sent forces to Troy. Thus began the war. It is then somehow fitting that, millennia later in fifteenth-century Italy, representations of the Trojan War and of its aftermath would become part of upper-class wedding ceremonies. Vows and rings normally being exchanged in private, the wife was led to her new husband’s house in a public marriage procession called a domumductio. Marriage chests, customarily called forzieri at the time and now referred to as cassoni, accompanied the bride as she walked through the streets.2 Until about the second quarter of the fifteenth century, these cassoni were generally decorated with floral patterns and scenes of rustic life.3 However, as scholars, poets, and artists rediscovered, translated, adapted, and illustrated the texts and culture of classical antiquity, the panels of the marriage chests became progressively more narrative in nature and drew increasingly on the characters and stories of classical epic.4 It is on one set of cassone panels, realized by Apollonio di Giovanni (Figure 1.2), that we find, according to Jerzy Miziołek, the earliest narrative illustrations of Homer’s 1 On classical representations of this wedding, see Margaret R. Scherer, The Legends of Troy (New York: Phaidon for the Metropolitan Museum of New York, 1963). For later images, see Paul Grootkerk, ‘The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis in Art and Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance’, PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1975. 2 On terminology, see Julius Kirshner, ‘Li Emergenti Bisogni Matromoniali in Renaissance Florence’, in William J. Connell (ed.), Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 94, n. 47. 3 Bruce Witthoft, ‘Marriage Rituals and Marriage Chests in Quattrocento Italy’, Artibus et Historiae, 5 (1982), 51–2. On the role played by cassoni in wedding festivities, see Attilio Schiaparelli, La Casa fiorentina e i suoi arredi nei secoli XIV e XV (Florence: Casa Editrice le Lettere, 1983); Peter Thornton, ‘Cassoni, forzieri, goffani e cassette: Terminology and its Problems,’ Appolo, 120 (October 1984), 246–51; Cristelle Louise, Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gender in Early Modern Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Julius Kirshner and Anthony Molho, ‘The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market in Early Quattrocento Italy’, Journal of Modern History, 50 (1978), 403–38. 4 See Paul Watson, ‘Virtu and Voluptas in Cassone Painting.’ PhD diss., Yale University, 1970, and Ellen Callman, ‘The Growing Threat to Marital Bliss as Seen in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Paintings,’ Studies in Iconography, 5 (1979), 73–92.

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Figure 1.1. Jean Mielot, Discord at the Wedding Feast of Peleus and Thetis (1461). Illustration for Christine de Pizan’s Epître d’Othéa . . . à Hector. MS. Fr. 9392, fo. 63v. (Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels). (# Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique.)

Figure 1.2. Apollonio di Giovanni, The Adventures of Odysseus, cassone panel depicting an episode from the Odyssey, specifically Polyphemus (left) and other moments (15th century). (Krakow, Royal Wawel Castle.) Photograph by Stanisław Michta. (# Wawel Royal Castle, Cracow.)

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Odyssey in post-antique art.5 Apollonio di Giovanni’s workshop, patronized by some of Florence’s most powerful families, including the Medici and the Strozzi, was ‘one of the busiest and most fashionable firms of [its] kind’ and his decision to decorate wedding chests in reference to classical epic was decisive for the history of Europe’s fascination for epic art.6 The evolution from floral patterns to epic heroes is a concrete trace of Western Europe’s rediscovery and appropriation of ancient epic. An earlier and textual moment in the story is Petrarch’s acquisition in the early 1350s of a Greek manuscript of Homer, an author almost entirely unknown throughout the Middle Ages. Petrarch, like his medieval predecessors, could not read Greek: ‘Homerus tuus apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum’ (‘Your Homer is dumb as far as I am concerned, or rather I am deaf as far as he is concerned’).7 Consequently, Petrarch commissioned Leontius Pilatus to translate Homer into Latin. Thus began a process of translation and refashioning of which Apollonio di Giovanni and the authors and artists studied in this book are the direct inheritors. With the advent of printing, the rediscovery of classical epic would accelerate: Homer, for example, would be printed in book form for the first time in Florence in 1488. In 1510, a Latin translation of the Iliad, by Niccolò della Valle, would become the first publication of Homer in France. We thus see that, between the 1350s and 1500, Europeans began again to read Homer (and Virgil and Lucan)— and also that they began to see their stories refigured in art.8 Reading and seeing go hand in hand—readers also look and spectators also read. This connection between literary text and works of art such as these Florentine wedding chests is, I argue, essential for understanding the reception and redefinition of epic in this period—and yet, perhaps, somewhat problematic. It is first useful to take a closer look at Apollonio di Giovanni’s Odyssey panels. First, the panels retell Odysseus’ story not in the order in which Homer recounts it, but rather in the order in which the hero experiences the events.9 Secondly, most of the characters wear contemporary (rather than ancient) clothes.10 What do these observations tell us? To Apollonio di Giovani and his contemporaries, the story of Odysseus perhaps mattered much more than Homer’s text qua text, the latter seen primarily as a vehicle for a narrative, rather than as a text per se. In addition, the ancient hero was not seen through history’s remove—rather, he was transposed 5 Jerzy Miziołek, ‘The Odyssey Cassone Panels from the Lanckoroński Collection: On the Origins of Depicting Homer’s Epic in the Art of the Italian Renaissance’, Artibus et Historiae, 27/53 (2006), 57. On depictions of the Odyssey in ancient art, see Karl Schefold, Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art, trans. Alan Griffiths (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 6 Ernest H. Gombrich, ‘Apollonio di Giovanni: A Florentine Cassone Workshop Seen through the Eyes of a Humanist Poet’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 18/1–2 (January–June 1955), 16. 7 Quoted in Philip Ford, ‘Homer in the French Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly, 59 (2006), 1. 8 On the rediscovery of Homer, see Ford, ‘Homer in the French Renaissance’ and De Troie à Ithaque. Still relevant, despite its age, is Noémi Hepp, ‘Homère en France au XVIe siècle’, Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 96 (1961–2), 389–508. 9 Miziołek, ‘The Odyssey Cassone Panels’, 62. 10 Miziołek, ‘The Odyssey Cassone Panels’, 63.

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into, and appropriated by, fifteenth-century Europe. In other words, the cassone panels are Homeric—but not necessarily of the Homeric texts. On the first point, we must recall, of course, that, throughout the Middle Ages, the Trojan War and associated stories were known to Europeans not through Homer but through the accounts of Dares and Dictys: the De Excidio Troiae historia and the Ephemeridos belli troiani libri.11 Medieval Europeans did not, as a general rule, read Greek. And there was no Latin translation of Homer before the one that Petrarch commissioned: Virgil, after all, had read Homer in Greek, a language he learned from Parthenius of Nicaea.12 As brides walked through the streets with marriage chests depicting Odysseus, Homer’s epic was thus still merged with other accounts of the Trojan War. We can further note that elements of the Odyssey panels—for example, their depiction of Polyphemus—drew not on Homer or even Dares and Dictys, but on Virgil’s adaptations of Homer in the Aeneid.13 As for the modern clothes worn by the characters in the panels, such an appropriating and modernizing style of reinterpretation would remain common until approximately the mid or even late sixteenth century, when newer and more scientifically produced editions of ancient texts started to reintroduce the historical chasm.14 As Giancarlo Fiorenza has shown, the complex relationship between the cassone panels and the different (Homeric and non-Homeric) texts that tell the story of Odysseus demonstrate a ‘competition between painting and poetry’, in which painting asserts its authority to ‘domesticate’ and to ‘personalize’ in ways that both complement and contest the literary text.15 The panels realized by Apollonio di Giovanni were not, moreover, an isolated occurrence, as illustrated by the existence of other cassone series on the same subject—for example, one by Guidoccio Cozzarelli (c.1480–1).16 The Aeneid had never been forgotten in the same way as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Still, Virgil’s epic had become increasingly engulfed—as I hinted at in the Introduction and as I shall discuss later in this chapter—in Christian allegory and 11 See Hugo Buchthal, Historia Troiana: Studies in the History of Medieval Secular Illustration (London: Warburg Institute, 1971), 1–8, and Nathaniel Edward Griffin, Dares and Dictys: An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Versions of the Story of Troy (Baltimore: J. H. Furst Company, 1907). 12 Parthenius of Nicaea left Bythinia (near the Black Sea), arriving in Rome as a prisoner of the Mithridatic Wars—but he would soon win favour with emperors, such as Tiberius, who had his portrait hung in public libraries. For an introduction to Parthenius, see his writings and the accompanying biographical sketch in Jane L. Lightfoot (ed.), Hellenistic Collection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). See also Robert R. Dyer, ‘Where did Parthenius teach Vergil?’, Vergilius, 42 (1996), 14–24. A starting point for Virgil’s reworking of Homer is George N. Knauer, ‘Vergil’s Aeneid and Homer’, in Virgil: The Aeneid, ed. Philip R. Hardie (London: Routledge, 1999), 93–113. 13 Miziołek, ‘The Odyssey Cassone Panels’, 68. The example given by Miziołek is that Polyphemus here grips onto a tree trunk with one remaining branch, something not mentioned in Homer but rather at Aeneid 3:854. 14 On Apollonio de Giovani’s connection to Antiquity, see also Paul Watson, ‘Apollonio di Giovanni and Ancient Athens,’ Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, 37 (1979–80), 3–25. 15 Giancarlo Fiorenza, ‘Homer’s Odyssey and the Image of Penelope in Renaissance Art’, in Luisa Capodieci and Philip Ford (eds), Homère à la Renaissance: Mythes et transfigurations (Paris: Somogy, 2011), 226–7. 16 Fiorenza, ‘Homer’s Odyssey’, 227. On the series by Cozzarelli see also Les cassoni peints du musée national de la Renaissance (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2010), 34–9.

Figure 1.3. Apollonio di Giovanni, cassone panel depicting an episode from the Aeneid, specifically Dido’s welcoming of Aeneas in Carthage (c. 1450). Tempera on panel. Yale University Art Gallery, Inv. 1871.35. (Yale University Art Gallery University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520. Purchase from James Jackson Jarv.)

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so, while it did not need to be rediscovered in a literal sense, it too would be appropriated and interpreted in new ways within Renaissance France. It would shed, bit by bit, its allegorical clothing—but that would take time. Like Homer’s text, Virgil’s also began to enter into a sustained dialogue with the sister arts. For a different Floretine family, the same Apollonio di Giovanni prepared wedding-chest panels that depicted the main events of the Aeneid.17 Jennifer Klein Morrison has studied these panels in detail and concluded that that artist ‘was participating in, and responding to, the broader literary and humanistic interest in Virgil’s epic that blossomed during the late Trecento and throughout the Quattrocento’ and thus that the Virgilian marriage chests, in the way they told the story of Aeneas, actually relate directly to such textual appropriations of Virgil’s epic as Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (1374), Maffeo Vegio’s ‘thirteenth book’ of the Aeneid (1428), and Cristoforo Landino’s Disputationes Camaldulenses (1472).18 For example, in the panel in Figure 1.3, we see Dido at the temple of Juno welcoming the Trojans (centre), Aeneas and Achates off to one side, separated from Dido by a pillar, as if to suggest they are still enclosed in a cloud (on the left), with Dido’s subjects busy building Carthage (on the right), a depiction that echoes Boccaccio’s more ‘historical’ reading of Dido, which does not presuppose her union with Aeneas and which underlines her role as a city founder.19 As Morrison concludes, the panels ‘presented to the public and private gaze not only the adventures of a classical hero, but also specific interpretations of those adventures, interpretations deriving from popular Virgilian commentaries’.20 As we see, the rediscovery of Ancient epic, the rethinking of its possible meanings, and the transpositions it underwent as it was read by readers in a new historical moment took place not only in texts, but also in other art forms that testify to, and provide a trace of, how different texts and interpretive traditions became intertwined. As the decades passed, Europe continued to intensify its dialogue with classical antiquity. As part of this movement, epic literature came more and more to influence—and to be influenced by—the sister arts. Here is not the place to give an exhaustive account of Italy’s artists’ and sponsors’ growing passion for subjects drawn from epic. What can be said is that the trend that was most obvious in the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni was not particular to him. Rather, it was also present in other places, artists, and media. Several particularly magnificent creations must be mentioned. In addition to tapestries—like the Franco-Flemish one now at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and which shows Odysseus and Penelope (1480–1)—and paintings—like Pintoricchio’s Telemachus and Penelope (c.1509) 17 Jennifer K. Morrison, ‘Apollonio di Giovanni’s Aeneid cassoni and the Virgil Commentators’, Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1992), 27–47. 18 Morrison, ‘Apollonio di Giovanni’s Aeneid cassoni’, 32–3. 19 Here, Morrison (‘Apollonio di Giovanni’s Aeneid cassoni’, 34–5) is drawing on the analysis by Craig Kallendorf of Boccaccio’s texts, which posits that Boccaccio makes two distinct readings of Dido, one as a woman who suffers from illicit love, and a second in which she is primarily historical. See Craig Kallendorf, In Praise of Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 58–9. 20 Morrison, ‘Apollonio di Giovanni’s Aeneid cassoni’, 43.

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or Dosso Dossi’s early sixteenth-century Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape—there were also a growing number of sites where epic served as the basis for integrated schemes of what we might call, anachronistically, interior design.21 As classical epic literature entered into print, it was also progressively ‘installed’ within the spaces of upper-class and royal dwellings. In other words, one might say that epic texts increasingly sought out gallery space, compelling evidence for the growing attraction and perceived relevance of epic literature, which could not be confined to the space of the book. In the 1550s Pellegrino Tibaldi decorated two rooms of the Poggi Palace in Bologna with Odysseus’ story.22 During that same decade, a room in the Lanzi Palace in Gorlago (Bergamo) was decorated with a dozen frescoes realized by Giovanni Battista Castello (c.1500–c.1569), also based on the Odyssey and closely related to the woodcuts in Venetian editions of the text—again, text and the sister arts exist in a very close relationship.23 In the late 1560s, Ulisse Aldrovandi, a celebrated naturalist, would order a series of thirteen paintings on the topic of the Odyssey for his villa in Bologna.24 In fact, it is probably fair to say that Odysseus’ story was ubiquitous in the sister arts of sixteenth-century Italy.25 A similar enumeration and statement could be made for the Aeneid. We see then that, as time passed, the privileged site for epic became no longer panels for wedding chests, but galleries—both in Italy and, as this chapter will discuss, in France. And, at each site, a complex relationship emerges between texts, translations, artists, and patrons. Each site reveals itself to be the mediating space of an interpretive community.26 In this chapter, I will study three specific sites where classical epic enters into Renaissance galleries in Renaissance France. In each case, I will examine how strands of meaning emerge and knot together. Beginning with a discussion of Homer and the well-known Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau, I will subsequently discuss two lesser-studied sites—namely, the Galerie du Grand Ecuyer at the Château d’Oiron, which takes up Virgil’s Aeneid, and the Galerie de Pharsale, which takes up Lucan’s epic the Pharsalia, at the Château d’Ancy-le-Franc. It will emerge from the pages that follow how the three galleries relate to both the original texts, to the ways in which those texts were translated and commented upon by Renaissance scholars, as well as to the political and historical moment at which epic enters into art. The organization adopted is the chronological order of the original texts (Homer, Virgil, Lucan), in that Virgil responded to Homer and Lucan to Virgil. It will be shown how the reception of epic in Renaissance France took place not only in the domains of publication, translation, and explicit commentary, but 21

Scherer, The Legends of Troy, 145, 169, 163. Sylvie Béguin, Jean Guillaume, and Alain Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse à Fontainebleau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), 3. See also Vittoria Romani, Primaticcio, Tibaldi e la questione delle cose del cielo (Cittadella (Padova): Bertoncello Artigrafiche, 1997). 23 See I Pittori bergamaschi (Il Cinquecento) (Bergamo: Poligrafiche Bolis, 1976), ii. 443–4. 24 Mario Fanti, ‘La villeggiatura di Ulisse Aldrovandi’, Strenna storica Bolognese, 8 (1958), 27–9. 25 Marco Lorandi, Il mito di Ulisse nella pittura a fresco del Cinquecento italiano (Milan: Jaca Book, 1996). 26 I borrow this term, of course, from Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). 22

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also in the sister arts, which both echo and challenge what we know about how epic was understood as a purely literary phenomenon.

HO MER A T F ONTAINEBLEAU Although not the earliest, the most important epic gallery space in Renaissance France was without a doubt the Galerie d’Ulysse (1541–60) at Fontainebleau,27 which featured depictions of some sixty scenes from Homer’s Odyssey.28 Designed by Primaticcio, who had been called to Fontainebleau by François Ier, and realized—‘con molta diligenza’ (‘with much diligence’)29—by another Italianborn artist, Primaticcio’s assistant Niccolò dell’Abate, the gallery was possibly inspired by Whitehall’s Long Gallery or the Cortile del Belvedere in Rome.30 It also somewhat resembled the Gallery of Geographic Maps in the Vatican.31 Other possible precedents include a façade painted by Peruzzi around 1510 and which featured ‘stories of Ulysses’32 and, perhaps most importantly, Pordenone’s tapestries on the subject of Odysseus’ travels produced for Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.33 The latter are of particular interest, for they underscore the need to read epic installations in relation to textual hermeneutics and how the Fontainebleau gallery might function in a similar manner.34 Even within the restricted context of Fontainebleau, the Galerie d’Ulysse was part of a tradition: Niccolò dell’Abate had already decorated the king’s chamber with seven scenes from the Iliad,35 and, as 27 Ford, De Troie à Ithaque, 269. With the gallery, asserts Ford, ‘l’inspiration homérique atteint son apogée’ (‘Homeric inspiration reaches its high point’). 28 On the gallery, see Louis Dimier, Le Primatice, peintre, sculpteur et architecte des rois de France (Paris: E. Leroux, 1900), 91–108, 289–300; Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse; Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 106–14; Primatice, maître de Fontainebleau (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004), 292–357; Claude Mignot, ‘Fontainebleau revisité: La Galerie d’Ulysse’, Revue de l’art, 82 (1992), 9–18. 29 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti (Rome: Newton Compton Editori, 1991), 1279. 30 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 41. 31 On this gallery, see Lucio Gambi, The Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, trans. Paul Tucker (New York: George Braziller, 1997). 32 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 3. 33 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 100. 34 Although Pordenone’s tapestries no longer survive, an idea of them can be gained from Ridolfi’s Meraviglie dell’arte (1648). Ridolfi, moreover, gives an interpretation of the ensemble, underlining—in the manner of the Italian mythographer Natale Conti in his Mythologiae—that Odysseus’ story, as represented in the tapestries, is that of man’s battle with life’s obstacles, such that the Land of the Lotus-eaters (Odyssey 9) signifies the pleasures of the senses, which steal the individual away from virtue; Odysseus’ victory over the Cyclops Polyphemus (Odyssey 9) points to how intelligence can win over ignorance; and so forth. This programme in Ferrara may have influenced Primaticcio’s plans for the south wall at Fontainebleau. On the date of Natale’s work, for a long time given as 1551, see Barbara Carman Garner, ‘Francis Bacon, Natalis Comes and the Mythological Tradition’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33 (1970), 264–91. 35 See Henri Zerner, The School of Fontainebleau: Etchings and Engravings (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1969), 12; Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, ‘Women on Top at Fontainebleau’, Oxford Art Journal, 16/1 (1993), 34–48; Fontainebleau; l’art en France, 1528–1610 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1973), ii. 152–3.

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Marian Rothstein has recently shown, the illustrated edition of Hugues Salel’s translation of the first ten books of the Iliad was produced specifically to echo the concerns and ideals of the members of François Ier’s Fontainebleau court.36 In a general sense, the construction and decoration of the gallery took place around the same time that Homer’s epics made their way to France. Most notably, Jacques Pelletier du Mans translated two books of the Odyssey into French, published in 1547 as part of his Œuvres complètes; and a Latin translation by Franciscus Floridus Sabinus of the first eight books of the Odyssey appeared in 1545.37 It is indeed impossible to separate the textual event from the artistic one. Unfortunately, the southern wing of the Cour du Cheval-Blanc that housed the Galerie d’Ulysse was destroyed in 1739, meaning that our knowledge of the gallery is based entirely on preparatory drawings by Primaticcio, woodcuts by Theodoor van Thulden, and later written descriptions, a collection of documents that have been gathered together by Sylvie Béguin, Jean Guillaume, and Alain Roy into a whole that offers what is likely to be the best possible idea of what the gallery was.38 So, what was this gallery like? And how did the epic text take its place within the space of the château? And what did this epic gallery ‘mean’ to those who saw it in the sixteenth century? To begin, let us recall that decoration was split between fifteen ceiling vaults and fifty-eight wall paintings. Paintings in the ceiling vaults illustrated the theme of ‘destiny ruled over by the gods in harmony with the laws of nature’.39 The large wall paintings, most of which measured approximately 2 x 2.5 metres, told the story of Odysseus. The spatial organization thus followed perfectly the notion of epic as a narrative that recounts human feats in a divinely inflected world: gods above look over and influence man below. Odysseus’ story flowed first along the southern wall, then the northern, where windows interrupted the paintings at regular intervals. The first twenty-nine images (that is, the south wall) told of Odysseus’ adventures on his way back from Troy; the second twenty-nine took up the nostos or homecoming theme of his arrival back in Ithaca. Most of the paintings would seem to date from 1555–60, thus coinciding mainly with the reign of Henri II (r. 1547–59).40 Moreover, one of the first paintings to be executed included Henri II’s monogrammatic ‘H’.41 To understand the gallery, it is useful to recall Claude Mignot’s clear summary of three overlapping projects: in a first instance, François Ier probably decided around 1537–8 on the construction of a gallery that would connect together the new Pavillon des Poêles and the old Pavillon de la Grotte and the Jardin des Pins.42 The decision to decorate the gallery with the story of Odysseus probably dated from 1554–6, at which point Henri II moved his private apartment to the Pavillon des Poêles. Finally, Charles IX would 36 Marian Rothstein, ‘Homer for the Court of François Ier’, Renaissance Quarterly, 59 (2006), 732–67. 37 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 99. 38 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 99. 39 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 102. 40 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 63. 41 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 62. 42 On the gallery’s architecture, see Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 9–42.

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alter the completed gallery, adding two chimneys and a pictorial allusion to contemporary history that politicized the gallery in a new way—to which I shall return later. It would not be surprising if François Ier had a voice in the selection of the Homeric subject matter—although Mignot argues clearly that he did not. Contextually, it can be noted that Hugues Salel dedicated his translation of the Iliad to François Ier and that, likewise, Jacques Peletier du Mans dedicated his translation of the Odyssey to him in 1547. Nor is it surprising that such a theme was chosen—or assented to—by François Ier’s son and successor Henri II.43 The Swiss humanist Simon Lemnius—to whom Luther referred in a public sermon as an ‘infamous rascal’44—dedicated to Henri II his translation of the Odyssey, the first full translation of the epic into Latin verse.45 The encomiastic dedication to the king takes up a full twenty-two pages of hexameters!46 Why, then, a gallery dedicated to the adventures of Odysseus? When walking through the gallery how would sixteenth-century visitors have understood what they saw? Odysseus is, now, a household name—and a fairly innocuous one at that: an adventurer (barely a warrior) who flees Calypso, Circe (Figure 1.4), and other erotic encounters, descends into the underworld (Figure 1.5), before finally heading home to faithful Penelope. But there were times when he elicited much stronger reactions. For Virgil, of course, Odysseus was a Greek warrior responsible for the fall of Troy. In particular, he was the ingenious trickster who came up with the idea of invading the city with the Trojan Horse. This Roman view of Odysseus—hardly flattering—is evident in the Aeneid at the point when Aeneas and his companions sail past Ithaca: ‘We flee past the rocks of Ithaca, Laertes’s realm, and curse [exsecramur] that land that nursed cruel [saevi] Ulysses.’47 Elsewhere, Virgil uses the adjective pellax (‘seductive, deceitful, lying’) to qualify Odysseus.48 Still elsewhere, he calls him a scelerum inventor (‘author of crime’).49 Virgil notably played on Homer’s formulation ‘
E 'O
ı’ (‘divine Odysseus’), reshaping it into the similar-sounding ‘dirus Ulixes’ (‘cruel Odysseus’).50 In total, Virgil alludes to

43 Ford, De Troie à Ithaque, 270: ‘[il n’est] guère surprenant que les errances d’Ulysse aient été choisies comme thème central pour la galerie afin de rendre hommage au roi valois’ (‘it is hardly surprising that the wanderings of Odysseus were chosen as the gallery’s central theme, such that homage might be made to François Ier’). For a similar opinion, see Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 105. 44 Quoted in Herbert David Rix, Martin Luther: The Man and the Image (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1983), 281. 45 Ford, De Troie à Ithaque, 126. 46 Odysseae Homeri libri XXIIII nuper a Simone Lemnio Emporico Rheto Curiensi, heroico Latino carmine facti, & a mendis quibusdam priorum translationum repurgati (Basel: J. Oporin, 1549). 47 Virgil, Aeneid 3:273–4. On Virgil’s depiction of Odysseus, see Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 295–6. See also Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney (eds), Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 48 Virgil, Aeneid 2:90. 49 Virgil, Aeneid 2:164. 50 See Aeneid 2:261 and 2:762. This example is borrowed from Enciclopedia virgiliana (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1984–91), entry on ‘Ulisse’, 5:359. See also William Francis Jackson Knight, Roman Vergil (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), 195. Further comment is also provided by Michelina Martorana, Ulisse nella letteratura latina (Palermo: R. Sandron, 1926).

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Figure 1.4. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus on Circe’s Island. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

Figure 1.5. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus Meets Hercules in the Underworld. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

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Odysseus nineteen times, almost always casting him in a negative light.51 One critic even notes that Virgil ‘hates’ Odysseus.52 Taking a step back, we can see with Margaret R. Scherer the general trend of how Odysseus came to be read as follows: in Homer’s epics ‘Odysseus is represented as prudent and ingenious but courageous; later legend . . . tended to show him as deceitful and somewhat cowardly’.53 Speeding forward to the early fourteenth century, Dante would put Odysseus in hell, as punishment for ‘l’agguato del caval’ (‘the horse trap, or stratagem of the horse’)—Odysseus’ arte (‘wiles, capacity for ingenious invention’) was for a long time Odysseus’ crime.54 But surely Henri II would prefer a
E or divine hero than a dirus or cruel one. We must recall that, alongside Virgil and Dante, there existed another tradition in which Odysseus was seen in a more positive light. Jerzy Miziołek has plotted out this alternative trajectory, which he locates in authors like the fourth-century Basil of Caesarea, author of an Address to Young Men on Greek Literature, translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni at the end of the fourteenth century as Oratio ad adolescentes, wherein Greek literature is discussed as a kind of ‘preparatory course’ for Christian Scripture.55 In his Oratio, Saint Basil defends Homer’s poetry as being an encomium of virtue, texts whose verses contained moral wisdom not incompatible with Christianity.56 The reading would be taken up by Bruni himself, who would write in 1424 that Homer’s poetry ‘provides a complete doctrine of life, divided into periods of peace and war’ and that it contains all sorts of lessons on ‘the prudence of the general . . . the cunning and bravery of the soldier’, as well as on the ‘kinds of trickery to be allowed or omitted’, clear references to Odysseus.57 Against this background, there are good reasons to believe that French Humanists read the Odyssey in the particular light of the teachings of Jean Dorat, to whom we must now turn our attention. Jean Dorat was, at the small Collège de Chenac, the preceptor of Lazare de Baïf ’s son, aged 8,

51 As Maria Teresa Graziosi summarizes, ‘Nell’intera opera di Virgilio la figura di Ulisse è assunta nei suoi caratteri più negativi e sgradevoli, secondo un modello contrario al trattamento dell’eroe nell’Odissea, con la sola eccezione di Eneide 3’ (‘Throughout all of Virgil’s work the figure of Odysseus assumes the most negative and unpleasant characteristics, according to a model opposite to the treatment the hero receives in the Odyssey, with the sole exception of Aeneid 3’) (‘Ulisse’, in Francesco della Corte (ed.), Enciclopedia virgiliana (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1990), v. 358). 52 William Bedell Stanford, The Ulysses Themes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 131. 53 Scherer, The Legends of Troy, 142. 54 Dante, La Divina Commedia, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), Inferno, 26:59, 26:61. 55 Frederick Morgan Padelford, ‘Essays on the Study and Use of Poetry by Plutarch and Basil the Great’, Yale Studies in English, 15 (1902), 40. Padelford’s longer summary of St Basil’s central thesis is as follows: ‘While classical philosophy, oratory, and poetry even at their best do not reveal the truth with absolute accuracy, they yet reflect it as in a mirror; the truth may be seen face to face only in the Scriptures, yet it is possible in the pagan writings to trace, as it were, its silhouette. Accordingly, for those who are not yet prepared for the strong meat of the Scriptures, the study of Greek literature is a valuable preparatory course.’ 56 The best edition is Mario Naldini (ed.) Discorsi ai giovani [Oratio ad adolescentes] (Florence: Nardini editore, Centro internazionale del libro, 1990). 57 Quoted in Miziołek, ‘The Odyssey Cassone Panels’, 77.

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and of Ronsard, aged 20.58 Following the death of Lazare de Baïf in 1547, Dorat obtained a teaching post at the Collège de Coqueret, where another (soon to be famous) pupil, Joachim du Bellay, joined his classes. He remained at Coqueret until 1556, when he became the new lecteur royal de grec (‘royal reader in Greek’). While at Coqueret, he taught his students how to read—especially Homer—allegorically. Ronsard wrote some fairly famous verses about his teacher, saying that Dorat M’apprist la Poësie, et me monstra comment On doit feindre et cacher les fables proprement, Et à bien desguiser la verité des choses D’un fabuleux manteau dont elles sont encloses (Taught me poetry, and showed me how One must certainly fain and hide fables And disguise well the truth of things Under a fabulous cloak that encloses them).59

Another of Dorat’s students, whose name has been lost to history, took relatively rigorous notes, in Latin, about Dorat’s teachings on the Odyssey, which Philip Ford recently published.60 Dorat, who relies much on the science of etymology in his exegetical efforts, most often eschews focused moral readings in preference for more global strategies of allegorization in which, as Ford has summarized, ‘les errances d’Ulysse représentent le périple de l’âme humaine qui retourne à la patrie céleste’ (‘Odysseus’ wanderings represent the journey of the human soul as it returns to its heavenly home’).61 French humanists, then, were very close to the tradition of Saint Basil and Leonardo Bruni, discussed above. Dorat also offers a specific way of understanding Odysseus: ‘Ulysses potest significare Politicum qui ad patriam aspicit id est ad foecilitatem civilem’ (‘Odysseus can stand for the statesman who looks after his homeland, i.e. who watches over the happiness of his people’).62 Dorat adds that ‘Et servasse cupit socios, id est cives suos in officio continere et justicia’ (‘Odysseus wants to protect his people, i.e. to keep his citizens within duty and justice’).63 Odysseus, no longer pellax, no longer guilty of arte, is here rehabilitated as a prudent statesman. Sylvie Béguin, Jean Guillaume, and Alain Roy had suggested, even before the notes of Dorat’s student had been made available, that, in the simplest summary, 58 The following details are from Philip Ford’s introduction to his edition of Jean Dorat’s Mythologicum. See also Jean Vignes, ‘Jean Dorat et Jean-Antoine de Baïf ’, in Christine de Buzon and Jean-Eudes Girot (eds), Jean Dorat, poète humaniste de la Renaissance: Actes du Colloque international (Limoges, 6–8 juin 2001) (Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 420; Geneva: Droz, 2007), 19–46. 59 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ii. 561; vv. 79–82. 60 Other notes have also been published. On Dorat’s teaching about Pindar, see Peter Sharratt, ‘Ronsard et Pindare: Un écho de la voix de Dorat’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 39 (1977), 97–114. 61 Ford, ‘Introduction’, p. xxii. See also Pierre de Nolhac, Ronsard et l’humanisme (Paris: Champion, 1921), 71–2. See also Philip Ford, ‘Jean Dorat et l’allégorie homérique’, in Buzon and Girot (eds), Jean Dorat, poète humaniste de la Renaissance, 185–97. 62 Dorat, Mythologicum, 8. 63 Dorat, Mythologicum, 8.

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Odysseus in the Fontainebleau gallery represents the virtue of prudentia and the perfect prince, in the line of writers such as Budé, Erasmus, and Michel de l’Hospital.64 To be prudens is to have foresight, to be wise, knowing, sagacious, sensible. Budé had spoken of the Odyssey as providing ‘semina theologiae’ (‘seeds of a theology’) and of Odysseus as a ‘vir prudens’ (a prudent man) who was ‘de sua salute propinquorumque et sociorium anxius’ (‘concerned for his salvation and that of his neighbours and crewmen’).65 We are in the domain of Aristotelian phronesis (çæ ÅØ), as defined in the Nicomachean Ethics, a form of practical wisdom (defined in opposition to sophia ( çÆ)): whereas the latter deals with universal truths, the former relates to decision-making within the world as it is—in that, it is the appanage of those who look after the ºØ—that is, politicians and princes.66 Dorat’s teaching emphasized how Odysseus, as a statesman, must fight through many battles. In this, Dorat’s understanding of Odysseus differs from Du Bellay’s, as Marc Bizer has shown. Du Bellay’s recasting of Odysseus would be somewhat different. For Dorat, Odysseus is a kind of Christian sage and statesman; Du Bellay, in his famous sonnet—‘Heureux qui comme Ulysse . . . ’ (‘Happy is he who, like Odysseus . . . ’)—‘rejects Dorat’s principle according to which a statesman must sacrifice his own well-being for the happiness of those who are in his charge’.67 Dorat’s Odysseus is more of a self-abnegator. As another of Dorat’s students, Guillaume Canter, summarized: Ulysses igitur, ne longum faciam, proponitur ab Homero vir non tam sapiens aut felix, nisi quantum humanae res ferunt, quam verae sapientiae ac felicitatis (haec enim Penelope est, haec Ithaca) studiosus. (In brief summary, then, Homer presents Odysseus less as a model of the wise or happy man, unless it is in the sense of what is natural within human affairs, namely that he is anxious for true wisdom and happiness, i.e. Penelope and Ithaca.)68

Although Dorat in some ways echoed Budé, his emphasis was on a holistic interpretation of the Odyssey, rather than on allegorizing individual episodes.69 Turning back to the paintings at Fontainebleau, it is not difficult to locate in the gallery’s Odysseus traces of his prudence as a leader—and it quickly becomes evident to what extent the gallery presents itself as a reading of an epic text, rather than a mere ‘illustration’. As in Homer’s narrative, Odysseus clearly takes the lead as he and his companions set off from Troy. It is he who makes a sacrifice to the gods, he who leads the combat against the Cicones, he who grabs a Lotus-eater by the hair, and so forth. It is, after all, the Galerie d’Ulysse and not the Galerie de l’Odyssée. Odysseus’ collaboration with his companions, leading in a spirit of prudenita, is 64 Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 105. On the notion of the perfect prince, see also McGowan, Ideal Forms, passim. 65 Quoted in Ford, ‘Homer in the French Renaissance,’ 10, 12. 66 Francis Goyet provides a useful student of this and related concepts in Montaigne in his Les Audaces de la prudence: Littérature et politique aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2009). 67 Bizer, ‘Du Bellay’s Most Famous Sonnet’, 373. 68 Guillaume Canter, Novarum lectionum libri septem (Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1571), 260. Quoted in Ford, De Troie à Ithaque, 225. 69 Ford, ‘Homer in the French Renaissance,’ 16.

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Figure 1.6. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and Companions Blind Polyphemus. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

particularly clear in one image (Figures 1.6 and 1.7), which shows Odysseus and his companions blinding Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon. Comparison with Homer reveals just how close the image is to its textual source: ‘reeling, [Polyphemus] fell back upon his back, and lay there with his thick neck bent aslant, and sleep that conquers all laid hold of him.’70 Primaticcio does not represent the giant’s drunken vomiting, but returns to Homer’s text for the image of Odysseus collaborating with and leading his companions.71 Homer underscores grammatically Odysseus’ connection with his companions. First he writes how ‘[Odysseus’companions ( ÆEæØ)] took the stake of olivewood, sharp at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I [Kªg], throwing my weight upon it from above, whirled it round, as a man bores a ship’s timber with a drill, while those below kept it spinning with the strap’.72 They combine with I to form the following we: ‘we 70

Homer, Odyssey 9:371–2. Homer, Odyssey 9:372–4: ‘And from his gullet came forth wine and human flesh, and he vomited in his drunken sleep.’ 72 Homer, Odyssey 9:381–86. 71

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Figure 1.7. Detail of Figure 1.6. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and Companions Blind Polyphemus. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

took the fiery-pointed stake and whirled it around in his eye.’73 This same collaboration, with Odysseus leading, is what Primaticcio depicts (Figures 1.6 and 1.7). He was not the first to do this, but the arrangement of the three men (Odysseus and his two companions) certainly highlights their collaboration, while still putting Odysseus above, as a leader of men.74 Other scenes in the gallery also underscore Odysseus’ leadership. In Figure 1.8, as Odysseus and his companions try to escape Polyphemus’ lair, Odysseus’ care for his fellow men again takes centre stage: ‘I took thought how all might be the very best, if I might find some way of escape from death for my comrades and myself [ ÆæØØ . . . M
 Kd ÆPfiH].’75 The word ÆEæ is essential here and throughout the Polyphemus and other episodes, for it relates to a comrade or companion, 73

Homer, Odyssey 9:387–88. See, e.g., the Eleusis amphora (Museum of Eleusis), which shows Odysseus and a companion blinding Polyphemus. 75 Homer, Odyssey 9:420–2. 74

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Figure 1.8. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and Companions Flee from Polyphemus. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

but more specifically in Homer to the ‘follower of a chief ’.76 Primaticcio’s depiction shows Odysseus in the bottom left of the image, holding tightly onto a ram. The centrality of Odysseus to the story and his relationship to his ÆEæØ (Homer) or socii (Budé) are what the gallery takes up. As Philip Ford has noted, “the original idea for the gallery probably came too early for any input but Dorat, but as the decoration proceeded it would have been surprising if the future poète royal and interprète du roi did not have some influence’.77 In terms of the gallery’s overall politico-historical significance, one more question must be addressed. As noted above, Claude Mignot identifies several key moments at which the gallery takes on historical meaning, culminating during the reign of Charles IX in a renewal and intensification of the connections between the gallery 76 In other contexts, the term can describe a pupil/discipline, to a political ally (Henry George Liddell (ed.), A Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)). 77 Ford, ‘Homer in the French Renaissance’, 18. See Ford’s similar comment in De Troie à Ithaque, 270.

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and contemporary France. As Mignot has argued, under Charles IX and Catherine de Médicis, Henri II’s ‘narrative gallery’ morphed into a ‘political machine’, which told the tale of royal vengeance against rebel subjects.78 Mignot points to the addition of the following painting, Charles IX assis sur son trône et les habitants du Havre-de-grâce à genoux à ses pieds qui lui en présentent les clefs (‘Charles IX Seated on his Throne with the Inhabitants of Le Havre on their Knees at his Feet, offering him the Keys to their City’).79 The painting, recently identified at Montauban’s Musée Ingrès, shows a town by the sea whose inhabitants are on their knees presenting a key to Charles IX, who is accompanied by his brother Henri, Duke of Orléans and by the future Henri III, as well as by their mother, Catherine de Médicis.80 The subject of the painting is the coming-together of French Huguenots with the royal Catholic army to fight off and chase out the English invaders, a victory that was brought about—according to an inscription on a black marble tablet that apparently used to be placed next to the painting—‘Sous les auspices du Roi très-chrétien, Charles IX, et par les conseils et la rare Prudence de Catherine, Reine-mère’ (‘Under the Patronage of the Most Christian King, Charles IX, and by the Advice and Rare Prudentia of Catherine, the Queen Mother’).81 The picture once again partakes of the prudential theme, thus connecting leadership of Charles IX and his mother to that of Odysseus, illustrated in the rest of the gallery. Such a political reading of the gallery stems from contemporary understandings of the figure of Odysseus. But other layers of meaning are also detectable, some of which are meta-poetic and which offer, I argue, a reflection on the rediscovery of epic as a parallel to the rediscovery of classical forms in other arts, especially architecture. Figures 1.9 and 1.10 are a case in point. They show Odysseus arriving back home. The first captures the moment when Odysseus’ dog, Argos, recognizes his master.82 Argos, who had been lying on the floor and ‘full of dog ticks’, now wags his tail on hearing Odysseus’ voice.83 Odysseus looks down at his dog, then moves into his ‘stately house [
ı s ÆØ Æ]’.84 The second depicts Odysseus again outside his house and (probably) facing his servant Melantho, who scolds him and threatens him with a torch.85 There are differences between the Homeric text and Primaticcio’s images. Homer writes that Argos was not able to move towards Odysseus, because he lacked strength to move, causing Odysseus to cry—he has to wipe away a tear.86 It is, however, the setting of the actions rather Mignot, ‘Fontainebleau revisité’, 14. The title is based on the description of the painting given in Pierre Guilbert, Description historique des chateau bourg et forest de Fontainebleau, contenant une explication historique des peintures, tableaux, reliefs, statuës, ornemens qui s’y voyent; & la vie des architectes, peintres & sculpteurs qui y ont travaillé. Enrichie de plusieurs plans & figures (2 vols; Paris: chez André Cailleau, 1731), ii. 24 [Arsenal 8-H-13449(1) and (2)]. 80 For a reproduction and description of the discovery of this painting, see Jean-Claude Boyer, ‘La Reddition de la ville du Havre de Nicolo dell’Abate: La Composition manquante de la galerie d’Ulysse de Fontainebleau identifiée’, Revue de l’Art, 123 (1999), 71–2. 81 Quoted in Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 104. 82 Homer, Odyssey 17:290–330. 83 Homer, Odyssey 17:300. 84 Homer, Odyssey 17:324. 85 Homer, Odyssey 19:65–9. 86 Homer, Odyssey 17:301–5. 78 79

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Figure 1.9. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus is Recognized by his Dog. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

than the actions themselves that forces the modern viewer to search for meaning. Homer refers to Odysseus’ house, as already seen, as being s ÆØ Æ, which might be rendered as ‘stately’ or, more closely, ‘comfortable’.87 Various elements in Figures 1.9 and 1.10—the classical architecture, the pair of sphinxes, the halfdemolished column—suggest, however, that the architecture depicted by Primaticcio alludes most overtly to the rediscovery of classical forms in Renaissance France. The classicizing influence flowed, of course, from Italy, especially from the likes of Bramante, Raphael, and others. And the exchange became particularly pronounced starting in the 1530s. One of the first manifestations of the revival of ancient forms in France took place in Toulouse in 1535, when ancient-style triumphal arches—decorated according to the Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric orders—were erected to welcome François Ier into the city. Bit by bit, the influence 87 The following (now old) article shows just how much disagreement there has been about the layout and nature of Odysseus’ palace: Samuel E. Bassett, ‘The Palace of Odysseus’, American Journal of Archaeology, 23/3 (July–September 1919), 288–311.

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Figure 1.10. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and the Servant. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

would spread, culminating in buildings like Pierre Lescot’s new Louvre.88 On another, related, level, one thinks of François Ier’s veritable passion for collecting antiquities, from Florence, Lyons, Nîmes, or elsewhere—but especially Rome. He sent money to Rome in exchange for original statues or, when they were not available, for copies. Informed contemporary visitors to the château, such as André Thevet, spoke of these works with great admiration.89 Gabriel Symeoni saw the king’s collection as ‘a regeneration of Rome, transferred to France’.90 And we should also keep in mind the arrival in France of Sebastiano Serlio—to whom I return later in this chapter—and the publication in 1547 of the first French translation of Vitruvius, realized by Jean Martin.91 The newness of the antiquestyle conceptualization of ornaments is visible in the translator’s need to paraphrase 88

See Lemerle and Pauwels, L’Architecture à la Renaissance, ch. 9. McGowan, The Vision of Rome, 62. 90 McGowan, The Vision of Rome, 64. 91 Vitruvius, Architecture, ou Art de bien bastir de Marc Vitruve Pollion . . . mis de latin en françoys par Jan Martin (Paris: J. Gazeau, 1547). 89

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and forge neologisms.92 When we look then at Figures 1.9 and 1.10, we see an epic Odysseus amid a landscape all’antica, which is a kind of manifesto for France’s current architectural aesthetics and priorities—and a mise en abyme of its contemporary rediscovery. As for the sphinxes, we must note that interest in the classical regularity of Rome and Athens was also accompanied by a passion for things Egyptian. Pierre Belon visited Egypt in 1553 and, on his return, published descriptions of the Pyramids and the Sphinx.93 But already before that, there were Egyptianizing decorations at Fontainebleau, notably in the Pavillon des Armes (or Pavillon de l’Horloge), at the Porte des Aumonières, opposite the Jardin de Diane: either side of the doorway are Egyptianizing terms supporting an entablature, carried out by either Rosso, Primaticcio, or Serlio, in the 1530s or 1540s.94 In the Fontainebleau gardens, too, one comes across sixteenth-century huge-breasted sphinxes. Sphinxes of one form or another can also be seen at the Château de Chenonceau, at the Château d’Anet, and elsewhere in Renaissance France.95 Late sixteenth-century illustrations of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata would also contain a similar admixture of the classical and the Egyptianizing.96 Perhaps based on the sphinxes that Primaticcio designed for the Cortile del Belvedere in Rome, those present in the Galerie d’Ulysse thus serve to associate an epic text with the rediscovery of classical forms, as well as with Fontainebleau’s very own gardens.97 The way in which an epic story here develops via images that chart the rediscovery of classical forms can also be examined through several other moments in the series. Figure 1.11 relates to the moment when Odysseus, accompanied by his son Telemachus and by his two friends Eumaeus and Philoetius, sets about killing the suitors who had been pursuing Penelope in his absence, accompanying his gesture with a clear explanation: ‘You dogs [Œ ], you thought that I should never again come home from the land of the Trojans, seeing that you wasted my house, and lay with the maidservants by force, and while I as still alive covertly courted my wife . . . Now over you one and all the cords of destruction [OºŁæı] have been made fast.’98 The two images translate this destruction by showing muscular and almost naked fighters, whose depiction is much beholden to Italian mannerism. Once the killing is done, an aged Eurycleia announces to Penelope that Odysseus is

92 Frédérique Lemerle, ‘L’Architecture ou Art de bien bastir de Vitruve, traduit par Jean Martin à Paris chez Jacques Gazeau Françoys, en 1547’, in Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon, Architecture et imprimerie (Lyons: Mémoire Active, 2004), 418–19, and, by the same author, ‘Jean Martin et le vocabulaire d’architecture’, in Jean Martin: Un traducteur au temps de François Ier et de Henri II (Paris: Presses de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1999), 113–26. 93 James Stevens Curl, The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West (New York: Routledge, 2005), 119. 94 Curl, The Egyptian Revival, 120–1 and figure 45. 95 Curl, The Egyptian Revival, 122. 96 Rensselaer W. Lee, ‘Observations on the First Illustrations of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 125/5 (1 October 1981), 341. 97 See Lusia Capodieci, ‘De l’antre de Polyphème aux bras de Pénélope’, in Capodieci and Ford (eds), Homère à la Renaissance, 205–08. 98 Homer, Odyssey 22:35–41.

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Figure 1.11. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus and his Supporters Fight the Suitors. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

back: ‘He has killed the proud suitors who troubled his house [ e r Œ ], and devoured his property, and oppressed his son.’99 Odysseus destroys the suitors to reclaim his home, the concrete realization of his  or homecoming. In Homer’s text, Odysseus and his companions make sure that the suitors cannot escape, by positioning themselves by the doors. The setting for the fighting is the ªÆæ (main hall), which can refer, more specifically, to ‘the men’s dining hall, the chief room of the Homeric house’.100 The seemingly tiled floor in Figure 1.11 is an obvious trace of the Renaissance’s rediscovery of perspective, in that it orchestrates a clear vanishing point.101 Although Brunelleschi was probably the 99

Homer, Odyssey 23:8–9. Homer, Odyssey 17:325 (when Odysseus first enters into his house and heads straight to the main room); 23:120; 23:274. Entry ‘ªÆæ ’ in Georg Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1891). 101 On the discovery of perspective, see Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 1975), and Lawrence Wright, Perspective in Perspective (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983). 100

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first to understand how parallel lines in a plane converge to a single vanishing point, it was Alberti who first wrote down the rules of perspective, in his De pictura (On Painting) (1435). The term used for tiled floors à la Alberti in Renaissance painting is pavimento. As has been noted, Alberti’s rules on perspective take up only a small part of the treatise and their aim was rather practical, to ‘help the individual painter with the main business at hand: the decorous enhancement of his figures and compositions, the lending of spatial order to his istoria’.102 Odysseus’ homecoming on the wall of the Fontainebleau gallery thus also depicts a return of classical perspective. Alberti, moreover, knew his Homer. And in the De pictura he mentions Homer as one of various ancient authors to whom painters should look for inspiration.103 To conclude these thoughts on the Galerie d’Ulysse, we must turn back to questions of narrative. Indeed, the most surprising moment in Primaticcio’s depiction of Odysseus’ homecoming is located, for this viewer, in moments when Odysseus and Penelope are in bed (Figures 1.12 and 1.13). In book 23, the bed is essential in Penelope’s recognizing that this recently arrived stranger is in fact her husband: Penelope says to move the bed, and Odysseus cries out that the bed cannot be moved, for he made it himself from an olive tree of which it is part: ‘Hard would it be even for someone of great skill, unless a god should come and easily of his own choice set it in another place.’104 Short of divine intervention, however, the bed cannot move to this potential other place, in must remain in situ, as part of the olive tree: ‘A bush of long-leafed olive was growing within the court, strong and vigorous, and in girth it was like a pillar. Round about this I built by chamber [ŁºÆ ].’105 We have moved from the ªÆæ (main hall) to the ŁºÆ (inner room or chamber). Odysseus describes his craftsmanship in some detail: I cut away the leafy branches of the long-leafed olive, and, trimming the trunk from the root up, I smoothed it round about with the adze well and cunningly, and trued it to the line, thus fashioning the bedpost [ æE '] . . . made smooth the timbers of my bed, until I had it done, inlaying it with gold and silver and ivory, and I stretched on it a thong of ox hide, bright with purple.106

The fact that the bedpost ( æ) is still part of the olive tree is not merely decorative—it defines Odysseus’ identity, as much as the scar on his thigh by which Eurycleia recognized the hero in book 19.107 Both are signs or semata. Ann Bergren has studied the connections in Homer’s text between Odysseus’ return to Penelope and questions of gender and architecture, affirming that the ‘(re)marriage

102

Edgerton, Linear Perspective, 50. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 126. 104 Homer, Odyssey 23:184–6. The word åæÆ refers to ‘the space in which a thing is’ (Liddell (ed.), A Greek–English Lexicon). 105 Homer, Odyssey 23:190–2. 106 Homer, Odyssey 23:195–201. 107 See Erich Auerbach’s now classic reading of this moment in his Mimesis, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), ch. 1. 103

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Figure 1.12. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus Recounts his Adventures to Penelope. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

of Penelope and Odysseus . . . tells a myth of architectural origin’.108 Via this bed, made by his own hands, Odysseus becomes the ‘architect of his [and Penelope’s] identity’.109 Bergren’s central point is that the ‘bed is a sign of the Odyssean ideal of architecture, gender, and philosophy in and as immovable (re)marriage’.110 The bed allows the couple to recognize each other and is a concrete marker of the immovability not just of the bed, but of their relationship. It has been stated that ‘the lost mural appears to have been exceptionally attentive to the Homeric epic’ and that there Primaticcio is incredibly ‘faithful’ to the text.111 However, it is fairly obvious that nothing in Figures 1.12 and 1.13 resembles the bed and bedpost

108 Ann Bergren, ‘The (Re)Marriage of Penelope and Odysseus Architecture Gender Philosophy’, Assemblage, 21 (August 1993), 9. For other recent readings of the importance of Odysseus’ bed, see Eduardo González, ‘Odysseus’s Bed and Cleopatra’s Mattress (69)’, MLN 119/5 (December 2004), 930–48. 109 Bergren, ‘(Re)Marriage’, 9. 110 Bergren, ‘(Re)Marriage’, 19. 111 Giancarlo Fiorenza, ‘Penelope’s Web: Francesco Primaticcio’s Epic Revision at Fontainebleau’, Renaissance Quarterly, 59/3 (2006), 801. Béguin, Guillaume, and Roy, La Galerie d’Ulysse, 307.

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Figure 1.13. Theodoor van Thulden, after Primaticcio, Odysseus Falls Asleep next to Penelope. In Les Travaux d’Ulysse (1635). (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

described by Homer. Whereas Odyssey panels for the marriage chest would have been ‘placed at the sides of the nuptial bed . . . to be a daily reminder of the antique ideal of a man and wife’, there is nothing marriage-like about the meeting of Odysseus and Penelope in the Galerie d’Ulysse.112 The bed is no longer a marker of place—the æ no longer relates to a specific åæÆ—rather, it is just a bed, a bed for love-making and for narrative. The emphasis seems to be elsewhere—on the pleasure of being back at home, in peace, following a storm.113 The prudent leader had made it home and restored peace. Such is the message provided by the caption on Van Thulden’s version of the image. The Odyssean gallery at Fontainebleau, although now destroyed, thus still offers up a set of overlapping meanings Miziołek, ‘The Odyssey Cassone Panels’, 78. See the caption that accompanies Figure 1.12: ‘vlysse estant au lict auec Penelope, luy fait vn ample recit de ses aduentures; Et son propre exemple luy donne à connoistre, Qu’il y a du plaisir à s’entretenir de la tempeste quand on se void dans le calme’ (‘Ulysses, in bed with Penelope, tells her an ample tale of his adventures; and his own example yields the knowledge that, There is pleasure in discussing the storm once one finds oneself now in a place of calm’). 112 113

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that are neither lifted directly from Homer, nor invented ex nihilo by the gallery’s patrons or artisans. Rather, the gallery problematizes its own relationship to classical models and reworks particular Homeric episodes through the lens of Renaissance hermeneutics. As we shall now see, it was not only French kings who would reconfigure ancient epic in new French contexts.

THE FIREPLACE OF HELL: VIRGIL A T O IR ON Better remembered as the probable setting for Charles Perrault’s tale Le Chat botté (1695), known in English as Puss in Boots, the Château d’Oiron (Figure 1.14), situated in the Deux-Sèvres département of western France, is also the location of an epic Galerie du Grand Ecuyer (Gallery of the Grand Squire). Within it, fourteen images take up key moments of the Trojan War and of Aeneas’ descent into the underworld.114 The still extant gallery (Figure 1.15), decorated between 1546 and 1549, is 55 metres in length and 6.5 metres wide. It constitutes a provincial echo of the politics and epic aesthetics of Fontainebleau. The pictures, most likely designed by Noël Jallier, were not frescoes as is often noted, but distemper paintings—that is, made from pigments bound together with some sort of glue (egg, oil, animal fats, and so on) and applied to dry plaster.115 Jean Guillaume has called the edifice a ‘Fontainebleau poitevin’ and Anthony Blunt has referred to the series as one of ‘the most impressive decorations of the period’.116 As we shall see, the gallery does not take up one epic text in particular; rather, it combines Homeric, Virgilian (and, indeed, Euripidean and other) elements, creating nevertheless a relatively coherent space from disparate sources. Before we analyse the gallery’s possible meanings, it is useful to say a few words about Claude Gouffier, whose choice it was to have such a gallery at Oiron, and to give a general overview of the paintings. Claude Gouffier, then, was the son of Artus Gouffier (the gouverneur of the young Count of Angoulême, the future François Ier) and Hélène de Hangest. By 1545, he had been made captain of the Cent gentilshommes de la maison du roi. A year later, he was named grand écuyer du roi. Approximately equivalent to the position of Master of the Horse in England, Gouffier’s position made him 114 The key sources for this gallery, referenced throughout this section, are Eveline Schlumberger, ‘Les Fresques restaurées du château d’Oiron’, Connaissance des Arts (October 1969), 84–93; Emile Rostain, Denise Canard, and Alain Labrousse, Le Château d’Oiron Renaissance: La Guerre de Troie retrouvée (Paris: Hachette, 1974); Jean Guillaume, ‘Oiron: Fontainebleau poitevin’, Monuments historiques (February 1979), 76–93, and, by the same author, La Galerie du grand écuyer: L’Histoire de Troie au château d’Oiron (n.p.: Editions Patrimoines et Médias, 1996); Jean Hubert Martin, Le Château d’Oiron et son cabinet de curiosités (Paris: Editions du patrimoine, 2000). 115 Nothing is known of Noël Jallier. He is known only for his work at Oiron. Anthony Blunt notes (Art and Architecture in France: 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 70) that he is ‘an artist otherwise unrecorded’. 116 Guillaume, ‘Oiron’; Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture, 70–1. Blunt compares their style to various Roman decorations of the 1540s, in particular Daniele da Volterra’s frames in the Vatican’s Sala Regia and Salviati’s decorations for the Palazzo Sachhetti.

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Figure 1.14. The Château d’Oiron as it stands today. (# Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, Philippe Berthé.)

responsible for the royal stable and, more generally, for the transport of the king and the royal entourage, as well as for horse breeding throughout France and for provincial military academies. His role as écuyer is directly referenced by the large number of horses depicted in the gallery. Following the death of his mother in 1538, he busied himself with various architectural and artistic enterprises, bringing marble from Italy for his father’s tomb, finishing the façade and other aspects of the château’s church, and demolishing the left part of the main building to replace it with newer elements, such as a turning staircase of the kind more famously present at Chenonceau.117 The gallery, commissioned in 1546, was part of this moment of artistic renewal at Oiron. Given the importance of epic themes at Fontainebleau, as discussed above, it is not difficult to see why Gouffier would have wished for something similar. The gallery is in a most concrete sense an extension of Fontainebleau in that it is dedicated to two kings of France: the gallery’s three earliest paintings carry the monogram and device of François Ier (who died in 1547); all the remaining ones include a figuring of Henri II and the linked crescents associated

117

Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 10–11.

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Figure 1.15. The Galerie du Grand Ecuyer at the Château d’Oiron. (# Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, Jean-Luc Paillé.)

with the House of Orléans and with Diane de Poitiers, the king’s mistress.118 The gallery begins with a kind of prologue (Figure 1.16) by which Gouffier and Jallier dedicate the space to François Ier.119 This prologue, fitted around the gallery’s entrance door, features three images: a winged Pegasus in the centre, Apollo on the left, and a warrior god on the right (probably Mars or Minerva). Pegasus, the ‘swiftflying’ horse, the horse god capable of giving birth to inspiring springs with each placement of a hoof on the earth, perhaps echoes moreover the écuyer’s own importance and influence via the horses of the royal stables.120 The fact that Pegasus’ hooves created the Hippocrene, the sacred fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon, is also significant, and indeed Pegasus was a favourite figure in the sixteenth century for alluding to poetic talent—here, one assumes, that of Homer and, especially, Virgil.121 Pegasus was, moreover, commonly seen as a figure of la 118

Rostain, Canard, and Labrousse, Le Château d’Oiron, 60. Dedication to the king of non-royal spaces was not particular to Oiron. In 1544, the Cardinal Du Bellay has made a similar dedication at Saint-Maur (Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 24). 120 Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, coll. Loeb Library, 1951), 4:786. 121 For an overview of Pegasus in the sixteenth century, see Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l’art profane (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 119–20. One can note in passing that Pegasus was used as his 119

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Figure 1.16. The Galerie du Grand Ecuyer at the Château d’Oiron. Prologue. Distemper painting, attributed to Noël Jallier (c.1540). (# Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, Jean-Luc Paillé.)

Renommée or Fame, as in Henri II’s royal entrance at Rouen in 1550. Apollo and Mars–Minerva clearly aim to suggest François Ier’s excellence in the arts and at war.122 A partially destroyed inscription textualizes the encomiastics, calling the king ‘Francisco Valesio Gallorum Regi | Christianissimo invictiss poten- | tissimo Principi’ (‘François de Valois, King of the French, the most Christian king, most invincible and most powerful’), gifted with great prudentia (‘foresight, wisdom’), fortitudo (‘physical strength, courage’), and justicia.123 The provincial gallery, then, is certainly a gallery space under royal patronage and dedicated to specific kingly virtues, not dissimilar from those celebrated at Fontainebleau. The remaining thirteen paintings that follow the prologue depict (1) the assembly of the gods (2) at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, at which took place the famous beauty contest between Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite; the judgment of

printer’s mark by Christian Wechel. See also the depiction of Apollo and Pegasus in the Galerie d’Ulysse. 122 Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 24–5. 123 Quoted in Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 23.

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Paris124 (3), the abduction of Helen (4), the sacrifice of Iphigenia (5), a battle scene (6a) that begins a series of six paintings dealing specifically with the Trojan War, Patroclus’ funeral pyre (6b), more battle scenes (7), one-on-one combat between Paris and Menelaus (8), the death of Hector (9), the Trojan Horse (10), the flight of Aeneas from Troy (11), the arms and battles of Aeneas (12), the golden bough (13) with which Aeneas would cross into the underworld, and finally Aeneas in hell (14). Although the gallery is somewhat heterogeneous, Jean Guillaume has suggested that an overall reading of the gallery can be made. The absence of any assertion of Trojan origins for the French is significant and points the viewer in another direction—namely, that of an evolution leading from the first paintings which evoke men’s shortcomings and cruelty (2–4), to the central paintings about battles and the misfortune of those who lose (5–9), and finally to the figure of a hero (Aeneas) who becomes wise and finds salvation (10–14).125 In a word, and as other elements of the gallery confirm, Paris committed an error. The progression is thus clearly from disorder and ignorance to order and (self-)knowledge. The inscriptions that accompany the paintings seem indeed to support just such a reading. Guillaume’s analysis is convincing. Indeed, the inscription accompanying the assembly of the gods (1) alludes to the tragic consequences of Paris’s selecting Aphrodite as the fairest goddess, echoing Aeneid 1:27; the inscription for the judgment of Paris (2) underlines how the latter lacks sound judgment: ‘Jupiter eripuit Paridis de pectore mentem | judice quo Priami flammas in regiam adegit’ (‘Jupiter ripped good judgment from Paris’s mind; with that, he set fire to Paris’s palace’).126 The subject is the sacrifice of Iphigenia (5), accompanied by a quote from the Aeneid—‘Sanguine placastis ventos et virgine caesa’ (‘With the blood of a slain virgin you appeased the winds’), an allusion to Agamemnon’s fault.127 The middle paintings (5–6) show the battles and struggles of Patroclus, Paris and Menelaus, Hector, and Aeneas (12). But it is really with the final (and fully Aeneid) section of the decorative programme around which the interpretation turns, to which question I shall return shortly. It must first be underscored that the gallery relies on various literary sources. The establishment of the Oiron gallery comes shortly after Hélisenne de Crenne’s translation of Les Quatre Premiers Livres des Eneydes du treselegant poete Virgile (1541) and was contemporaneous with the growth of interest in, and study of, Greek language and literature, signalled among other things by Hugues Salel’s French translation of the Iliad (1545). And, indeed, the most important Greek source for the gallery is, of course, Homer’s Iliad, although the paintings rarely follow the text directly, and it is the further connection with the Aeneid that gives the gallery its final meaning.128 To take one example, the battle between Paris and

124 The judgment of Paris, familiar to Homer’s audience and hence concisely recounted at Iliad 24:25–30, would later be rewritten in Ovid, Heroides 16 and elsewhere. 125 Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 60. 126 Quoted in Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 29. 127 Virgil, Aeneid 2:116. 128 See, e.g. Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 33.

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Figure 1.17. The Galerie du Grand Ecuyer at the Château d’Oiron. Combat Scene (Paris and Menelaus). Distemper painting, attributed to Noël Jallier (c. 1540). (Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, Jean-Luc Paillé.)

Menelaus (9; Figure 1.17) at Oiron becomes a somewhat simple battle between two soldiers—moreover somewhat small in size compared to the imposingly muscular horses from which onlookers observe the battle.129 If anything, the message here seems to be that good soldiers depend very much on their grand écuyer. Oiron’s version is, in addition, much closer to the description in Lemaire’s Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye, based largely on Dictys.130 While Oiron is contemporaneous with the return to Greek sources that characterizes this moment of the Renaissance, it signals the continued importance of those sources already available throughout the Middle Ages. Virgil’s Aeneid is the second—and arguably overall most important—source for the gallery. Virgil’s presence is first felt in the (sometimes modified) quotations from the Aeneid that are included in the cartouches of the Iliadic sections of the ensemble, in relation to the Trojan Horse episode (10): ‘vectus equus mediaeque minans inlabitur urbi | Talibus insidiis periurique arte Sinonis’ (‘The horse, dragged 129

Guillaume, La Galerie du grand écuyer, 37–8. Jean Lemaire de Belges, Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye, ed. Pierre Jodogne (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1972), ii. 181. 130

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on, slides menacingly into the city’s midst | Thanks to the insidious ruses and skillful perjury of Sinon’).131 More important still is the fact that the Aeneid becomes the essential source for the gallery’s final paintings (11–14), essential for the overall meaning of the gallery if we are to read it as Jean Guillaume suggests. Panel 11 depicts Aeneas’ flight from Troy, with father Anchises on his shoulders and holding his son Ascanius by the hand, in the position now familiar to us from Raphael’s Fire in the Borgo (1514). The picture is accompanied by two lines from the Aeneid: ‘quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando | explicet aut possit lacrimis aequare labores?’ (‘Who could unfold in speech that night’s havoc? Who its carnage? Who could match our toils with tears?’).132 Two women painted on the left and right sides of the trompe-l’œil cry with despair, their ankles attached.133 Panel 12 shows Vulcan forging the arms of Aeneas,134 including the (not depicted) shield based on Achilles’ shield in the Iliad.135 Scenes to the left and right hint, in somewhat general terms, at Aeneas’ arrival in, and conquest of, Italy. The subject of panel 13, whose original state is largely hidden behind the unrelated scene chosen by Louis Gouffier, was the golden bough—that is, the tree branch with golden leaves that Aeneas was instructed by the Sibyl to find so that he might safely cross through the underworld: ‘sed non ante datur telluris operta subire | auricomos quam quis decerpserit arbore fetus’ (‘But it is not given to pass beneath earth’s hidden places, before someone has plucked from the tree the golden-tressed fruitage’).136 It is the final Aeneid panel (14) that really sheds light on the meaning of the whole series and allows for a clearer understanding of how Virgil’s epic is being appropriated here. Of central importance at this juncture is the allegorical tradition of reading initiated by Servius, pursued by Fulgentius (late fifth–early sixth century), and taken up still later by Cristoforo Landino (1424–98).137 For Landino, working from a point of view that owes much to Marsilio Ficino and the Platonic Academy of Florence, the Aeneid, as he interprets it in his Quaestiones camaldulenses (1470),138 is above all about an individual’s progress, from darkness to light,

131 Virgil, Aeneid 2:240, 2:195. Aeneid 2:240 reads ‘illa subit mediaeque minans inlabitur urbi’ (‘Up it moves and glides throughout the city’s midst’). So that it makes sense as an independent quotation, the inscription replaces ‘illa subit’ (‘it moves’) with ‘vectus equus’ (‘the carried/dragged horse’). 132 Virgil, Aeneid 2:361–2. 133 Virgil, Aeneid 2:766. 134 Venus asks Vulcan to make Aeneas a shield at Aeneid 8:370–406; Vulcan sets about making the shield at Aeneid 8:414–15. The description of the shield is at Aeneid 8:608–731. 135 Homer, Iliad 18:478–608. See Michael C. J. Putnam, Virgil’s Epic Designs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), ch. 5. For a different perspective regarding the shield’s sources, see Riemer Faber, ‘Virgil’s “Shield of Aeneas” (8:617–731) and the Shield of Heracles’, Mnemosyne, 4/53 (February 2000). 49–57. 136 Virgil, Aeneid 6:140–1. 137 For a point of departure, see Julian W. Jones, Jr, ‘The Allegorical Traditions of the Aeneid,’ in John D. Bernard (ed.), Vergil at 2000: Commemorative Essays on the Poet and his Influence (New York: AMS Press, 1986), 107–32. 138 See Cristoforo Landino, Camaldulensium disputationum (Paris, 1511). See also Thomas H. Stahel, ‘Cristoforo Landino’s Allegorisation of the Aeneid’, PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1968.

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from vice to virtue, and from ‘lower civic to higher theological virtues’.139 As Don Cameron Allen has summarized, this Aeneas is ‘a man who gradually purged himself of many great vices, learned the marvellous ways of virtue, and, in spite of obstacles, reached his summum bonum, a feat which no man can achieve without wisdom’.140 In such a reading, book 6 is central to the Aeneid’s overall structure, for it is the moment at which virtue is acquired. This way of reading the Aeneid had certain currency in the first half of the sixteenth century in France, traces of which can be found inter alia in Josse Badius’ editions of Virgil’s Opera,141 as well as in the series of enamels created in Limoges (discussed in this book’s Introduction), which equally focus attention on the sixth book.142 Servius placed central importance on the sixth book—‘Totus Vergilius plenus est scientia, in qua hic liber tenet principatum’ (‘All of Virgil is full of knowledge, and above all in this [sixth] book’).143 The 1529 Servius commentary notes, in respect of Aeneas’s encounter with Palinurus in book 6, that ‘prudentiores dicunt animas recentes a corporibus sordidiores esse donec purgentur: quae purgatae incipiunt esse clariores’ (‘Those who are rather more versed [in such matters] say that souls fresh from their bodies are relatively polluted until they are purified: once purified, they begin to be clearer’).144 A glance at the page space of a portion of book 6 in the 1529 edition (Figure 1.18) shows just how much Virgil’s own text was outweighed by allegorical commentary at this point. The Oiron paintings confirm that such is the preferred reading in the details of their composition. The representation of Aeneas in hell—in fact the deep and gloomy pit of Tartarus—is placed next to the gallery’s fireplace (14; Figure 1.19). Such a choice was surely planned, for the hearth’s jumping flames would have made the horror of hell all the more striking. In this hell, one sees many souls wandering along circular walkways. Some make their way upwards, only to fall down eventually into a pit of fire; others, not getting so far, fall into a lake. In the foreground, the viewer sees four souls with contorted bodies and who seemingly cry out in despair. This is not, of course, Virgil’s hell. It will be recalled that, in book 6, the Sibyl describes to Aeneas not a general scene of torment, but rather individual punishments and particular encounters. Although one finds mention, for example, of ‘infantum . . . animae flentes’ (‘the souls of weeping infants’)145—the evocation of a non-particularized plurality—the emphasis throughout is placed squarely on individuals particularized by their punishment or by their role in Aeneas’ trajectory (Palinurus, Dido, 139 Noel L. Brann, The Debate over the Origin of Genius during the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 115. 140 Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 150. 141 On Badius, see Philippe Renouard, Imprimeurs et libraires parisiens du XVIe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1969), ii. 6–24. 142 See Usher, ‘The Aeneid in the 1530s’. 143 Virgil, Opera Virgiliana . . . cvm decem commentis, docte et familiariter exposita . . . Addidimus præterea opusculum aliud, in priapi lusum, quod in antea impressis minime reperitur (Lvgdvni: In typographaria officina Ioannis Crespini, 1529), liber VI, CCLXXIX. [Columbia RBML B87VI B29] 144 Virgil, Opera Virgiliana (1529), liber VI, CCCIIII. 145 Virgil, Aeneid 6:427.

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Figure 1.18. Page from book 4 of the Aeneid, showing text and commentary, from Opera Virgiliana (Lyons, 1529). (Rare Book Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York.)

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Figure 1.19. The Galerie du Grand Ecuyer at the Château d’Oiron. Depiction of Virgil’s Hell. Distemper painting, attributed to Noël Jallier (c.1540). (# Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, Jean-Luc Paillé.)

Anchises, and so on). Even those descriptions that situate a plural presence tend to be highly particularized, as with the Greek casualties of the Trojan War.146 As is also the case in the Limoges enamels from the 1530s, in which emphasis is placed not on the substantial exchange between Aeneas, Palinurus, and the Sibyl,147 but on the

146

Virgil, Aeneid 6:481–5.

147

Virgil, Aeneid 6:337–83.

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description of Charon’s boat and the crowds wishing to be ferried by him,148 so in the Oiron hell, it is the overall infernal topography that predominates, such that a moralized reading of the Aeneid calls attention to itself more than the specific vicissitudes of the story itself.149 According to Landino, Paris dies at Troy because he was controlled by a corrupt form of love; Aeneas, on the other hand, survived because his love, celestial, allowed him to attain wisdom.150 If we see the gallery as offering an allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid, how might this relate to its status as the provincial extension of royal aesthetics and politics? The family devise was ‘Hic terminus haeret’ (this is the final outcome; or, here is the boundary stone). The phrase is used by Dido in the curse she pronounces in book 4 in regards of Aeneas: si tangere portus infandum caput ac terris adnare necesse est, et sic fata Iouis poscunt, hic terminus haeret, at bello audacis populi uexatus et armis, finibus extorris, complexu auulsus Iuli auxilium imploret uideatque indigna suorum funera (If that accursed wretch must needs reach harbour and come to shore, if Jupiter’s ordinances so demand and here is the boundary stone, yet even so, harassed in war by the arms of a fearless nation, expelled from his territory and torn from Iulus’ embrace, let him plead for aid and see his friends cruelly slaughtered!)151

As commentators have noted, Virgil’s use of hic terminus haeret reworks the phrase’s presence in Lucretius.152 Whereas Lucretius’ use of the expression occurs within a triumphant declaration of victory, when Virgil has Dido pronounce the same words, they sum up ‘her defeat by supernatural forces’.153 Dido’s various wishes for Aeneas’ disaster come true—but not in the way she wishes.154 The meaning of the devise has been studied by Jean Guillaume, who suggests that it should be understood as a statement about a Christian’s humility before death, in line with the Gouffier’s choice to be represented as a naked transi on his funeral monument.155 The allegorical Aeneid that concludes the series of paintings, leading from epic mistakes to epic renewal and translating a Christian idea of vice and virtue, here clashes with the humility topos in the squire’s assertion that ‘Hic terminus haeret’. It 148

Virgil, Aeneid 6:298–316. On this part of the Limoges enamels, see Usher, ‘The Aeneid in the 1530s’. Landino, Camaldulensium disputationum, fo. XL vo and fo. XLI ro. 151 Virgil, Aeneid 4:612–18. 152 See the comments in Roland Gregory Austin, P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). 153 This argument is developed by Julia T. Dyson, ‘Dido the Epicurean’, Classical Antiquity, 15/2 (October 1996), 217. 154 For an analysis of this aspect, see Charles E. Murgia, ‘Dido’s Puns’, Classical Philology, 82/1 (January 1987), 53–4. 155 Jean Guillaume, ‘Hic Terminus Haeret: Du terme d’Erasme à la devise de Claude Gouffier. La Fortune d’un emblème à la Renaissance’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 44 (1981), 186–92. 149 150

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might also be possible to assert that the ‘boundary stone’ of the Gouffiers’ devise is rather that of arriving at an Aeneas-like moment of renewal. We see, then, that the gallery at Oiron cannot be understood as simply decorative. Rather, it calls upon those who visit it to piece together various strands, including Homer, Virgil, the idea of political prudentia that already had currency in the Galerie d’Ulysse, the allegorical readings of the type advanced by Landino, the personal appropriation of the Trojan story by an écuyer keen to represent his own importance in matters of war, and so forth. The gallery ‘makes sense’ in the way in which readers struggle to understand how Jallier’s images relate to—which is to say take up and blend—various textual and non-textual elements. The Oiron gallery inscribes itself within the spaces of royal power, while also asserting the authority of the écuyer in his own right.

LUCAN A ND THE CIVIL WARS IN BU RGUNDY Lucan is Caesarian in his ambition, but Pompeian in his remorse ( Jamie Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Civile)156

The final French epic gallery to be discussed in this chapter is the latest chronologically in two ways: it relates not to Homer or Virgil, but to Lucan; and it was the last to be commissioned and built. If the Galerie d’Ulysse and the Galerie du Grand Ecuyer belong to the relatively triumphant reigns of François Ier and Henri II, this final gallery belongs to and speaks for, as we shall see, more troubled times. We shift here to Château Ancy-le-Franc in the heart of Burgundy, where we find—and it is still extent—a Galerie de Pharsale (Pharsalus Gallery, or Pharsalia Gallery), decorated by huge murals depicting the Battle of Pharsalus (48 bce) at which Caesar won victory over Pompey, the subject at the heart of Lucan’s Pharsalia or Civil War (61–5 ce), the Roman epic poem often seen as a kind of disabused response to the triumphalism of the Aeneid. Both the château and the gallery within it must be situated, aesthetically and politically, in relationship to Fontainebleau. It is useful to begin with the building itself, before proceeding into the gallery. The château was built by the Italian architect Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554), better known for his influential theorizations of classical architecture, in particular the orders he treated in his first published work, the Regole generali di architettura sopra le cinque maniere degli edifici (1537).157 This is significant for various reasons, not least of which is the fact that it makes of Ancy-le-Franc that which Fontainebleau might have been—because Serlio, who had sent François Ier a copy of his Regole before 156 Jamie Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Civile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10. 157 For a brief overview of Serlio’s theorization of architectural orders, see Lemerle and Pauwels, L’Architecture à la Renaissance, 118–21. For further details, see Jean-Jacques Gloton, ‘Le Traité de Serlio et son influence en France’, in Jean Guillaume (ed.), Les Traités d’architecture de la Renaissance (Paris: Picard, 1988), 407–24, and Alina Alexandra Payne, The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament and Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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subsequently dedicating to him his Antiquita di Roma (1540),158 found that after an initial invitation to work at Fontainebleau his talents were, so to speak, underemployed. His contributions to Fontainebleau were minimal and his plans for the Louvre were rejected in favour of those of Pierre Lescot.159 Serlio’s Burgundy château stands as a perfect realization of Renaissance architectural ideals: symmetry and order prevail in the shape (a perfect square with four corner towers) and in the elaborate surface decoration (aligned windows, pilasters, and so on).160 Such, indeed, was the judgement of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, who wrote in his anthology-like work detailing France’s ‘most excellent’ buildings, published 1576–9, that ‘[on] diroit presque, en co[n]siderant l’edifice, qu’il a esté tout fait en vn iour, tant il rend de co[n]tenement à l’oeil’ (‘such contentment does it offer the eye that one might almost say, when contemplating the building, that it was built in a single day’).161 That regularity, clearly visible in the illustration that accompanies Du Cerceau’s description (Figure 1.20), is just as obvious and just as visible today (Figure 1.21). An inscription above a small door at the rear of the building tells us when it was completed: soli deo—gloria—1546.162 It was, however, only fifteen or so years later that Serlio’s patron, a certain Antoine III de Clermont, created within it the Galerie de Pharsale (Figure 1.22), an approximately 20-metre-long gallery decorated with ochre-toned murals that depict the Battle of Pharsalus (bataille de Pharsale) and/or Lucan’s Pharsalia (La Pharsale)—the French is ambiguous. Its tone is grandiose and horrific, at once almost sublime and grotesque in its physicality. Experts suggest that the murals were probably realized by Rugiero de’ Rugieri (also written in various other forms, such as Ruggiero (de) Ruggieri and Roger de Rogery), a native of Bologna. If this attribution is exact, then it makes of the Galerie de Pharsale a direct relative of Fontainebleau’s Galerie d’Ulysse, because Rugieri was not only at the heart of a network of Renaissance artists;163 he also played a Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, ‘Serlio à Fontainebleau’, Annali di architettura, 13 (2001), 72. On Serlio’s unhappy tenure at Fontainebleau, see Sabine Frommel, Sebastiano Serlio architetto (Milan: Electa, 1998). 160 For a very brief introduction to the château, see Jean-Louis Gaillemin, ‘Ancy, le premier château Renaissance en France’, Connaissance des Arts, 599 (November 2002), 116–21; François Gébelin, Les Châteaux de la Renaissance (Paris: Les Beaux-arts, 1927), 26, 39–41; Reginald Theodore Blomfield, History of French Architecture (London: G. Bell, 1921), i. 19–20, 63–4. A thorough study is now provided by Arnaud Barbet-Massin and Sabine Frommel, Ancy-le-Franc: Joyau de la Renaissance (Paris: Editions du Huitième Jour, 2010). For a plan of the building, see Serlio’s unpublished Traité d’architecture, book 6, pl. XII. For a modern edition of this book of Serlio’s treatise, see Sebastiano Serlio, On Domestic Architecture. The Sixth Book: The Different Dwellings from Meanest Hovel to the most Ornate Palace, ed. Myra Nan Rosenfeld (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978). 161 Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, Le Premier Volume des plus excellents bastiments de France (Paris: impr. pour ledit J. Androuet Du Cerceau, 1576–9), fo. 3v. 162 William Bell Dinsmoor, ‘The Literary Remains of Sebastiano Serlio’, Art Bulletin, 24/2 (June 1942), 146. 163 Rugieri was a long-time assistant of Primaticcio at Fontainebleau and he went on to inherit officially all of his master’s sketches and preparatory drawings; and he was the father-in-law of Toussaint Dubreuil (who will be discussed in Chapter 4), to whom he in turn bequeathed at least a part of what he inherited from Primaticcio. With Dubreuil, he designed a History of Hercules cycle for the Pavillon des Poêles at Fontainebleau. See Bernadette Py, ‘Histoire des dessins de Primatice du XVIe 158 159

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Figure 1.20. Façade of Château Ancy-le-Franc, from Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, Premier [et Second] Volume des plus excellents bastiments de France (1576–9). (With kind permission of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.)

Figure 1.21. Château Ancy-le-Franc in 2010. (# Phillip John Usher.)

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Figure 1.22. The Pharsalia Gallery at Château Ancy-le-Franc. General view. (Courtesy of Château Ancy-le-Franc.)

secondary role in the design and execution of the Galerie d’Ulysse and he became one of its concierges—a title given to those painters who restored the gallery’s paintings after the château had been left empty and before the king and the royal entourage returned. It is also thought that he played a key role in executing painted copies of about ten scenes from the Galerie d’Ulysse, of which four are still extent.164 One example is Figure 1.23, a copy of the twenty-sixth image from the Galerie, showing ‘Odysseus confronting the Sirens and Crossing between Charybdis and Scylla’. He was thus, literally and figuratively, Primaticcio’s inheritor. He was responsible inter alia for the diffusion of the Galerie d’Ulysse—and of its particular form of epic art—beyond the limits of the Château de Fontainebleau. Thus, just as the château itself was designed by an architect previously underappreciated at Fontainebleau, so the Galerie de Pharsale that it contained was probably the work of a painter who played only a secondary role in the Galerie d’Ulysse but who knew it intimately and participated in its diffusion and rayonnement. What, then, does a viewer see as he advances through the Galerie de Pharsale? A first, holistic, response is that he sees various depictions of the horror of civil war: naked bodies, flying spears, swords pushed right through the body of enemies, siècle au XVIIIe siècle’, in Primatice, maître de Fontainebleau, 54, 156; and Catherine Grodecki (ed.), Documents du minutier central des notaires de Paris—Histoire de l’art au XVIe siècle (1540–1600) II (Paris: Archives nationales, 1985), 207–9 and nos. 838–43. 164 Py, ‘Histoire des dessins de Primatice’, 297–8. See also Jean Adhémar, ‘Les Concierges du château et l’Ecole de Fontainebleau’, Gazette des beaux-arts, 41 (May 1953), 120.

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Figure 1.23. Rugiero de’ Rugieri, after Primaticcio, Ulysses and the Sirens. (Erich Lessin /Art Resource, NY.)

severed heads lying on the floor, and so forth (Figure 1.24). There are barely any identifiable participants, and the soldiers are mostly nude. The foreground is strewn with fallen men and horses; those who can still fight occupy the middle ground; and in the background is a haunting human presence—as if there will always be more soldiers ready to reach the foreground and breathe their last breath. The eyes of the various soldiers suggest an almost hallucinatory sense of horror—not unlike the gazes to be glimpsed in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1536–41), with which it also shares a mannerist overcrowding and emphasis on muscular bodies. Indeed, it should be recalled that Michelangelo’s huge fresco in the Sistine Chapel, now a tourist attraction, was at the moment of its realization capable of causing both contrasting and violent reactions. Some, like Pietro Aretino in his celebrated invective of 1545–6, accused Michelangelo of going too far, of placing art above religion: ‘[he] makes such a genuine spectacle out of both the lack of decorum in the martyrs and virgins, and the gesture of the man grabbed by his genitals, that even in a brothel the eyes would shut so as not so see it.’165 While we possess no contemporary documents detailing how visitors to Ancy-le-Franc reacted to the Galerie de Pharsale, the animosity of Aretino’s (and other’s) assault on Michelangelo’s mannerism makes it almost certain that the Galerie de 165 Quoted in Bernadine Ann Barnes, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 81.

Figure 1.24. South wall of the Pharsalia Gallery at Château Ancy-le-Franc. (Courtesy of Château Ancy-le-Franc.)

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Pharsale’s violence—compared to the relative decorum of the galleries at Fontainebleau and elsewhere—as well as the naked bodies and overt physicality could not have escaped them. The Galerie de Pharsale is obviously very different from earlier epic galleries in that it is not directly in celebration of a king and because it is ostensibly less concerned with the depiction of specific narrative moments. We can note, regarding the second point, that it is impossible, for example, to walk through the gallery and to identify Caesar crossing the Rubicon from book 1 of the Pharsalia or to identify Cato and Brutus who disagree about war in book 2. The viewer will search in vain for Pompey’s dream of Julia in book 3, and so forth. Nor can one say that the whole gallery relates to book 7’s description of the Battle of Pharsalus. But it would be equally false to say that the gallery offers a historical—as opposed to literary—view of the battle. Rather, the gallery picks up on specific descriptive elements from Lucan’s epic, at every turn underscoring the horror of civil war. It is not hard, indeed, to imagine the gallery’s designer—perhaps Rugieri—leafing through a copy of the Pharsalia in an attempt to figure out how best to show countrymen at war with each other and the emotional response each must feel. Neither is it difficult, on leafing through the text, to find such moments. Lucan deplores fratricidal bloodshed. In response to Virgil’s affirmative, singularizing, and unambiguous ‘Arma virumque cano’ (‘I sing of arms and of a man’),166 Lucan announces at the outset that he will sing of civil war (‘bella . . . plus quam civilia’) and of ‘ius . . . datum sceleri’ (‘crime given force of law’).167 From the beginning, the inherently futile nature of civil conflict is underscored.168 The pain and suffering of the war are omnipresent, spoken by various mouths.169 Lucan’s battle scenes thus focus not on military exploits of individual warriors—there is no battlefield aristeia in any traditional sense—but on mass conflict.170 This is exactly what we find in the paintings at Ancy-le-Franc. Neither Lucan nor Rugieri names names: ‘No one casts the spear or wields the sword, but each man dies, a bloody body part falling to an inanimate instrument of war.’171 Lucan’s description of the Battle of Pharsalus, as the site of the ultimate horror of civil war, follows just this pattern, as Lucan himself notes: ‘mors nulla querella | digna sua est’ (‘No death is worthy of its own lament’).172 Lucan’s own laments regarding the battle’s slaughter173 and horror174 focus indeed on this holistic horror. The beginning of the description of the battle demonstrates the poetics of mass warfare:

166

167 Lucan, Pharsalia 1:1–2. Virgil, Aeneid 1:1. Lucan, Pharsalia 1:14–16. 169 See, e.g., the women at the start of book 2 (Pharsalia 2:16–42) or Pompey (Pharsalia 7:85–123). 170 For a full study of Lucan’s battle scenes, see Wilhelm Metger, ‘Kampf und Tod in Lucans Pharsalia,’ PhD diss., Kielm 1957, part of which is summarized in ‘Kampf und Tod in Lucans Pharsalia’, in Werner Rutz (ed.), Lucan (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftsliche Buchges, 1970), 423–38. 171 Vanessa B. Gorman, ‘Lucan’s Epic Aristeia and the Hero of the Bellum Civile’, Classical Journal, 96/3 (2001), 271. 172 Lucan, Pharsalia 7:30–1; 7:617. 173 Lucan, Pharsalia 7:385–459. 174 Lucan, Pharsalia 7:551–6. 168

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spargitur innumerum diversis missile votis: volnera pars optat, pars terrae figere tela ac puras seruare manus (Innumerable darts are scattered about with various intents. Some wish for wounds, others to plant the javelins in the earth, so as to keep their hands pure).175

It is just this innumerability—the countless bodies upon bodies, and spears pointed amid spears—that the visitor to the gallery sees, too. Both the literary epic and the paintings at Ancy-le-Franc thus depict civil war as the blind killing of one’s compatriots. Close inspection of the gallery’s southern wall reveals its multiple influences and resonances, at once artistic and literary, ancient and modern. A first line of thought pertains to the thorough inscription of the horses within the battle, which bespeaks a dual genealogy connecting the gallery (a) to Lucan’s poem and (b) to a (now probably lost) painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. The gallery’s horses are wholly integrated into the paintings, as much part of the battle as the soldiers—both as combatants and as fleshy sentient beings that are scared and in fear of their lives. The viewer sees a horse terror-stricken as its rider plunges his spear into another man, a horse cowering, pulling up its hoof to protect its face from further injury, a horse looking up in horror as a soldier seemingly prepares to bring down upon it his heavy sword as the previously mentioned speared man also falls down over him, a horse looking back with anxious eyes on the man he has just kicked with his hoof, and so forth. Every single horse, dead or alive, is literally connected to the human world as each is entrapped by the legs of its triumphant or crushed rider. The bodies of both humans and horses receive similar pictorial treatment, with emphasis placed on muscular physicality, a commensurability that extends even to the fact that both men and horses are also depicted facing away from the viewer, their buttocks forced to express their emotions, whether in the case of a man who clenches tightly to secure himself as he reaches round into the fray or of two horses who are seemingly close to death. The horses are in no way just the means by which the soldiers move and fight. They are every bit as invested, physically and emotionally, and indeed every bit as horrified as their riders. Given the lack of documents regarding the gallery’s origins, it is impossible to speak of sources per se. But what can be stated is that—in respect of the way in which the horses are represented—the gallery at Ancy-le-Franc seems to announce a crossover between Lucanian epic and a certain strain of contemporary mannerist painting. For a glimpse at the Lucanian resonances, one can turn to the end of book 4, which concludes with King Juba’s slaughtering of Curio.176 Having announced that the Romans, surrounded by the Numidian cavalry, are ‘doomed’ and ‘stupefied’ by fear, Lucan describes the scene in ways that recall the closely packed scene on the gallery’s southern wall: ‘the soldiers, surrounded on all sides, were crushed by slanting thrusts from close quarters and spears hurled straight forward from a distance’—death arises from a ‘hail of weapons’ and from the ‘sheer weight of steel’. 175 176

Lucan, Pharsalia 7:485–7. The following quotes are from Lucan, Pharsalia 4:750–810.

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The great army huddles together tightly ‘into a small compass’ and, should any man crawl into the middle of the press, ‘he could scarce move about unhurt among the swords of his comrades’. The soldiers are so closely packed that they ‘have no longer space to ply their weapons; their bodies are squeezed and ground together; and the armoured breast is broken by pressure against another breast’. Of particular interest here is that the description of this battle scene, with everyone compressed into a small space across which spears fly, begins with an evocation of the soldiers’ horses. More specifically, Lucan emphasizes the horses’ fears: ‘the warhorse was not roused by the trumpet’s blare [non sonipes motus clangore tubarum], nor did he scatter the stones with stamping hoof, or champ the hard bit that chafes his mouth, with flying mane and ears erect.’ Making the warhorse’s reaction even more palpable, Lucan describes its body in consuming detail: its ‘weary neck sinks down’, its ‘limbs reek with sweat’, its ‘tongue protrudes’, its ‘mouth is rough and dry’, its ‘lungs, driven by quick pants, give a hoarse murmur’, its ‘labouring breath works the spent flanks hard’, and ‘the froth dries and cakes on the blood-stained bit’. The soldiers urge on the recalcitrant steeds, but what results resembles only the slaughter also represented in Ancy-le-Franc’s gallery: ‘no man profited by overcoming the resistance of his horse’ because the rider was merely ‘carried close to the foe and, by offering a target, saved the javelin a long flight’. Curio, responsible for the carnage, kills himself, and Lucan offers a moralizing conclusion, saying that Curio and his kind ‘pay for the wars they make with their own blood and their own deaths’. This description from book 4 of the Pharsalia deals with Curio who, on behalf of Caesar, launches an African campaign in which he and his mean are defeated by King Juba, and not the Battle of Pharsalus itself (which occurs in book 7). But its depiction of the horror of battle in general, and the foregrounding of the horses’ role therein, announce the style and emphasis of Ancy-le-Franc’s southern wall. If the gallery resonates closely with the kinds of Lucanian battle scenes just described, it also arguably finds a pictorial correlate in Da Vinci’s probably lost Battle of Anghiari (1504), of which a description survives in the writings of Giorgio Vasari and of which Peter Paul Rubens executed a copy in 1603 (Figure 1.25), based on an earlier engraving (1553) by Lorenzo Zacchia.177 According to Vasari, Da Vinci succeeded in his Battle of Anghiari in depicting the rage, fury, and revenge (‘la rabbia, lo sdegno e la vendetta’) in both the men and their horses (‘negli uomini; ne’ cavalli’).178 He also notes—in words that could just as easily be lifted from book 4 of Lucan or used to describe the southern wall at Ancy-le-Franc—that the horses’ forelegs are interlocked and that they fight no less fiercely with their teeth than those who are riding them. One particularly long—one might even say run-on— sentence captures the interlocked nature of the fighting bodies:

177 I say ‘probably lost’ because, in 2012, a group of researchers in Florence claimed to have found Da Vinci’s fresco on a wall in a cavity of Florence’s town hall, behind indeed a later fresco by Vasari, The Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana (1563). See Tom Kington, ‘Art Historians Say They Have Found Evidence of Hidden Leonardo da Vinci’, Guardian, 12 March 2012. 178 The following quotes are from Vasari, Le vite, 564–5.

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Figure 1.25. Peter Paul Rubens, after Leonardo da Vinci, Battle of Anghiari. (# RMNGrand Palais/Art Resource, NY.) non fanno men guerra coi denti, che si faccia chi gli cavalca nel combattere detta bandiera, dove apiccato le mani un soldato, con la forza delle spalle, mentre mette il cavallo in fuga, rivolto egli con la persona, aggrappato l’aste dello stendardo, per sgusciarlo per forza delle mani di quattro, che due le difendono con una mano per uno . . . ([the horses] battle no less with their teeth than do their riders as they fight for the standard flag, which a soldier grabs with his hands, who seeks via the strength of his soldiers, as he spurs his horse to fight, having turned his body around and grabbed the staff of the standard, to wrestle it from the hands of four others, of whom two defend it, each with one hand . . . )

As Vasari describes—and as one can observe in Rubens’s copy—two figures in foreshortening (in iscorto) battle on the ground between the horses legs. Daggers are raised, terrified horses look in different directions, men and horses battle in a radically reduced space. Of the horses’ forms and lineaments, Vasari wrote that Da Vinci represented them better than anyone else ever could, showing their spirit, muscles, and shapely beauty (‘di bravura, di muscoli et di garbata bellezza’). We see, then, that the Galerie de Pharsale, probably decorated by Rugieri, situated within a château designed by Serlio, and whose paintings resonate both with Lucanian epic and with various painterly realizations by the likes of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, stands at the crossroads of these multiple literary, artistic, and even political influences. It is after Fontainebleau in the various meanings of that term, but also aesthetically and politically oppositional to it. It is clear that the gallery depicts the civil war of Ancient Rome in ways that suggest

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a closeness to Lucan’s text and to Da Vinci’s painting. But what significance did that war have for the gallery’s patron and for its visitors? Why represent a war that took place so long ago? To answer that question, it will be useful to investigate interpretive responses to Lucan’s epic at this time; and, subsequently, to turn to what we know of the historical and political situation of 1560s Burgundy and to the personal context of the gallery’s sponsor. If we attend first, then, to the reception of Lucan in the sixteenth century, it can be stated that—and this probably comes as no surprise—Lucan’s epic description of Roman civil war was frequently read allegorically in relation to France’s Wars of Religion (1562–98). One essential trace of such an interpretive move can be located in a contemporaneous edition of Lucan’s text—namely, the one edited by Theodor Pulmann in 1564. In a prefatory letter addressed to Nicolaus Rococcius, Pulmann states how Lucan’s treatment of the Roman civil wars also provide an adequate representation of France’s Wars of Religion—the same cruelty, the same horror.179 Thus when we look on at a corpse, its severed head to the left of a sword and that head’s helmet strewn to its right, we are thus invited to think both of the severed heads in Lucan’s Pharsalia and of those heads severed in Renaissance France, and indeed of a country split it two. On the one hand, we should hear the raving matron’s bemoaning of civil war (‘what madness is this that drives Romans to fight Romans?’) as she has a foretelling vision of Pompey’s headless corpse at the end of book 1: ‘him I recognise, that headless corpse [deformis truncus] lying on the river sands,’180 a description that reworks Virgil’s of decapitated Priam.181 And we should hear, too, the old man at the opening of book 2 who talks of unburied corpses: ‘round all the headless bodies I went, seeking for a neck to fit the severed head.’182 And also book 3’s description of women kissing and of men fighting over headless bodies, in the (incorrect) belief that these bodies are their husbands and sons: ‘Many a wife clasped a Roman corpse, mistaking the face with features disfigured by the sea, for her husband’s.’183 On the other hand, through this horror, we must also see the heads severed in Renaissance France—such as those depicted in the Premier volume contenant quarante tableaux ou histoires diverses qui sont mémorables touchant les guerres, massacres et troubles (First Volume containing Forty Pictures or Diverse Histories which are memorable regarding the Wars, Massacres, and Troubles), published in 1569–70.184 As Bruno Méniel has summarized more generally for this period, readers

179 See the full letter in Lucan, De bello civili (Antwerp: Ex officina Plantiniana, 1564). I consulted a re-edition: M. Annaei Lucani de Bello civili, vel Pharsaliae libri X (Antwerp: Ex officina Plantiniana, 1576) [BnF Rés. Yc-7033]. 180 Lucan, Pharsalia 1:685–86. 181 See Virgil, Aeneid, 2:557–58. 182 Lucan, Pharsalia 2:169–73. 183 Lucan, Pharsalia 3:756–61. 184 On these images, see especially Philip Benedict, Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin (Geneva: Droz, 2007). For a reproduction of the images, see pp. 213– 384. In addition, see Pierre Bonnaure, ‘Des images à relire et à réhabiliter: L’Œuvre gravé de Tortorel et Périssin’, Bulletin de la Société d’histoire du protestantisme français, 138 (1992), 475–514.

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éprouvent un sentiment de proximité, voire de fraternité, à l’égard de Lucain, d’abord parce qu’il raconte une guerre civile comparable à celle que traverse leur pays (feel a closeness, even a brotherly connection to Lucan, most importantly because he tells the story of a civil war that is comparable to the one that France was then experiencing).185

Agrippa d’Aubigné, whose Tragiques will be discussed in Chapter 4, ostensibly agrees with this view—he would later write of Lucan that: “Il a été amant de la liberté et il a vécu en haine de la tyrannie, | La Liberté a été son [dernier] port’ (‘He was a lover of freedom and he lived in hatred of tyranny’).186 There can be little doubt that the Galerie de Pharsale reads Lucan just as many other Renaissance readers did. But it is necessary to ask one final question: why did the château’s owner, Antoine III de Clermont, decide upon such a gallery? What might it have meant for him and for those to whom he explained it as they visited the château? In a very general sense, it must be noted that the Wars of Religion raged in Burgundy as elsewhere and that, given the region’s particular history, questions of identity came to the fore.187 In 1563, for example, Jean Bégat, a judge in the Parlement of Dijon, presented to King Charles IX a remontrance detailing the sentiments and fears of the (Catholic) Burgundians: ‘how can it be that you would suffer among your subjects a law so contrary and foreign that allows not only the public profession, but also the free and public exercise [of heresy]?’188 Making the situation even more pressing was the fact that, owing to the system of free elections in Burgundy—all men, whatever their rank or estate, were eligible to vote: there was a very real and quite remarkable possibility that both Catholics and Protestants might run for office and that voters might begin to vote along religious (rather than purely political) lines. Bégat’s concern—and perhaps that, too, of Antoine III or of his visitors, touched upon questions of the fleeting nature of peace: ‘how many riots and uprisings will we see in future?’ asked Bégat of Charles IX.189 Within this general context, we must next inscribe the situation of Antoine III de Clermont. By the 1560s, Antoine III was an older man (he was born in 1497 or 1498), and his career—and his social and political situation—had taken a sudden beating. He was, at various points, a man of many titles: Count of Clermont, Viscount of Tallard, Lord of Ancy-le-Franc, Governor of Dauphiné, Lieutenant General for the King in Savoie; not to mention, under Henri II, Grand Master and

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Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 61. Agrippa d’Aubigné, Pages inédites, ed. Pierre-Paul Plan (Geneva: Société d’histoire et d’archéologie, 1945), 168. See also Jacques Bailbé, ‘Lucain et D’Aubigné’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 22 (1960), 320–37. 187 See the useful study of Mack P. Holt, ‘Burgundians into Frenchmen: Catholic Identity in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy’, in Michael Wolfe (ed.), Changing Identities in Early Modern France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1997), 345–70. 188 Quoted in Holt, ‘Burgundians into Frenchmen’, 353. 189 Quoted in Holt, ‘Burgundians into Frenchmen’, 354. For further exploration of the situation of Burgundy during the Wars of Religion, see also Mack P. Holt, ‘Wine, Community, and Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy’, Past and Present, 138 (February 1993), 58–93. On Bégat in particular, see also Paul Viard, ‘Etudes sur la Réforme et les guerres de religion en Bourgogne: le president Bégat’, Revue bourguignonne, 15 (1905), 1–105. 186

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General Reformer of France’s Waters and Forests.190 He had, in earlier times, played significant roles: he fought alongside the chevalier Bayard to defend the town of Mézières against imperial forces in 1521; he probably accompanied the same Bayard into Italy to the battles of Ribecq and La Bicocca; it is likely that he fought at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.191 The king eventually appointed him lieutenant du roi in the provinces of Dauphiné and Savoie and he would also be the primary representative of the Catholic leader, François de Guise. Everything, however, changed in 1557, when Diane de Poitiers—whose younger sister Françoise Antoine III had married in 1532—‘broke ranks’ with the Dukes of Guise, aligning herself with their enemy, the Connétable de Montmorency. Against the will of the people, François de Guise thus subsequently forced Antoine III out of the lieutenance générale following accusations that Antoine III has shown too much leniency implementing the various royal edicts against the Protestants.192 One example adduced by Sabine Frommel was Antoine III’s behaviour in Valence in 1560: 5,000 rebels had occupied the church of the Franciscans; while the governor sought a ‘swift military solution’, Antoine III ‘tried to find a peaceful way out of the impasse’. A provincial nobleman whose ancestral lands had been regularly expanding since at least the twelfth century and who had once wielded an appreciable amount of political power both locally and nationally was by the 1560s somewhat of a beaten man, having been forced out of the lieutenance générale and not included in the Catholic triumvirate constituted in 1561.193 Moreover, the tragedy was intensely—and increasingly—personal: Antoine III would subsequently lose both his sons in the civil and religious upheavals. His elder son falls at the battle of Moncontour in 1569 and his younger son Henri would die during the siege of La Rochelle in 1573.194 There can be little doubt that the Galerie de Pharsale presents to its viewers this personal and political sense of despair. Various Renaissance readings of Lucan’s epic suggest that it should be praised for its judgements on the moral reprehensibility of civil war and simultaneously objurgated for its aesthetic excess. Whether we turn to the contemporary Poetices libri septem of Julius Caesar Scaliger, first published in 1560—that is, two years after the author’s death—or to the slightly later Essais (1580–95) of Montaigne, that is the reading we find. Scaliger spoke ill of Lucan’s style:195 he recognized that 190 François-Alexandre Aubert de la Chesnaye Des Bois and Jacques Badier, Dictionnaire de la noblesse, contenant les généalogies, l’histoire et la chronologie des familles nobles de France (Paris: La Veuve Duchesne, 1772), iv. 94–5. 191 I draw these and subsequent biographical details from Frommel, Sebastiano Serlio, 85–9. 192 On these key points, see Frommel, Sebastiano Serlio, 87, and also Gaston Zeller, ‘Gouverneurs de province au XVIe siècle’, Revue historique, 185 (1939), 247, and Nicolas Chorier, Histoire générale du Dauphiné (Grenoble: P. Charvys; Lyons: J. Thioly, 1661–72), 2, 539, 546. 193 This triumvirate constituted an alliance made between François, Duke of Guise, Anne de Montmorency, and Jacques Dalbon, Seigneur de Saint André. 194 See Frommel, Sebastiano Serlio, 89, n. 87, and Pierre de Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris: Chez Mme Ve[uve] J. Renouard, 1864–92), 9:391 and 9:187, n. 1. 195 Modern critics still sometimes fault Lucan’s style. Roland Mayer, for example, comments that ‘Lucan is a not a poet of the first rank’ (p. vii) and, as regards style, underlines that ‘ever since the elder Scaliger gave it as his opinion that Lucan seemed to bark rather than to sing, the poet’s style has been faulted’ (p. 10) (Lucan, Pharsalia. Liber 8, ed. Roland Mayer (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1981)).

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Lucan’s Pharsalia had specific qualities, notably its insights into psychology, although he criticizes his excessive use of hyperbole, concluding that ‘Vasta omnia, et insani potius, quam poeta’ (‘Everything is over-sized; it is the work of a madman, not of a poet’).196 As for Montaigne, having just stated, in chapter 2.10 ‘Des Livres’ (‘On Books’), that he finds the fifth book of the Aeneid ‘le plus parfaict’ (‘the most perfect’), Montaigne goes on to say that he also likes Lucan, ‘non tant pour son stile que pour sa valeur propre et verité de ses opinions et jugemens’ (‘not so much for his style as for his innate value and the truth of his opinions and judgments’).197 The Galerie de Pharsale, understood as a reading of Lucan, seems rather to take up both its moral condemnation of war and its aesthetics of horror. It is arguably close to the epic in both intent and form, marrying together a consciousness of Lucan’s excessiveness, hyperbole, and generally boundless exposition of horror and blood, with a moral condemnation thereof, which can be clearly ascribed to Antoine III. As David Quint has suggested, Lucan’s Pharsalia is a loser’s epic that housed ‘voices of resistance’ that questioned the triumphalism of the Virgil’s Aeneid.198 Within this general framework, Quint sees the Pharsalia as ‘the epic of the lost Roman republic’, which ‘gives back to the vanquished republicans their story of resistance’.199 The Galerie de Pharsale less tells a story of resistance than it represents an untenable and horrific situation, in which neither side wins or can win. Executed by a painter who had worked on, and painted copies of, the Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau, in a château built by an architect called to, then dismissed from, Fontainebleau, and taking up not Homer or Virgil but Lucan’s anti-triumphalist epic, in a style whose excess and physicality are closer to Da Vinci and Michelangelo than to Primaticcio and Rosso, the Galerie de Pharsale offered— and indeed still offers—its visitors a reading both of a literary text and of that text’s relevance for understanding what Burgundy—and France in general—was going through in the later sixteenth century. To conclude this chapter, it is useful to bring to mind the title page of a 1543 edition of the Pharsalia, which frames the author’s name (‘Lucanus’), the place (‘Parisiis’) and date of publication, as well as the publisher’s name (‘apud Simonem Colinaeum’—that is, Simon de Colines) inside a richly decorated architectural structure, topped by a complex entablature with cornice, moulding, and frieze, pedestals with cap and base, and so on. Literally behind the white space, in the pages of the book, is the poem about the Roman civil war. At almost the same moment at Ancy-le-Franc—that is, in the 1560s—Antoine III de Clermont commissioned distemper paintings about that same war—and with similar emphasis on anonymous combat, as if taking the 1543 edition’s frontispiece as an invitation to bring the poem to life within a real architectural space. All three

196

Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (Geneva: Jean Crespin, 1561), v. 12, 266, col. 2. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and Verdun L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1924), 410–11. Further comment on Montaigne’s reflections on Lucan is provided by Jean-Claude Ternaux, ‘J’ayme aussi Lucain’, Montaigne Studies, 17/1–2 (2005), 81–95. 198 Quint, Epic and Empire, 99. 199 Quint, Epic and Empire, 133. 197

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building sites studied in the present chapter—the Galeries d’Ulysse, du Grand Ecuyer, and de Pharsale—are in a sense bellifontains. While only the first was actually at Fontainebleau, the second is dedicated to the same royal patrons (François Ier and Henri II), and the third was located in a château designed by an architect and painted by a painter both of whom were intimately associated with Fontainebleau. All connected with this one central site, all three galleries also belong to almost the same historical moment—their dates, we recall, are 1541–60, 1546–9, and c.1560. Yet, by the 1560s, the classical epics of Homer and Virgil seemed apparently less pertinent than Lucan’s lamenting Pharsalia. As this chapter has shown, the passage from text to gallery does not obey a single and repeatable principle of transformation. The stakes are similar in all three cases, but each gallery is strikingly different: Christian and political allegories, rooted in the commentaries printed in sixteenth-century editions or in the teachings of humanists like Jean Dorat, or in historical comparisons between civil wars past and present, or else induced post facto by more recent scholars, are clearly of primary importance, tying the Galerie d’Ulysse to a politics of prudentia, the part-Virgilian fireplace of hell at Oiron to Christian notions of cleansing and rebirth, and the Galerie de Pharsale to France’s growing religious divide. But other meanings continually graft themselves to such allegories: we saw, for example, how the Galerie d’Ulysse also traces the very rediscovery of classical culture and forms of which it is an example; and the over-sized horses in the Galerie du Grand Ecuyer betoken an ever more personal mark of appropriation. What becomes apparent, then, is that—as much as a book of emblems, where each page provides multiple texts and an image, forcing the reader to take an active role in assembling meaning—the epic galleries studied here are spaces of mobile and active readership, which call upon erudite and informed readers to be aware constantly both of underlying textual sources and of the contemporary responsibilities, personalities, and anxieties of the gallery’s artists and patrons, whom we must see as hermeneuts as much as the translators, editors, and publishers who made classical epic available to Renaissance French readers.

2 Dolet’s Fata: Celebrating François Ier in the Wake of the Battle of Pavia Years before he was accused of heresy and subsequently strangled and burned at the Place Maubert in Paris in 1546, Etienne Dolet (Figure 2.1) was a law student in Toulouse and a vocal supporter of King François Ier.1 The speeches he made as a student prepared him for one of his later enterprises, an epic written in Neo-Latin, which he himself adapted into French and which would sing the king’s praises despite recent military defeat. This double bind—how can one sing victory amid failure?—found its vibrancy, as we shall see in this chapter, by echoing and competing with painting and other non-literary art forms. To remain for a moment with Dolet while he was still a student in Toulouse, it can be said that he was intimately involved with what would now be called campus life, especially as a (seemingly very gifted) participant in disputes between university nations.2 During one of the speeches he made in this role, he spoke not just of French military might, but of France’s ability—in the manner of Mars—to wage war or peace as it pleased. On the one hand, said Dolet, the French ‘subjugate anyone they wish’; on the other, ‘they lavish peace, as if it were their boundless treasure’. The French were not 1 The oldest account of Dolet’s life is a collection of extracts from texts by Dolet and his contemporaries, grouped together by Michel Maittaire in his Annales Typographici ab artis inventae origine ad annum MDCLXIV (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1967 (reprint of 1789 edition; earliest edition 1719)), upon which Née de la Rochelle largely based his Vie d’Etienne Dolet: Imprimeur a [sic] Lyon dans le seizième siècle (Paris: Gogué & Née de la Rochelle, 1779). For other early perspectives on Dolet, see Antoine Du Verdier, La Bibliothèque . . . Contenant le catalogue de tous ceux qui ont escrit, ou traduict, en françois, & autres dialectes de ce royaume (Lyons: B. Honorat, 1585) [Butler BOOKART 018.31 D95], and François Grudé La Croix du Maine, Premier volume de la bibliothèque . . . Qui est un catalogue general de toutes sortes d’autheurs qui ont escrit en françois depuis cinq cents ans & plus (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1584) [Butler BOOKART 018.31 L114 and RBML Z2162 .L14]. Some progress was made by Alphonse-Honoré Taillandier, Procès d’Estienne Dolet (Paris: Techener, 1836), followed by Joseph Boulmier, Estienne Dolet, sa vie, ses œuvres, son martyre (Paris: A. Aubry, 1857), a work still heavily indebted to Née de la Rochelle. Richard Copley Christie, Etienne Dolet: The Martyr of the Renaissance (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1964 [1899]), is still the most complete account, to which can be added Marc Chassaigne’s (frequently negative, often mocking) Etienne Dolet: Portraits et documents inédits (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930), and John Charles Dawson, Toulouse in the Renaissance: The Floral Games, University and Student Life; Etienne Dolet (1532–1534) (New York: AMS Press, 1966 [1923]). The most recent book-length work on Dolet is Jean-François Lecompte, L’Affaire Dolet (Paris: Editions Edite, 2009), but apart from the opening chapter (pp. 9–50) this is an anthology, not a study. The most up-to-date bibliography of works written or printed by Dolet is provided by Claude Longeon, Bibliographie des œuvres d’Etienne Dolet (Geneva: Droz, 1980). 2 On Dolet as student orator and for details of the two orations, see Dawson, Toulouse in the Renaissance, pt. III.

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Epic Arts in Renaissance France Figure 2.1. Portrait of Etienne Dolet. From Du Verdier’s Prosopographie (Lyons, 1573). (From author’s copy of Marc Chassaigne, Etienne Dolet (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930). Photo # Phillip John Usher.)

just good at war; they also decided when it happened and when it did not; they were not only good soldiers and victorious in battle, but seemingly in control of the course of events—something more like the gods in classical epic than their heroes.3 The French, Dolet summarized, ‘frighten the whole world’ with their ‘mere name’.4 Dolet’s confident tone was not, however, in tune with recent French performances on the battlefield. France’s army and the French king had recently suffered one of their most humiliating defeats. On the morning of 24 February 1525, the French had fought a battle in Pavia, Italy, against the Spanish Imperial army. Surprised in the middle of the night, the French troops were brutally butchered and the battle was over by noon the following day. François Ier, his horse cut down beneath him, was taken captive—fittingly, for the opposing side, on the emperor’s birthday. The captured king was removed to Spain, where he remained in prison until the signing of the Treaty of Madrid on 14 January 1526. Even his final liberation was humiliating, for it included various clauses such as the handing-over of his two sons. The defeat was a huge blow—to the French army, to the king, and to the nation’s self-esteem. It was, not surprisingly, apparent to Dolet’s fellow students that high praise of France as a warrior nation at a time of defeat was somewhat dissonant. One student from another nation heckled him. Dolet responded by explaining that recent misadventures were caused not by any shortcomings of the French army, but rather by ‘catastrophic Fortune’.5 Despite his 3 For a general survey of epic gods, see Denis C. Feeney, The Gods in Epic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Their particular character in the Renaissance is treated by Gregory, From Many Gods to One. 4 Etienne Dolet, Deux discours, ed. and trans. Kenneth Lloyd-Jones and Marc van der Pael (Geneva: Droz, 1992), 163. 5 Dolet, Deux discours, 164.

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earlier assertion that the French meted out war or peace as it wished, they also, apparently, were vulnerable to Fortune, a term (Latin fortuna) used throughout classical epic and whose meaning is complex, referring neither to chance, hap, or luck, nor to fate itself, but to something like the twists and turns of destiny, the way in which a predetermined and divinely ordained plan is revealed in the flow of events.6 We can think of the line in the Aeneid with which Evander describes the causes of his arrival in Italy: ‘fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum’ (‘allpowerful fortune and unavoidable destiny’)7—the two forces are different, but intimately connected. In Dolet’s explanation—that ‘catastrophic Fortune’ caused failure at Pavia—the French thus found themselves in a position similar to that of the lesser Olympians in that they could often exert power over humans, but not actually control destiny—Latin fatum or Greek
EæÆ, ‘a shadowy force sometimes identified with the will of Zeus, sometimes described as independent of him’, an essential term for Dolet and to which I shall return.8 Dolet’s riposte to his detractor not only attempted to erase the memory of defeat; it also served to inscribe that defeat within an interpretive system—and a teleology—that is fundamentally epic in nature.9 Dolet, in his short reply, weaved France’s military ups and downs into an epic fabric of fatum and fortuna. His comment about ‘catastrophic Fortune’ being responsible for Pavia is essential to the concerns of the present chapter, concisely illuminating the core of Dolet’s later epic project and the mode by which Dolet was able to compete with the sister arts. Dolet’s epic project came to fruition a number of years later in 1539, when he published the Francisci Valesii, Gallorum regis, fata (Fates of the King of the Gauls, François Ier), which he would translate into French the following year as Les Gestes de Françoys de Valoys (The Great Deeds of François de Valois).10 With no central figure other than François Ier himself—more historical referent than fully elaborated literary character—Dolet’s text, in both Latin and French, is at a far remove

6 Much has been written on the meaning of fatum and fortuna. See, e.g., Howard Vernon Canter, ‘Fortuna in Latin Poetry’, Studies in Philology, 19/1 (January 1922), 64–82; and Bernard F. Dick, ‘Fatum and Fortuna in Lucan’s Bellum Civile’, Classical Philology, 62/4 (October 1967), 235–42. For (somewhat brief ) commentary on Dolet’s understanding of fatum and fortuna, as he describes them in his Commentarii Linguae Latinae (1536–8), see Kenneth Lloyd-Jones, ‘Fatum in the Writings of Etienne Dolet’, in Ian D. MacFarlane (ed.), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1986), 358–61. Cotgrave translates fortune as ‘Fortune; also, hap, chaunce, luck, lot, hazard, aduenture; also, destinie, fatall necessitie’. 7 Virgil, Aeneid 8:334. 8 Gregory, From Many Gods to One, 6. 9 Centuries later, Ernest Renan would appropriately surmise that the construction of a nation implies, not just shared memories, but also communal forgetting. See Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 9–22. 10 I refer to and quote from, throughout, the following editions: Etienne Dolet, Francisci Valesii, Gallorum regis, fata, ubi rem omnem celebriorem a Gallis gestam nosces ab anno Christi M. D. XIII. usque ad annum ineuntem M. D. XXXIX (Lugduni: apud S. Dolet, 1539) [BnF Res M-YC-111(1)], and Les Gestes de Françoys de Valois, roy de France: dedans lequel oeuvre on peult congnoistre tout ce qui a esté faict par les Françoys depuis l’an mil cinq cents treize jusques en l'an mil cinq cents trente neuf premièrement composé en latin par Estienne Dolet; et après par luy mesmes translaté en langue françoyse (Lyons: E. Dolet, 1540) [BnF Rés M-YC-111(2)].

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from other roughly contemporary epics.11 It has little or nothing in common with Ariosto’s recent Orlando Furioso (1516–32), not in any case translated into French until 1543.12 Not completely unlike the long poëme, as Du Bellay would define it, Dolet’s epic is a hybrid, drawing on both historical chronicle (for its subject matter) and classical epic (for much of its form). The historical source text upon which Dolet drew for the events he describes was the Mer des chroniques, a translation and extension of Robert Gaguin’s Compendium.13 Any reader will notice that Dolet’s Latin text reads a lot like the chronicle on which it draws, except that it is set in verse and further textured by means of formal properties borrowed from (mainly Virgilian) epic especially, as we shall study shortly, extensive use of epic simile. The Gestes, a prose rendering of the Fata—a common trend in Renaissance translation,14 reads even more like the original historical source text, a difference expertly studied by Valerie Worth.15 The Fata and the Gestes—to which I refer collectively as the Fata unless specific differences between the two call out for comment—are thus neither chansons de geste (despite the French title), nor romance epics, nor pure imitations of classical epic, but hybrids of historical chronicle and Virgilian form. I shall argue in the following pages for their inscription within a wider context of literary, artistic, and architectural production connected with the defeat at Pavia and the subsequent attempts by the king to reclaim his power and to direct the nation. Before going any further, it should be briefly recalled that the Fata are not, of course, the first epic to deal with defeat as opposed to victory. As already noted in the previous chapter, David Quint’s seminal study on the history of the epic form established an operative distinction between winners’ epics (in the tradition of the Aeneid ) and losers’ epics (in a lineage going back to Lucan’s Pharsalia). Quint sees the latter, considered to house ‘voices of resistance’, as questioning the 11 Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, for example, takes up historical events related to Charlemagne, his Christian paladins, and their battle against the Saracens, but the emphasis is neither on recent events, nor on historical accuracy. Moreover, while Arisoto does comment on certain contemporary happenings, such as French and Spanish invasions, the politics of Popes Julius II and Leo X, the final form the epic took in 1532 ‘reduce[d] the undigested signs of its own and its author’s historicity into the self-contained forms of narrative’ (Albert Russell Ascoli, ‘Ariosto and the “Fier Pastor”: Form and History in Orlando Furioso’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54/2 (2001), 517). See also Eric MacPhail, ‘Ariosto and the Prophetic Moment’, Modern Language Notes, 116/1 (2001), 30–53. 12 The first translation of the Orlando Furioso, into prose by Jean Martin, was published in 1543 (Lyons: Jean Des Gouttes, 1543). 13 On the life and works of Gaguin, see Franck Collard, Robert Gaguin: Un historien au travail à la fin du XVe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1996). On the connections between Dolet and Gaguin, see Claude Longeon, ‘Etienne Dolet historien’, in Mélanges à la mémoire de Franco Simone (Geneva: Slatkine, 1983), 243–58. 14 On this phenomenon, see Georges Doutrepont, Les Mises en prose des épopées et des romans chevaleresques du XIVe au XVIe siècle (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1939), and, more recently, Marian Rothstein, Reading in the Renaissance: Amadis de Gaule and the Lessons of Memory (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1999), and Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, and Anne Schoysman (eds), Mettre en prose aux XIVe–XVIe siècles (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). My review of the latter work is forthcoming in the Sixteenth Century Journal. 15 Valerie Worth, ‘Etienne Dolet: From a Neo-Latin Epic Poem to a Chronicle in French Prose’, in McFarlane (ed.), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani, 423–9, and, by the same author, Practising Translation in Renaissance France: The Example of Etienne Dolet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 68–72, 152–64.

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triumphalism of the former.16 However, if the Pharsalia can indeed be seen, as Quint argues, as ‘the epic of the lost Roman republic’, which gave ‘back to the vanquished republicans their story of resistance’, it is impossible to attach Dolet to that particular tradition of losers’ epics, because the Fata are wholly triumphalist— they discuss victory despite failure, and indeed, in an almost Orwellian fashion, failure as victory.17 The Fata and the Gestes are indeed epics of defeat, but their articulation of François’s failures owes much more, as we shall see, to Virgilian affirmation than to Lucanian counter-discourse.

M O N UM E N T S F O R T H E SE C O N D A S C E N SI O N The Fata—and their affirmation of royal power—were, I assert, part of a response to the Battle of Pavia that spanned literary and non-literary art forms alike and that began almost immediately after François Ier’s 1526 return to France from his prison in Madrid, a crucial moment for French history and for all forms of literary and artistic production. As a result of what historians have baptized the king’s ‘second ascension’, France would never look the same again.18 The transformation of art, architecture, and literature that ensued was part of the nation’s need to restore its domestic and international public image at a time of political fragility. To examine the nature of this transformation, I turn first to the king’s ambitious building programme, which changed for ever both France’s capital and the Loire Valley. I argue, first, that Dolet’s epic should be seen as engaging with that programme’s general aims and, secondly, that certain formal properties of Dolet’s epic partake of a certain shared aesthetics. The king, then, left captivity on 17 March 1526. To be free, he surrendered not only claims to Italy, but also his rights to Flanders, Artois, and Burgundy; he also suffered, as already mentioned, that his two sons be sent to the Spanish court as hostages.19 On his return to France, he would continue the war against Charles V—but now through the arts as well as in military combat.20 Between 1527 and 1547, François would coordinate the (re)construction of seven palaces within the Ile-de-France area alone, palaces that, unlike medieval châteaux forts, whose main purpose was defensive, were as much about internal and external decoration as about providing shelter or protection from enemies. They can be seen, for all intents and purposes, as spaces and surfaces for the publication of royal prestige and power. The point is that these palaces are not only contemporary with the Fata, but also part of a common programme. 16

17 Quint, Epic and Empire, 133. Quint, Epic and Empire, 99. Charles Terrasse, François 1er: Le Roi et le règne (Paris: Grasset, 1943), ii. 21, and Robert. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 250. 19 An early study of the treaty is provided by Henri Hauser, Le Traité de Madrid et la cession de la Bourgogne à Charles-Quint; étude sur le sentiment national bourguignon en 1525–1526 (Dijon: Damidot frères, 1912). 20 Roland Mousnier, La France de 1492 à 1559 (Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, 1971), ii. 217. 18

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Given that the king had been held captive in Madrid, it is appropriate that the first palace in the programme be the Château de Madrid, destroyed by the hammers of the Revolution and amid general indifference in 1792. The palace was originally referred to, for example, in contemporary legal documents, as the Château du Bois de Boulogne. Why it came to be nicknamed the Château de Madrid, although much studied, is a thorny question.21 It is a known fact, in any case, that its new name was quickly connected to the idea that the king supposedly conceived of the new structure while in Madrid, taking as his model the Royal Alcazar.22 Pertinent here is that, despite the two buildings being in fact very different and despite the king not baptizing his Boulogne residence ‘Madrid’, the connection between captivity (in Madrid) and reconstruction (of France, beginning with the ‘Madrid’ palace) would quickly enter into circulation.23 In his 1532 Fleur des antiquitez, singularitez et excellences de Paris, Gilles Corrozet would write that the king was constructing a palace ‘sur la façon du chasteau de Madric [sic], assis en Espaigne’ (‘after the fashion of the Château of Madrid, situated in Spain’).24 The legend would go down in history, with Peter Heylyn noting in his travel journal in 1656 how he ‘passed by Madrit [sic], so called of the king of Spain’s house at Madrit’, and how François Ier, having ‘been taken prisoner at the bastel [sic] of Pavie, anno 1525 . . . had no less than a twelvemoneths [sic] leisure to draw that platform’.25 The difference in architecture compared to the Alcazar and the fact that the king did not refer to the palace as the Château de Madrid, on which construction began in 1527, are less significant than the fact that the palace came to be seen in its relationship to the consequences of the Battle of Pavia, that it was seen by writers such as Corrozet as an architectural response to military defeat. Just one year later, work began on turning the hunting lodge at Fontainebleau into a magnificent, albeit inconsistently designed, Renaissance palace,26 for which master mason Gilles Le Breton (d. 1553) was largely responsible.27 Châteaux at Blois, Chambord, Amboise, and elsewhere would follow shortly. The king also 21 For a useful summary of the history of this appellation, see Monique Chatenet, Le Château de Madrid au bois de Boulogne (Paris: Picard, 1987), 119–26. 22 On this palace, see José Manuel Barbeito, El Alcázar de Madrid (Madrid: Comisión de Cultura, Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos, 1992). 23 Monique Chatenet is categorical: ‘Le château n’est pas la copie de l’Alcazar de Madrid; le roi n’est pas à l’origine du surnom. Il est certain que le roi n’a pas baptisé son château Madrid’ (‘The palace is not a copy of the Alcazar in Madrid; the king is not at the origin of its nickname. It is certain that the king did not baptize his palace “Madrid” ’) (Le Château de Madrid, 119). 24 Gilles Corrozet, La Fleur des antiquitez, singularitez et excellences de la noble et triumphante cité de Paris (Paris: Denis Janot, 1532), fo. 30v. 25 Quoted in Chatenet, Le Château de Madrid, 120. 26 A history of Fontainebleau is provided by Félix Herbet, Le Château de Fontainebleau (Paris: Champion, 1937); Françoise Boudon and Jean Blécon, Le Château de Fontainebleau de François 1er à Henri IV (Paris: Picard, 1998); and Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Le Château de Fontainebleau (Paris: Scala, 2009). As architectural historian Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos notes, the fate of Fontainebleau palace was perhaps sealed at the Battle of Pavia (p. 11). 27 On Gilles Le Breton, see Paul Vanaise, ‘Gilles Le Breton, maître-maçon, entrepreneur ou architecte parisien du XVIe siècle’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 68 (1966), 241–64, and Catherine Grodecki, ‘Un marché de Gilles Le Breton pour le château de Fleury-en-Bière’, L’Information d’Histoire de l’Art, 19 (1974), 37–41.

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announced that he was making Paris his principal residence, and he thus also completely renovated the Louvre.28 The impulse towards architectural construction was shared by several of François’s contemporaries: in England, Henri VIII would rebuild Whitehall and St James; Charles V would order work to be carried out on the Alhambra palace in Granada; and so on.29 Fontainebleau—whose Galerie d’Ulysse was discussed in Chapter 1—was surely the heart and soul of this new building programme. It was there that François Ier invited various foreign and French artists and craftsmen—especially Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio, Leonardo da Vinci—to take up residence and forge an aesthetics particular to the site. Many contemporary sources, including the likes of Benevenuto Cellini and Jacques Andouet du Cerceau, inform us that Fontainebleau was the king’s favourite residence.30 It was seemingly not only his preferred place of retreat, but also the most important of the châteaux for promoting a certain image of France to foreign powers, especially Charles V. René Macé, a Benedictine monk from Angers to whom Lacroix du Maine referred as ‘the king’s chronicler and poet’,31 provides a trace of the latter’s visit in his Voyage de Charles-Quint par la France (1540), a ninety-page poem that detailed the emperor’s travels—and indeed a text surely in competition with the Fata.32 Fontainebleau occupies a key site within the itinerary, as suggested by the poem’s incipit: L’Empereur vint jusqu’a Fontaine Bleau, Noble chastel tant ou plus fort que beau, Tresbeau pourtant, mais sa meilleure grace C’est qu’en Europe il n’y a telle chasse. Pour ce le Roy, ou qu’il soit, c’est chés soy, Dit il, que la: il le nomme Chés moy. (The emperor travelled as far as Fontainebleau, A noble palace as solid—if not more—than beautiful, Very beautiful, however, but its greatest charm is that Nowhere else in Europe is there such good hunting. 28 François Ier announced his intention to spend more time in the capital in the edict of 24 July 1527. See the Ordonnances des rois de France: Règne François 1er (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902), v. Robert J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 198–201, 253. 29 See André Chastel, ‘La Demeure royale au XVIe siècle et le nouveau Louvre’, in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art Presented to Anthony Blunt (London: Phaidon, 1967), 78–82. 30 Pérouse de Montclos, Fontainebleau, 12. 31 Quoted in Gaston Raynaud, ‘Introduction’, in René Macé, Voyage de Charles-Quint par La France, ed. Gaston Raynaud (Paris: A. Picard, 1879), p. iii. 32 Although almost totally forgotten today, already in 1529 Geoffroy Tory had sung Macé’s praises as an epic poet, saying that ‘de René Massé naist chose plus belle et plus grande que le Iliade’ (‘from René Macé is born a thing greater and more beautiful than the Iliad’), in reference to one of the poet’s earlier chronicles (Geoffroy Tory, Champfleury (1529), fo. iiir. quoted in Raynaud, ‘Introduction’, p. vii.) The Voyage’s modern editor has noted that, as a literary work, it is ‘more than mediocre’, calling it a ‘poetic jumble’ (Raynaud, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii). References to Homer and Virgil throughout the Voyage are numerous, but it is hardly a fully fledged epic. In her study on French Renaissance epic, Klára Csűrös categorizes Macé’s text, like Dolet’s Fata, as a chronicle (Csűrös, Variétés et vicissitudes, 385). Csűrös makes no other mention of the text. On the connection between epic and historical discourses in this period, see Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 461–73. Méniel makes no mention of Macé. Macé’s chronicle is indeed a rather dull versified account of the emperor’s visit.

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Epic Arts in Renaissance France Thus the king, wherever he is, says that his real home Is there: he calls Fontainebleau ‘my home’.)33

Just as much as were the châteaux of the king’s building programme and Macé’s rather pitiful epic about the travels of Charles V, Dolet’s epic, in both Latin and French, was a response to Pavia and an attempt to monumentalize the ‘second ascension’. The Fata’s connection to Fontainebleau is keener and more direct than to any of the other palaces, as I shall investigate here. To one extent or another, it would appear that Dolet was aware of this. Moreover, he seems to have understood the shared purpose in somewhat competitive terms. Unlike the artists at Fontainebleau, Dolet received little (that is, nothing) in the way of salary. His repeated requests for royal patronage were repeatedly and consistently ignored. In 1536, dedicating to François his Commentarii Linguae Latinae (Comments on the Latin Tongue), Dolet expressed the wish that the king might enjoy that work and moreover that he might sponsor his upcoming Fata, referred to as a ‘historia huius temporis’ (‘a story of these present times’).34 In a letter to Guillaume Budé, Dolet equally referred to it as a ‘nostri temporis [historia]’ (‘story of our times’).35 Unlike Rosso and Primaticcio, Dolet was not part of the king’s inner circle, as is made clear by a letter Dolet wrote to the prelate Pierre du Châtel, the king’s reader and librarian.36 Dolet wrote to Du Châtel to request that the latter intervene on his behalf, essentially to sing the praises of the Fata to the king.37 Dolet knew his connection to the king was tenuous and tried to enter into his good graces through a back door, so to speak. He received no royal patronage, however—unlike Rosso, who, by all accounts, benefited greatly from the king’s munificence to the extent that, as Vasari recounts in his Vite, he was able to live ‘non più da pittore, ma da principe’ (‘no longer as a painter, but as a prince’): François offered him servants and a dwelling full of tapestries and silverware, as well as luxurious furniture and other fine objects.38 Dolet, on the other hand, received nothing. Dolet was not alone among Renaissance poets to feel left out. We can think, too, of the epistle sent by Ronsard (included in his Hymnes) to the Cardinal of Lorraine, in which he complains about ‘des peintres estranges’ (foreign painters) who surely do not deserve ‘tant que nous les postes des louenges’ (‘as much as we do those positions that receive great praise’).39 Dolet was clearly aware that his text’s celebration of the king was in competition with parallel realizations in the sister arts. The prefatory letter that accompanies the Fata makes clear the existence of rivalry.40 As Dolet expressed it, the paintings and

33

Macé, Voyage de Charles-Quint, 1:1–6. Etienne Dolet, Correspondance, ed. and trans. Claude Longeon (Geneva: Droz, 1982), letter 56 (French summary, 64; Latin text, 176–8). 35 Dolet, Correspondance, ed. Longeon, letter 57 (French summary, 65–6; Latin text, 179–82). 36 Julia Pardoe, The Court and Reign of Francis the First, King of France (London: Richard Bentley, 1849), 199. 37 Dolet, Correspondance, ed. Longeon, letter 77 (French summary, 78; Latin text, 220–1). 38 Vasari, Le vite, 760. 39 Quoted in Arthur Tilley, ‘Ronsard’s Poetic Growth: III’, Modern Language Review, 31/2 (April 1936), 170. 40 For this letter, see Dolet, Fata, 3–4. 34

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statues of François’s palaces would simply not be enough—an epic was also needed. His epic, of course. True testimony to the king’s virtues, especially his diligentia (‘diligence, zeal’) and prudentia (‘prudence, wisdom’), would be provided not by the sister arts but by literarum monumenta (‘literary monuments’).41 Unlike images or sculptures, explains Dolet, textual creations have the ability to last much longer and to inspire future generations in their pursuit of virtue and rejection of sloth. The opposition between two forms of monument to a king’s glory, seemingly simple, seems, however, to question itself, for Dolet, in reference to his own literary creation, uses a term (monumenta) borrowed from the sister arts. The choice is obviously not accidental, for Dolet twice talks of ‘literary monuments’ within just a few lines of the opening letter. His literary project, although eternal exemplum and thus superior to monuments of stone and the art they contain, is defined here through a comparison to that which it is not, for it too is a ‘monument’. In closing the preface, Dolet also uses the term ornamentum, more immediately appropriate for describing a product of the sister arts than a verse chronicle. The Fata, which Dolet offers to the king in 1539, thus appear to entertain a slightly restless relationship with the sister arts, at once better than, and yet comparable to, painting and sculpture. Dolet appears to be acknowledging the continuity of the arts by asserting one specific advantage of literature (it lasts for ever) while also asserting their inherent relatedness. Such a position would seem fitting for a work dedicated to François Ier, celebrated in his funeral elegies as the ‘père des arts et des lettres’ (‘father of arts and letters’).42 Indeed, some twenty years after his death, Antoine Caron would celebrate the king’s dedication to the renewal of arts and letters in a drawing of him in his Histoire françoise de nostre temps (‘French History of our Times’).43 By positioning his text in such a way, Dolet is both partaking in the construction of a certain image of François Ier and drawing on that image in an attempt to secure favour for his epic. Dolet, within his epic monumentum, tells us that François has been ‘Musarum verus alumnus’ (‘truly nourished by the Muses’); he also lists François’s role as sponsor of the arts and pleas for that role to be sung.44 Dolet argues that Gaul has now become a foremost site for literary study (primis studiorum sedibus) and that previously unskilled men, lacking polish, have now been properly ‘moulded’. To show appreciation of the king’s dedication to renewal of the arts, Dolet asks the poets (himself included) to acquit their debts in song.45 The justification for the complementarity of poetic 41

On the concept of prudentia, see Goyet, Audaces de la prudence. Quoted in Jacquart, François 1er, 303. 43 Janet Cox-Rearick, The Collection of Francis I: Royal Treasures (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 401–2, figures 456–8. On the way in which this idea was given even greater emphasis during the century that created the historical notion of the Renaissance, see Janet Cox-Rearick, ‘Imagining the Renaissance: The Nineteenth-Century Cult of François Ier as Patron of Art’, Renaissance Quarterly, 50/1 (Spring 1997), 207–50. 44 Dolet, Fata, 13. 45 ‘superate agros, persolvite Regi, | Gallia cui debet, quotquot nunc artibus audax | Decertare potest quavis cum gente Pelasga, | Vel Latia, primis studiorum sedibus olim. | Artibus ille quidem vos informauit inertes, | Expoliit, velut scabrum cos lævigat ensem. | Nunc agedum, quod debetis, persolvite cantu’ (‘rise above the fields, render to the king, | to whom Gaul is indebted, now with 42

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verse and the sister arts would be the king’s own support for both. The ultimate vanishing point of the association is the king himself, for Dolet extols as two parts of a combined whole the king’s glorious (pulcher) body and his eloquence (eloquium). By locating his Neo-Latin epic as both comparable to, and yet better than, other art forms, Dolet is able to situate himself within the confines of the king’s own position while also drawing attention to the importance of his own particular project—and of its need for royal sponsorship. GALLERIES OF KINGLY RESEMBLANCES From Dolet’s problematization of the term monument in the Fata’s preface emerges an alliance—and a competition—between the king’s building programme and epic literature. A further and complementary rapprochement is to be explored here, which pertains specifically to form. The question to which I now turn is thus: how can a Neo-Latin epic and its French translation compete with Fontainebleau? I argue that the answer lies in the connected domains of space and aesthetics. Both Fontainebleau and the Fata circumscribe a space or set of spaces that come to house and define a way of communicating via either real images (paintings, sculpture, stucco, and so on) or textual images. More specifically, it is to be suggested here that the Fata can be productively read as a kind of supplemental Fontainebleau gallery, its similes functioning somewhat like, and competing with, pictorial allegory. Certain characteristics of the Fata make it particularly comparable to the Galerie François Ier, often considered ‘one of the finest works of mannerist art outside Italy’ and ‘one of the most complicated and abstruse ensemble[s] of the period’.46 Constructed mainly between 1533 and 1540 and decorated largely by Giovanni Battista Rosso, the gallery is contemporary with Dolet’s epic—but it is also, in a certain sense, coextensive with it, in terms of certain formalisms that structure the respective spaces. Before pursuing this line of thought, it is first necessary (1) briefly to describe the gallery and (2) to ask a seemingly simple question: could Dolet have known anything about the interior of Fontainebleau? The gallery, then, is approximately 60 metres long and 6 metres wide. Its walls are divided horizontally: the lower part is decorated by panels carved from walnut wood, realized by the Italian artist Scibec de Capri; the upper region, split into distinct sections, is filled with an intricately wrought mixture of stucco and painting. The upper region exhibits great variety: each section’s central panel is flanked by either stucco figures, painted figures framed in stucco, or by stucco cartouches. In addition, there are male nudes, putti, fruit garlands, much ornate strapwork, and so on.47 As Rebecca Zorach has however many arts as he is boldly | able to compete in any way possible with the Pelasgian people, | or the Latian, once the foremost seat of studies. | Indeed, with the arts he has moulded you unskilled men, | And polished you, as a whetstone makes smooth a rough sword. | Now come, pay what you owe with a song’) (Dolet, Fata, 13). 46 Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), 36. 47 Blunt, Art and Architecture, 32–6.

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suggested, the leather-like appearance of the strapwork is reminiscent of the ‘curling edges of velum’—as if to point to the gallery’s proximity to literature and the literary.48 The king’s emblem—the salamander—is, of course, omnipresent.49 There would seem to be—I shall return to the complexity of such an assertion— an underlying iconographic programme. Could Dolet have known any of this? He probably never went to Fontainebleau—his biographers mention no such visit. However, the aesthetics associated with the site was broadcast throughout France and beyond, especially via prints or estampes: images from the Galerie François Ier circulated, for example, in engravings made by Antonio Fantuzzi,50 such that JeanMarie Pérouse de Montclos has affirmed (with perhaps slight exaggeration) that the gallery’s epic decorations were, thanks to such prints, known ‘aussitôt . . . dans l’Europe entière’ (‘right away throughout all of Europe’).51 Images were also reproduced in tapestries, now in Vienna.52 Dolet might thus have known something of Fontainebleau’s aesthetics, and his epic—of which a copy was sent to the royal library—would probably have been known to some greater or lesser extent by those members of the educated elite who frequented the château. In what sense, then, can the Fata and the Gestes be seen as functioning in ways similar to the Galerie François Ier? To begin, it can be stated that the royal gallery remains, despite all that has been written about it, much more enigmatic than the Fata or the Gestes. Whatever the possibilities for disagreement over exegesis, the way in which Dolet’s texts relate information to the reader is largely unproblematic: in a more or less epic tone and with varying degrees of rhetorical refinement and ornament, they tell of historical events. There are arguably no hidden meanings. References are to known events and people and the use of mythology is complementary. On the contrary, the overall iconographic programme of the Galerie François Ier remains something of a conundrum—critics now even suggest that its enigmatic nature is less the result of insufficient or failed readings than central to the way it communicates, such that a viewer of the gallery can be likened to the very active reader of a Renaissance rebus53 or emblem book.54 It is precisely this 48

Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 40. On the salamander, see André Chastel, ‘La Salamandre’, Revue de l’Art, 16–17 (1972), 151–3. 50 Fantuzzi was one of Rosso and Primaticcio’s assistants. On Fantuzzi, see Félix Herbet, Les Graveurs de l’école de Fontainebleau (Fontainebleau: impr. de M. Bourges, 1896–1902); Henri Zerner, L’Eau-forte à Fontainebleau: Le Rôle de Fantuzzi (Paris, 1964); Rainer Michael Mason (ed.), Les Lumières du maniérisme français: Antonio Fantuzzi, Léon Davent, 1540–1550 (Geneva: Musée d’art et d’histoire, 2003). 51 Pérouse de Montclos, Fontainebleau, 22. 52 Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 43. 53 On the rebus, see Jean-Claude Margolin, Devises: Armes parlantes et rébus au temps des Grands Rhétoriqueurs (Paris: J. Touzot, 1981), and Jean-Claude Margolin and Jean Céard, Rébus de la Renaissance: Des images qui parlent (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986). The rebus is also essential to the study of Renaissance literature developed in Tom Conley, The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), and An Errant Eye: Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 54 Studies on Renaissance emblem book are numerous. See especially Alison Adams, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders, A Bibliography of French Emblem Books (2 vols; Geneva: Droz, 1999–2002); Laurence Grove, The French Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Sources (Geneva: Droz, 2000), as well as Alison Saunders, The Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book: A Decorative and Useful 49

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difference—between a somewhat transparent text and a still enigmatic gallery— that will prove essential for thinking through the limits and meaning of the rapprochement that Dolet himself proposes. The playful nature of the gallery and its reliance on spectator participation for its meaning have a long history and one that must be reviewed briefly before seeking out correspondences with the Fata. The earliest account of the Galerie—by Pierre Dan (1642)—affirmed that Rosso’s intention had been to recount there ‘les actions principales de la vie du grand roy François’ (the principal deeds from the life of the great king François Ier), a reading that has often been seen as positing the existence of a series of one-to-one correspondence between image and biographical event.55 However, Dan’s argument is slightly more complex: the sentence just quoted continues as follows: ‘la vie du grand roy François, telle qu’estoit son inclination aux Sciences et aux Arts, sa pieté, son courage, son adresse, ses amours, ses victoires’ (‘the life of the great French king, as shown via his attachment to arts and sciences, his piety, his skill, his love affairs, his victories’). Although not anti-biographical, this second part of Dan’s summary gestures towards the idea that the gallery’s meaning is also about ideals, values, and exempla—what the king stood for and what he exemplified, not just what he did.56 Dan’s original comments set into motion the key question on which later debate would hinge—namely, how the gallery relates to François Ier. Pierre Guilbert (1731) largely followed what he saw as the biographical path set forth by Dan.57 Much later, Guy de Tervarent (1952), without breaking with this tradition, made advances by clarifying (a) just how profound was the gallery’s reliance on erudite sources and (b) that the panels were organized in travées (bays).58 Dora and Erwin Panofsky (1958), building on Tervarent’s insights, set about furnishing a definitive account of the gallery that would satisfy Dan’s original claim that the gallery recounts the history of François Ier’s reign.59 Following the gallery’s restoration, a team of experts gathered their skills for a volume of the Revue de l’Art (1972), in which André Chastel both showed the insufficiencies of the Panofskys’ reading and proposed the coexistence of two programmes (one

Genre (Geneva: Droz, 1988), Alison Adams, Webs of Allusion: French Protestant Emblem Books of the Sixteenth Century (Geneva: Droz, 2003), and Arnoud Silvester Quartus Visser, Joannes Sambucus (1531–1584) and the Learned Image: Forms and Functions of a Humanist Emblem Book (Leiden: Universiteit, 2003). 55 Pierre Dan, Le Trésor des merveilles de la maison royale de Fontainebleau: Ensemble les traités de paix, les assemblées . . . qui s’y sont faites jusques à présent (Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1642), 93 [BnF FOL-LK7-2803]. The text is also available in a modern facsimile edition whose page numbers thus correspond to the original edition: Fontainebleau, le trésor des merveilles de la maison royale (Paris: Res universis, 1990). 56 It is also worth noting that Dan qualifies his reading by noting how it is based both on ‘l’apparence’ (what he saw) and on ‘l’opinion de plusieurs’ (the account of several other people). How much we can read Dan’s sentence as the echo of public opinion is, of course, a matter of debate, but it at least hints at the possibility that such a reading was not limited to him alone. 57 Guilbert, Description historique des chateau bourg et forest de Fontainebleau. 58 Guy de Tervarent, Les Enigmes de l’Art: L’Art savant (Bruges: De Tempel, 1952), 28–45. 59 Dora Panofsky and Erwin Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie Francois ler at Fontainebleau’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 52 (1958), 113–90.

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monarchic, one mythological).60 The question of how the gallery relates to François Ier, however, remained (and remains) largely unchanged, caught in a fragile balance (as already proleptically hinted at by Pierre Dan) between biographical allusion and something else. Regarding the omnipresence in the gallery both of François Ier’s letter ‘F’ and of his salamander, Chastel remarks, for example, that they indicate how the theme of each of the gallery’s bays ‘possède une valeur intéressante par son application au roi François’ (‘possesses a certain interesting value when applied to King François Ier’) but that this value ‘n’est pas particulièrement explicite’ (‘is not particularly explicit’) and that it will become apparent from the hermeneutic enterprise articulated by the scenes’ poetics, which function like fabulae or emblems.61 The most recent readings abound in the same sense. The Joukovskys (1992) note that the gallery’s programme ‘relève partiellement d’un jeu littéraire fort apprécié à l’époque, et qui avait un équivalent dans les divertissements de Cour, dans les déguisements et les spectacles allégoriques, l’énigme’ (‘partially depends on a literary game greatly appreciated at the time and which had its equivalent in courtly entertainments, in disguises and allegorical spectacles—in enigma’).62 Similarly, Henri Zerner (1996) concludes his discussion of the gallery’s programme by noting (a) his conviction that a coherent programme must have existed, (b) the fact that such a coherent programme ‘résite étrangement au décryptage’ (‘strangely resists our attempts to decrypt it’), and (c) that the juxtaposition of subjects in the gallery finds it closest model in the Renaissance emblem book.63 Common to these various studies is the attempt to identify a coherent programme for the whole gallery whose complex elements tend to call out for the polysemic and the openended. Equally common to all readings of the gallery is the understanding that the images and other features, individually and in combination, do communicate meanings not wholly contained on their surfaces. There is a general acceptance, whatever the overall iconographic programme is or might be, that some form of allegory is at work.64 While no modern art historian would consider Pierre Dan’s reading—and the Panofskys’ elaboration thereof—as sufficient or wholly convincing in all its details and while they (and I) must surely disagree with the idea that 60 The first of Chastel’s remarks, striking for its convincing simplicity, is that the iconographic programme, as identified by the Panofskys, included events such as the death of the dauphin (1536) or the reprisal of war (1536), which necessarily occurred after the gallery’s programme had been set (1533–5). His second remark, made possible by the gallery’s restoration, is based in the gallery’s physical space, which, it could now be seen, disagreed with the Panofskys’ programme: ‘la galerie se divise incontestablement en deux sections de trois travées chacune (et non trois sections de deux travées), la césure étant marquée par la travée centrale des cabinets’ (‘the gallery is incontestably divided into two parts, each of three bays (and not three sections of two bays [as was previously thought]), the caesura being marked by the central bay and cabinets’) (André Chastel, ‘Le Système de la galerie’, Revue de l’Art, 16–17 (1972), 145). 61 Chastel, ‘Le Système de la galerie’, 147. 62 Pierre Joukovsky and Françoise Joukovsky, A travers la Galerie François Ier (Paris: Champion, 1992), 161. 63 Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 89. 64 For a review of the functioning of allegory in Renaissance painting, see Colette Nativel, ‘Quand l’écorce révèle le noyau: Les Peintres et l’allégorie à la Renaissance’, in Colette Nativel (ed.), Le Noyau et l’écorce: Les Arts de l’allégorie. XVe–XVIIe siècles (Rome: Académie de France à Rome, 2009), 9–31.

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the gallery’s meanings can be forced into some static and univocal form, the protoemblematic nature of the assembled elements nevertheless mean that the gallery’s visitor has to make informed judgements about how images and symbols point to something other than themselves, most likely to create impressions about François Ier, his reign, and the principles by which he led his life and ruled as the French sovereign. To return, then, to my question—how might the Fata and the Gestes be seen as functioning in ways similar to the Galerie François Ier?—it is useful to repeat that the Galerie, unlike Dolet’s epics, does not find its meaning only in the history of the king’s reign: as noted, Chastel has shown that the Panofskys’ purely historiographical reading cannot hold. But it is also true that the gallery, despite its polysemic and open nature, communicates as a whole a multitude of meanings that relate to the king’s reign. My suggestion, then, is to be that the gallery’s allegorical frescoes share a definite structural—albeit, as we shall see inverted—similarity with the Fata’s and the Gestes’ epic similes. One succinct definition of epic simile underlines that it ‘frequently offers an extended set piece, characteristically evoking a scene seemingly alien to the one being described in the main narrative—but more familiar to the poem’s audience than the epic subject itself ’, such as when Achilles’ shield is compared to a shepherd’s fire seen by sailors in book 19 of the Iliad.65 Epic simile forces the reader to pause and, playing on the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar, to picture a given set of narrative data in new terms. Such epic similes often describe battle scenes and serve to describe many aspects of combat: the appearance and movements of multiple warriors, the sight or sound of the fighting, the tempo (sudden violence or renewed ardour, pause or stalemate); to give measurements of magnitude (space, time, numbers); to illustrate the relationships between individuals who are fighting, and so on.66 A more theoretical definition would, following Aristotle in his Rhetoric (3:4), underline two basic principles: (1) the obligatory presence of a formal connector (such as ‘like’ or ‘as’)—thus differentiating simile from metaphor; and (2) a necessary semantic distance between compared elements.67 Classical epics are full of such comparisons. Within the almost 16,000 verses of Homer’s Iliad, the reader will read a total of 202 epic similes, of which 164 relate to battle scenes.68 Virgil’s Aeneid (approximately 10,000 lines) contains 116 similes—this time much more evenly distributed

65 David Mikics, A New Handbook of Literary Terms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 105–6. 66 For a useful survey and textual examples of the above listed uses of simile, see Michael Coffrey, ‘The Function of the Homeric Simile’, American Journal of Philology, 78/2 (1957), 113–32. For a further survey of the form and function of Homeric simile, the work of Arthur Leslie Keith is still useful. See his dissertation, published as Simile and Metaphor in Greek Poetry from Homer to Aeschylus (Menasha, WI: George Banta Publishing 1914). 67 A useful summary of Aristotle’s definition of simile is provided by Robert Archer, The Pervasive Image (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1985), 60–1. For an elaboration on and complexification of the Aristotelian definition, see Ziva Ben-Porat, ‘Poetics of the Homeric Simile and the Theory (Poetic) Simile’, Poetics Today, 13/4 (Winter 1992), 738. 68 Alan John Bayard Wace and Frank H. Stubbings (eds), A Companion to Homer (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1962), 70.

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between battle scenes and other kinds of narrative moments.69 Dolet’s epic is equally full—and, I would argue, comparatively even more full—of them. As has often been underscored, epic simile is by no means mere ‘decoration’—rather, it is ‘dynamic invention’.70 The somewhat florid prose of critics past can illuminate just how much of a gallery heroic verse full of epic similes might be: Paul Shorey in 1922 denied that epic similes are a sign of ‘the quaintness and fumblings of an immature art’, asserting a contrario that they are ‘exquisite if highly conventional ornaments used with consummate skill in the decoration of a great structural whole’.71 I should like, then, to take completely seriously the architectural latency of Shorey’s description. The château’s gallery and the Fata/Gestes thus all give (plastic or textual) shape to François Ier’s reign. The gallery (Figure 2.2) includes twelve frescoes, most of which relate in one way or another to François Ier as biological/historical person or as the personification of the French king. And the epic texts tell the story of that king, puncturing that narrative with similes that force the reader to imagine a scene that captures, in a different form, a particularly striking or important moment. In both the gallery and the text, the reader or viewer is asked to connect François Ier and a textual or painted image via the related procedures of epic simile or pictorial allegory. Enumeration of possible correlations will help elucidate what is meant. Setting aside those allegorical connections asserted by the Panofskys but shown by Chastel to be historically impossible, the following appear as possible readings for individual frescoes: François Ier brings unity to a nation just as a single pomegranate contains many seeds (the Unité de l’Etat—Figure 2.3); the king is just like an elephant in terms of gentleness, intelligence, piety, and wisdom (in the Eléphant fleurdelysé—Figure 2.4); the king, who was devoted to his mother Louise de Savoie, is just like Cleobis and Biton, who show their filial piety by pulling the cart of their mother Cydippe all the way to the festival of Argive Hera (in Cleobis and Biton); the defection of the Connétable Charles de Bourbon, who had played a key role in French victory at Marignano in 1515 but whose greed led him to join the forces of Emperor Charles V, is just like the treachery of Nauplius, who tricked the Greeks to avenge his son Palamedes (in the Revenge of Nauplius—Figure 2.5); François Ier, to whom Orazio Farnese, the grandson of Pope Paul III, was sent for his education, is just like the centaur Chiron, to whom Peleus dispatched Achilles for a similar purpose (in the Education of Achilles—Figure 2.6).72 Walking through the gallery,

69 Roger Allen Hornsby, Patterns of Action in the Aeneid: An Interpretation of Vergil’s Epic Similes (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1970), 7. 70 Richard Lattimore, ‘Introduction’, in Homer, The Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 45. 71 Paul Shorey, ‘The Logic of the Homeric Simile’, Classical Philology, 17/3 (July 1922), 259. 72 Other allegorical connections put forward by the Panofskys, but shown to be historically inaccurate by Chastel, are as follows: the early death (at age 18) of François Ier’s son, the dauphin François, was just like the death of Adonis (in the Death of Adonis); François Ier, now aging and ill, is nevertheless (or would like to be) just like a snake who remains young by shedding its skin every year (in the Fontaine de Jouvence); the ongoing war between François Ier and Charles V, which took a turn for the worse with the former’s invasion of Savoy and Piedmont in 1536, is just like the battle—somewhat of a drunken brawl—between the Lapiths (a legendary people from Thessaly) and the Centaurs at the wedding feast of Pirithous (in the Battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths).

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Semele Danae Twins of Catania Cleobis and Biton Royal Elephant Unity of the State The Sacrifice Ignorance Put to Flight

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then, the viewer is invited to explore possible correspondences between the frescoes and the king and/or his reign and/or his values and ideals. Such comparisons might seem to belong purely to scholarship in the tradition of the Panofskys—but if we turn to a very recent (2005), and in many ways revolutionary, reading of the gallery, we see similar kinds of allegory being deployed: Rebecca Zorach’s new reading of the image typically known as Venus Frustrated, which she proposes retitling Fontainebleau Nova Pandora, also turns on a number of X is just like Y formulae. Zorach speculates as follows: ‘the armed putti represent the tribulations or misfortunes of war, while the book held by the two putti in the foreground on the lower right represents humanity’s remaining hope—the single virtue retained by Pandora—in learning’; the ‘clothed female figure might represent Minerva, goddess of wisdom, who by some accounts breathed life into Pandora after Vulcan created her’ and the ‘book-as-hope would represent the humanist learning magnificently deployed throughout the gallery itself ’—and these various meanings would be embodied in the site of the château itself, ‘referred to in the small image below the main fresco’ and which ‘expresses the power of learning’.73 In other words: Fontainebleau is, in this positive sense, just like Pandora. The gallery’s meaning, in 1623 as in 2005 and beyond, depends on and demands such X is like Y formulations, such that the king, his entourage, and the values he did or hoped to embody were and are constantly submitted to comparisons drawn from history, mythology, literature—and Fontainebleau itself. It is in this respect that Dolet’s Fata and Gestes can be seen, I argue, as close cousins of the gallery. The gallery, as just suggested, overflows with allegories that point beyond the painted surfaces towards events, ideas, or values associated with François Ier and his reign. Now, Dolet’s texts, for their part, as they relate that same king’s reign, overflow not with pictorial allegories, but with epic similes. To see the similarity between these two modes of communicating, it is again useful to enumerate. In the Fata, we see that François Ier, burning with rage against the Swiss, is just like (‘ut’, ‘comme’) a great-hearted lion (‘Leo magnanimus’, ‘ung Lyon magnanime’) surrounded by a wild heard of oxen and dogs (‘grege . . . agrestis . . . Inde Boum, inde Canum, inde Ursis[ve], Lupis[ve]’, ‘une troupe d’animaulx, Boeufs, Ours, Loups, Chiens’);74 the rage of the battling French and Imperial troops is not unlike (‘non absimilis’, ‘non dissemblable’) that of two bulls (‘Tauros’, ‘Taureaux’) that chase down a mountainside in pursuit of a horny cow (‘Vaccam . . . ardentem’, ‘une Vache chaulde’);75 the passion of the French as they battle the Swiss is not other than (‘non alius’, ‘sembloit à veoir que . . . ’) that of Indian Tigers (‘Tigribus Indis’, ‘Tigres’) whose offspring have been stolen away;76 each French soldier is just like (‘haud secus’, ‘non aultrement’) a hungry wolf (‘impastus Luper’, ‘un Loup enrage de fain’) that prowls among sheep and goats before spilling their bloody guts all around;77 the French and Swiss battlelines rise up and battle not otherwise than (‘non aliter’, ‘tout ainsi que’) winds, which, equally, 73 74 76

Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 51–2; emphasis added. 75 Dolet, Fata, 17; Gestes, 27. Dolet, Fata, 16; Gestes, 25. 77 Dolet, Fata, 22; Gestes, 31. Dolet, Fata, 19; Gestes, 29.

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Figure 2.3. Rosso Fiorentino, Gallery of François Ier: The Unity of the State. Photo by Gérard Blot. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.)

Figure 2.4. Rosso Fiorentino, Gallery of François Ier: The Royal Elephant. Photo by Gérard Blot. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.)

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Figure 2.5. Rosso Fiorentino, Gallery of François Ier: The Vengeance of Nauplius. Photo by Gérard Blot. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.)

Figure 2.6. Rosso Fiorentino, Gallery of François Ier: The Education of Achilles. Photo by Gérard Blot. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.)

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rise up into the air in prolonged battle, yielding to neither sea nor clouds;78 the defeated Swiss troops withdraw from the battlefield just like (‘qualis’, ‘En la sorte que . . . ’) a snake that, run over and crushed by the wheel of a cart, still manages to slide away slowly into the undergrowth;79 Charles de Bourbon (mentioned above) is just like (‘ut’) a stork (‘Ciconia’) that abandons its young, and the French troops it left behind are comparable to the other baby storks that now seek to defend the abandoned parent;80 the French troops are just like (‘ceu’, ‘Comme’) lions that, having fought with bulls, realize the battle is useless and pull back from it;81 François Ier, as he strolls through the cadaver-strewn battlefield, is like (‘ceu’, ‘comme’) a desperate Boar (‘desperatus Aper’, ‘ung Sanglier’) that is eventually captured in a net;82 the collapse of the French battalions is just like (‘ceu’) a giant forest, the branches of whose trees are beaten by the tumult of Boreas (‘boreali impulsa tumultu’);83 the companies of French soldiers act not unlike (‘non aliter’, ‘comme’) a herd following the battle of two bulls, of which one has become victor;84 the French soldiers, who swallow back their lamentations and set about fortifying their cities, act not unlike (‘not aliter’) dogs that, threatened by the flashing teeth of a boar, can be beckoned by a master’s hand to stop barking and obey commands;85 the French are just like (‘ut’, ‘comme’) cranes (‘grues’, ‘une compaignie de Grues’) that defend themselves against the fowler’s traps;86 and so on. This is just a selection: other epic similes in the Fata and Gestes invoke other wild beasts, another serpent, another dog, more tigers, chicks and birds, a sparrow, sheep, and a fox. Like the visitor to the Galerie François Ier, Dolet’s reader is asked constantly to imagine the king, his entourage, and the French military as something they are not. As the footnotes to the above enumeration make clear, the Fata and the Gestes contain most of the same similes, although several similes present in the Latin text are omitted from the French adaptation. Moreover, the often complex syntax of the similes in the Latin text has often been simplified in French. Although the French text reads more like a chronicle, Dolet takes ‘few pains to naturalize’ the epic similes—such that a reader of the French text is almost bound to recognize their classical heritage as much as a reader of the Latin original.87 As this selection makes evident, the vast majority of Dolet’s similes are tied to animal behaviour, a kind of epic simile familiar to readers of Homer and Virgil: Homer, to give but one example, says that Zeus has inspired Ajax with such fear that he is like a lion driven from a sheepfold;88 Virgil invokes lions, wolves, tigers, eagles, and so forth.89 Post-classical epic poets—Dante, Milton, Spenser, Ariosto, and others—also all make use of such

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79 Dolet, Fata, 23; Gestes, 32. Dolet, Fata, 22–3; Gestes, 32. Dolet, Fata, 27. This simile is absent from the French text. 81 Dolet, Fata, 29–30; Gestes, 43. 82 Dolet, Fata, 37; Gestes, 48. 83 Dolet, Fata, 39. This simile is absent from the French text. 84 Dolet, Fata, 40; Gestes, 52. 85 Dolet, Fata, 43. 86 Dolet, Fata, 44; Gestes, 53. 87 On these questions, see Worth, Practising Translation in Renaissance France, 190. 88 Iliad 11:544–65. 89 See: lions at Aeneid 9:792–6, 10:454–6, 12:4–8, wolves at Aeneid 9:59–64, 9:565–6, tigers at Aeneid 9:730, and eagles at Aeneid 9:563–765. 80

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animal similes.90 Striking in the Fata is their very proliferation, as is their position vis-à-vis the reader. Many of Dolet’s comparisons—all signalled in the margins by the word ‘Comparatio’ or ‘Comparaison’—are borrowed directly from Virgil’s Aeneid, which Dolet himself edited in 1540 and which his readers could also have read, for example, in the 1509 French translation by Octovien de Saint-Gelais.91 Among the direct borrowings from the Aeneid is the comparison between the French and Swiss troops and two bulls chasing a horny cow, which it is worth studying more closely to see how Dolet appropriates his Virgilian model. In the Aeneid, it is Turnus and Aeneas who are compared to two bulls that battle on Mount Sila (a mountainous plateau in Calabria, southern Italy) or Mount Taburnus (a mountain range in the Apennines, central Italy).92 Dolet’s Latin text is fairly close to Virgil’s, with certain parts being borrowed verbatim (‘cornuaque obnixi infigunt et sanguine largo | colla armosque lavant’ (They run at each other with their heads, mix wounds with great force, and, leaned in, fix horns upon [each other], and with a slow [flow of] blood wash their necks and weapons))—the central violent image of the whole simile. Other parts are transposed less directly, such as the description of the confrontation’s sound: Virgil says that ‘gemitu nemus omne remugit’ (‘the woodland re-echoes with their bellowing’) and that the ‘ingens fragor aethera complet’ (‘mighty crash fills the [upper] air’). Dolet’s Latin text inverts the order, describing first how ‘horrificante boatu | Completur Cœlum’ (‘Heaven is filled with terrible screaming’), then how ‘vox ingeminata remugit | Late per campos, montes refusa pererrat’ (‘the echoed voice resounds wide over the plains and, poured back, wanders the mountains’). As for the French version of the simile in the Gestes, the most important difference is surely that, while the Aeneid and the Fata situate the action on Mount Sila or Mount Taburnus, the Gestes talk only of ‘une montaigne’ (a mountain)—a not surprising difference, in that the French text generally avoids making unnecessary or overly obscure learned references. In either case, however, the reader of the Latin and French texts cannot help but be aware of the Virgilian origin of the simile. Although the epic can be seen as a kind of extra Fontainebleau gallery, there is obviously something quite different about the functioning of painterly allegory and epic simile—and discussion of this difference will help refine the nature of the connection I seek out here. The former (pictorial allegory) allows for an image of one event or person to convey a meaning other than the literal; the comparison is made only by means of subtle hints on which the viewer may or may not pick up, 90 See Richard T. Holbrook, Dante and the Animal Kingdom (New York: AMS Press, 1966); Luigi Venturi, Le Similitudini Dantesche (Florence: G. G. Sansoni Editore, 1874); and James Whaler, ‘Animal Similes in Paradise Lost’, PMLA 47/2 (June 1932). 534–53. 91 See Christine Scollen, ‘Octovien de Saint-Gelais’s Translation of the Aeneid: Poetry or Propaganda?’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 39 (1977), 253–61; Christine ScollenJimack, ‘Hélisenne de Crenne, Octovien de Saint-Gelais and Virgil’, Studi Francesi, 78 (1982), 197–210. For a general study of Virgilian translation in sixteenth-century France, see WorthStylianou, ‘Virgilian Space’. 92 For the three versions, see Aeneid 12:715–27; Dolet, Fata, 17; and Dolet, Gestes, 27. In the interest of concision, I do not reproduce the three similes here.

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often so subtle that ‘their significance was lost within one or two generations’.93 Not only that, but it permits ‘partial as well as multiple comparisons’.94 Thus, for example, in the painting of Cleobis and Biton, not only is François Ier like both of them, but his two sons, the dauphin François and the future Henri II, show their filial piety by spending time as hostages in Madrid following their father’s release.95 Or else, in the Education of Achilles, Chiron perhaps alludes to François Ier’s mentoring of Orazio Farnese (as Achilles); or else, it is Achilles who alludes to François Ier himself; or else, Achilles alludes to François’s son, the dauphin destined to die young, indeed like Achilles.96 In other words, pictorial allegory as practised at Fontainebleau often leaves the viewer (especially the modern viewer) with many doubts and queries. It relies on the viewer’s extensive knowledge of mythology, literature, and perhaps even on an (even more informed) guide. Epic simile, on the other hand, grafts an image onto a clear narrative in such a way as to reinforce it and bring out its salient characteristics. No misunderstanding is (at least in theory) possible, because the comparison is explicit. The marker of comparison—like, as— welds the simile to the narrative and, in this, functions in a way similar to the guide required by pictorial allegory—that is, like François Ier himself when he would explain this gallery’s images to visitors, as seems to have been his habit. The king, indeed, had to be present ‘to prompt the visitor into understanding the significant and meaningful scheme formed by the decorations in the gallery’.97 As his sister Marguerite de Navarre phrased the issue, without the king, the meaning of Fontainebleau made as much sense to her as did Hebrew (a language she did not understand).98 Foreign ambassadors were often brought into the gallery: Sir John Wallop, one of Henri VIII’s ambassadors, visited Fontainebleau in 1540 and wrote to the king about the invitation to see the gallery: O monsieur lambassadour quod he vous soiez le tresbien venu. praying me to tarry awhile and the King wold shewe me his gallery.99

And it was the king’s bodily presence that must have given the gallery something of the solidity of the epic simile’s ‘like’ or ‘as’. In other words, it is the difference in pictorial allegory and epic simile that allows both the epic text to provide a gallery of images and the poet to make connections understandable just as the king would have in his own gallery. To return to Dolet’s comments in the prefatory letter, the Panofsky and Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier’, 114. Panofsky and Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier’, 130. 95 Panofsky and Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier’, 137. 96 Panofsky and Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier’, 153. 97 Christopher Burlinson, Allegory, Space and the Material World in the Writings of Edmund Spenser (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006), 55. 98 Marguerite de Navarre, Nouvelles lettres, 382: ‘voir vos édifices sans vous, c’est ung corps mort, et regarder vos bastiments sans ouïr sur cela vostre intention, c’est lire en esbryeu’ ‘seeing your edifices when you are not there turns them into dead bodies; and looking at your buildings without hearing from you what you intended is like trying to read a foreign language one does not speak [lit. ‘like reading Hebrew]’ (quoted in Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 46, n. 36). 99 Quoted in Burlinson, Allegory, Space and the Material World, 53. 93 94

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Fata and the Gestes could thus function as complete monuments even after the death of the royal guide. One final point calls for comment. Traditionally, epic similes served in part to make something foreign seem somewhat familiar. It can be recalled, for example, that the animals that figure in Homer’s similes all belong to Asia Minor, such that far-off places and unknown characters could be compared to familiar fauna.100 On the other hand, the Fata and the Gestes, in their appropriation of classical heritage, frequently mention animals that would be unfamiliar to sixteenth-century Parisians or inhabitants of the Loire valley—bull-ridden mountains and lions and Indian tigers are indeed rather absent from the French capital and surrounding countryside. In other words, Dolet’s epic similes, translated from or constructed after models in classical epic, thus come to function not as comparisons that make the foreign familiar, but rather the opposite, as comparisons that make the familiar (the French king, French troops fighting the Swiss, and so on) something rather more foreign (a lion, bulls, and so on), with the result that they actually end up performing in a way much more similar to the often convoluted allegories of the Galerie François Ier. Simile here—to borrow Ronsard’s celebrated definition— becomes as much a ‘fabuleux manteau’ (‘fabulous cloak’) enclosing ‘la vérité des choses’ (‘the truth of things’) as allegory itself.101 It is worth wondering, too, whether the high number of expressions like non aliter or non dissemblable (that is, ‘not unlike’)—as opposed to sicut, comme, and so on—is not perhaps an added indicator of the nature of the blurry connection between the familiar and the unknown. The Panofskys note that the gallery’s system ‘resulted from the summation of many small parts rather than from the organisation of one grand whole’.102 The gallery’s allegories offer more of a ‘running commentary’ than the ‘realisation of a pre-established blueprint’.103 Zerner’s more recent conclusion that a coherent system probably existed—but that it now escapes us—leaves us, fundamentally, in that same position, searching for allegorical (or other) correspondences and meanings that are probably part of an (as yet ungrasped) whole. Such evaluations resonate with the series of epic similes in the Fata and the Gestes, which establish only one-off connections. To conclude this rapprochement between Dolet’s epic and the Fontainebleau gallery, I should like to pause to examine a number of similes near the end of Dolet’s epic, for that series pertains directly to the spirit of reconstruction and national unity that dominates the aftermath of the Battle of Pavia. This series, as will be shown below, can be seen as an avatar of Rosso’s Unité de l’Etat (see Figure 2.3), a painting that situates King François Ier as ‘the pivot of social stability’ and as a ‘just arbitrator in direct contact with the juridically

100 101 102 103

Otto Körner, Die Homerische Tierwelt (Munich: Verlag von J. F. Bergmann, 1930), 2. Pierre de Ronsard, ‘Hymne de l’automne’, in Œuvres complètes, ii. 559–70. Panofsky and Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier’, 159. Panofsky and Panofsky, ‘The Iconography of the Galerie François Ier’, 159.

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responsible . . . representatives of a number of significant social groups’.104 Recognizable in the painting are men at arms, a clergyman, magistrates, scholars, merchants, and peasants. Although, as is hardly surprising, a dominant position is given to the nobility and the Church, the fresco was ‘conceived to propagate the increasingly alluring contention that the king’s state was a more equitable state—at least for men’.105 A small detail worthy of note are the lion masks atop the king’s boots, ‘a symbol of regal and martial power’ and perhaps hinting at a connection between François Ier and Hercules.106 And, as already noted above, the king holds out a pomegranate to signify the unity of the nation. A series of Dolet’s similes seeks to convey a similar message about the king’s role as unifier of the nation. François Ier’s return from captivity—the return that began the ‘second ascension’ with discussion of which this chapter began—is figured in the Fata via two extended similes, which do not fit together. Rather, they stand in parallel as two possible depictions of the same emotion.107 Happy to be reunited with their king, the Gauls are said to jump up and down in joy. In their jumping for joy, they are—in a first moment—compared to farmers (agricolas) who, having been unable to plough because of too much rain, are relieved when the sky is calmed by golden splendour (‘aurato Caelum splendore serent’).108 A second simile, introduced as an alternative within the same syntactic unit (‘aut velut’), figures the Gauls’ relief to that of the dog that, overjoyed at being reunited with his master, adulatur saltat, lambit repertum, Nullo stat loco, & sexcentos conficit orbes Huc, illuc celer currens (fawns all upon the man [which the dog] has found again, and jumps, and licks him, And it cannot stand still, and it completes six hundred circles running Swiftly, willy-nilly).109

The king’s return is crafted as a happy event, its movement captured as much as that of a battle scene via these complementary similes. Ten pages later, Dolet forges a second set of similes to describe an even greater sense of national unity when the king’s sons also return to France. François Ier’s exultation is compared to that of a crested bird (cristata ales) that sees a bird of prey (milvus) threaten her young. The mother is said to gather her chicks together and to rejoice at their having been snatched away from danger.110 This first simile is quickly followed by a second slightly modified version that likens the king to a sparrow (passer). Having been removed from the claws of a hawk, the sparrow flies down into a field of corn, chattering, forgetful of danger, flying from tree to tree.111 Now, these tableaux of unification and joy, expressed through animal similes, bring the narrative around to François Ier’s marriage to Eleanor of Austria, the sister of Emperor Charles V: Wilson-Chevalier, ‘Women on Top at Fontainebleau’, 34. Wilson-Chevalier, ‘Women on Top at Fontainebleau’, 34. 106 Barbara Hochstetler Meyer, ‘Marguerite de Navarre and the Androgynous Portrait of François Ier’, Renaissance Quarterly, 48/2 (Summer 1995), 299. 107 Dolet, Fata, 50–1. 108 Dolet, Fata, 50. 109 Dolet, Fata, 51. 110 Dolet, Fata, 60. 111 Dolet, Fata, 60–1. 104 105

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‘nusquam non omnia laeta’ (‘nowhere is there cause for anything but joy’), writes Dolet.112 Things have turned out well and the tumult of war (‘belli tumultu[s]’) has been settled.113 The king, says Dolet, will now devote himself to taking care of the Gauls, with whom he has been reunited, by prescribing friendly laws (‘leges amicas’), increasing the strength of the realm (‘vires augescere Regni’), and securing towns and building fortresses. Dolet’s François Ier here cuts a similar figure to the one that Rosso celebrates in his Unity of the State: a powerful leader, surrounded by his countrymen, and above all a unifier—but the specific image-vehicle (the armour, the pomegranate, and so on) is obviously different from Dolet’s. But both the message and the underlying means of conveying that method are very similar. In book VII of his treatise on architecture, Sebastiano Serlio (already mentioned in Chapter 1) defined the gallery as ‘una saletta per spassegiare’ (‘a room for walking in’).114 One of the primary uses of the gallery in the early modern period was to display paintings—more specifically, although not exclusively, portraits.115 The Galerie François Ier is not, of course, a portrait gallery per se—but it is a gallery of allegorical portraits of the king, his family, and of key moments and values in royal historiography. So are the Fata and the Gestes. As the gallery’s viewer casts his eyes left or right at the various images, hopefully with the king to explain them, so the epic’s reader advances through the text, with a clear narrative path this time— Dolet’s narrator takes the kingly role—but with just as many glances at sometimes unexpected images. In as much as the king’s presence is superfluous—the epic similes need no exegete other than the poet for the creation of a sense of walking through a gallery at once familiar and unfamiliar—then Dolet’s epic texts clearly show their independence and their capacity to rival with art in terms of a meaningful monument for the king’s second ascension.

FOREIGN PERSPECTIVES To pursue this discussion of the Fata’s connection to contemporary realizations in the sister arts, let us now turn to literary and artistic depictions of the event that lies at the heart of this chapter—that is, the Battle of Pavia. It comes as no surprise that that battle and its aftermath looked very different from France and from abroad. Dolet’s Fata (aimed at a Latin-speaking European-wide audience) and Gestes (aimed at a domestic and slightly less-educated readership) took up the challenge of offering a French perspective on these events aimed at countering foreign representations of the battle in which, of course, the French fared rather badly. The interaction with the sister arts studied so far in this chapter—the literary text presented as more durable than paintings or other art forms and yet also a 112

113 Dolet, Fata, 62. Dolet, Fata, 61. Quoted in Rosalys Coope, ‘The “Long Gallery”: Its Origins, Development, Use, and Decoration’, Architectural History, 29 (1986), 43. 115 See Susan Foister, ‘Paintings and Other Works of Art in Sixteenth-Century English Inventories’, Burlington Magazine, 123 (May 1981), 278. 114

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‘monument’ just as much as them; the aesthetic overlap between Fontainebleau allegory and epic simile—here opens out to a wider dialogue with European painting and tapestry when it comes to analysing Dolet’s depiction of the Battle of Pavia, a topic that will take up the rest of this chapter. To begin, I will discuss briefly how the battle was figured in paintings and tapestries outside France, in stark contrast to the gaping absence of such figurations within France—not picturing the battle was obviously the easiest way to deny defeat. I will subsequently turn back to Dolet’s texts, with the goal of demonstrating how the author counters foreign depictions of the battle by exploiting a central characteristic of epic—namely, the teleological nature of its narrative structures that inscribe human events within divine schema—as already hinted at by Dolet’s speech about France being beaten by ‘Fortune’. To this end, and for reasons that will become evident, a detour must be taken through the text’s depiction of French victory at Marignano, for, I contend, the transfer of modes of representation between victory and defeat plays a crucial role in the countering of foreign artistic perspectives on the battle. In 1585, then, Van Buchel described his visit to the Château de Madrid, which he says was built ‘sur l’ordre de François Ier pendant sa captivité à Madrid, après la bataille de Pavie’ (‘on the orders of François Ier during his captivity in Madrid, following the Battle of Pavia’). In one of its many rooms, Van Buchel continues, was to be found a painting of the said battle.116 Such a painting is, however, otherwise unattested, and there is good reason to believe it might never have existed. While defeat at the Battle of Pavia was the direct cause of the king’s decision to build palaces like Madrid and Fontainebleau, I have been unable to locate a single French-authored visual depiction of the battle. That defeat was not, understandably, a topic taken up by Fontainebleau’s flattering allegories nor elsewhere within the various palaces’ decorative schemes.117 Nor would it feature, many years later, in L’Histoire française de nostre temps (French History of Our Times) (1562–72), which celebrates Valois victories in verse (by Nicolas Houel) and in black-and-white illustrations (by Antoine Caron). Executed for Catherine de Médicis during the reign of Charles IX, the Histoire, whose full title defines its object—in language borrowed from chronicle and epic—as the ‘faictz & gestes’ (‘actions and great deeds’) of French kings, makes no mention of the Battle of Pavia.118 Within the twelve drawings related to the reign of François Ier, one finds François represented as an ideal king, crowned by Apollo upon Mount Parnassus, as well as various military feats (victory at Marignano, the campaign against Charles 116 Quoted in Chatenet, Le Château de Madrid, 62. Alexandre Vidier’s full translation can be found in the Mémoires de la société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France, 26 (1899). 117 Cécile Scailliérez, François 1er et ses artistes (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1992), 60. 118 The full title of the work is L’HISTOIRE | FRANÇOYSE DE NOSTRE TEMPS, | Comprenant en brief les faictz & | Gestes du grant ROY | FRANÇOYS premier, | de HENRY | second, de | FRANÇOYS second, & de CHARLES IXe, ROYS | de FRANCE. | PLUS UN PETIT RECUEIL DE | leurs Généalogies, & lignées, avec les figures & Pourtraictz | des plus illustres ROYS de FRANCE & Hommes | vertueux de la maison de MEDICI. Le tout par cartons de peincture de blanc & noir, Façonnez par les | plus excellentz Peintres de FRANCE, & d’ITALIE; | Ausquelz ont été adioutez plusieurs sonnetz pour | l’intelligence de l’HISTOIRE. | Par Nicolas Houel. Parisien. | A la | ROYNE de FRANCE Mère du ROY.

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V in 1536, the Battle of Cerisoles in 1544, and so on), but nothing about the defeat of 1525.119 In opposition to this absence, it is not surprising to find that the Battle of Pavia was a recurring subject for artistic works realized outside France at this time, in both high and low art, particularly within the circles around the court of Emperor Charles V. The list of imperial depictions of the Battle of Pavia is long and varied. Popular imperial songs of the time celebrated German bravery and Franco-Swiss cowardice: ‘Schiest drein, schiest drein ir frumme lanzknecht!’ (‘Fire away, fire away you pious Landsknechten!’).120 The battle is depicted on the reverse of a commemorative medallion and on the ornamental crystal top of a seal handle.121 There is a painting attributed to Jan Vermeyen122 and a woodcut by Jörg Breu the Elder that shows the Habsburgs’ military might.123 A drawing by the Austrian Wolf Huber (c.1485–1553), a Danube School painter influenced by Dürer, shows the events with a definite mannerist touch.124 A painting by a follower of Joachim Patinir (c.1480–1524), a Flemish landscape painter, offers a bird’s-eye view of the battle.125 As is typical of Patinir’s style, the landscape dwarfs the events depicted and the capture of François Ier, in the bottom right of the picture, hardly commands immediate attention from the viewer.126 Still, its imperial point of view is evident, in line with the fact that paintings by Patinir and his workshop were often owned by members of the emperor’s court.127 The list of depictions could be extended still more. Two depictions are of particular importance here, for they

119 Jean Ehrmann, Antoine Caron: Peintre des f êtes et des massacres (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), 84–114. For comparison with the absence of Pavia, see, for example, the poem about Marignano in which the king is shown to be ‘bénissant son Dieu, qui lui donnoit la gloire’ (‘blessing his God, who gave him glory’) (p. 89). 120 Extract from a contemporary song attributed to Hansen von Würzburg. See Rochus von Liliencrou, Deutsches Leben im Volkslief um 1530 (Berlin: W. Spemann, 1884), 31–7. The translation is by Pia F. Cuneo, Art and Politics in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 128, n. 132. 121 See Cuneo, Art and Politics, 131. For the medallion, see Guido Bruck, ‘Die graphische Vorlage für die Darstellung des Schlact von Pavia auf der Medaille des C Konstam oncz Welcz’, Mitteilungen der österreichischen numismatischen Gesellschaft, ns 12 (1961), 3–5. The seal, by Giovanni dei Bernardi, is in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, ‘Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe’, inv. no. 2244. See Alphons Lhotsky (ed.), Sonderausstellung Karl V (Vienna, 1958), 24–5. 122 See H. Stöcklein, ‘Die Schlacht von Pavia’, in Ernst Buchner and Karl Feuchtmayr (eds), Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Kunst (Augsburg: B. Filser Verlag, 1924), i. 235. 123 Cuneo, Art and Politics, 122–3. Reproduced as Plate 1. 124 The drawing is conserved at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich. Angus Konstam, Pavia 1525 (Oxford: Osprey, 2005), 41: Huber’s ‘Battle of Pavia’ offers a ‘completely imaginary view’ in which ‘the only way troops are differentiated is by their Imperialist or French standards’. On this drawing, see also Cuneo, Art and Politics, 131, and (for a reproduction) Peter Halm, ‘Die Landschaftszeichnungen des Wolfgang Hubers’, Münchner Jahrbuch für bildende Künste, ns 7 (1930). 125 For a reproduction and description of the painting, now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. 5660), see Klaus Demus, Friederike Klauner, and Karl Schütz (eds), Flämische Malerei von Jan van Eyck bis Pieter Bruegel (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1981), 267–8. In relation to the capture, we read simply that ‘Im Vordergrund rechts die Gefangennahme König Franz’ I. durch Prosper Colonna’ (‘In the foreground on the right, King François Ier is captured by Prosper Colonna’). 126 On Patinir, see Robert A. Koch, Joachim Patinir (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). 127 The catalogue of the recent exhibition at the Prado make this point clear. See Alejandro Vergara (ed.), Patinir: Essays and Critical Catalogue (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007).

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Figure 2.7. View of Room at the Villa Margone, Italy. (Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

illustrate the systematic nature of the Habsburg point of view against which Dolet is necessarily writing. First of all, one can turn to a room at the Villa Margone, situated above the town of Ravina and which belonged to the Basso family (Figure 2.7). Based on drawings by Maerten van Heemskerck, the frescoes of the ‘Ciclo di Carlo V’ (‘Cycle of Charles V’) begin with an ‘Allegoria delle vittorie di Carlo V’ (‘Allegory of Charles V’s Victories’) (Figure 2.8), complete with the imperial motto ‘Plus ultra’ (‘Further Beyond’; in French ‘Plus oultre’) and even a depiction of François Ier. The gallery’s next images depict the Battle of Pavia (Figure 2.9), the sack of Rome, the arrival of Imperial troops in America, and other moments of the emperor’s gestes.128 The inscription under the ‘Battaglia di Pavia’ fresco reads ‘Virtuti cessere animi viresque tremendae’ (‘[Their] spirit and tremendous strength [literally, “troops” or “numbers”] yielded to valour’), thus placing the emphasis not on the emperor’s might, but on the exemplary virtue ‘con cui l’imperatore ha vinto tutti i suoi avversari’ (‘with which the emperor has vanquished all his enemies’).129 The ciclo thus inscribes the Battle of Pavia within a more general iconographic programme that sings of Charles V’s military might.

128 For a description of the cycle, see Michelangelo Lupo and Julian Kliemann, Villa Margone a Trento e il ciclo affrescato delle vittorie di Carlo V (Trento: Editrice Temi, 1983), 51–7; for reproductions, pp. 86–110. See also Ezio Chini, ‘La pittura in Trentino e in alto Adige nel Cinquecento’, in Giuliano Briganti (ed.), La Pittura in Italia: Il Cinquecento (Milan: Electa, 1988), 138. 129 Lupo and Kliemann, Villa Margone, 55.

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Figure 2.8. Anonymous, after Maerten van Heemskerck, Ciclo di Carlo V at the Villa Margone: Allegoria delle vittorie di Carlo V. (Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

Secondly, we should turn to the most truly monumental representation of French defeat in the sister arts, the astonishingly large and beautiful Battle of Pavia tapestries designed by Bernard van Orley (c.1488–1541).130 Although offering a clearly imperial point of view of the battle, for whom the tapestries were originally executed and their exact relationship to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V remains uncertain. Originally understood as a gift from Charles V to Alfonso d’Avalos, an Italian condottiero who commanded the Imperial forces, as a sign of gratitude for the role he played in ensuring French defeat, the tapestries were later thought to have been offered to Charles V on the occasion of a gathering of the 130 The most recent study of Van Orley’s activities is Maryan Wynn Ainsworth, ‘Bernart van Orley, peintre inventeur’, Studies in the History of Art, 24 (1990), 41–64. The most useful study of the tapestries, which includes a colour plate, is La Bataille de Pavie (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999). The chapter by Nicolas Spinosa (‘Les tapisseries de la Bataille de Pavie’, pp. 14–29) was particularly important for the present study. Also important are Nicola Spinosa and Gianni Guadalupi, ‘To the Glory of Charles V: The Tapestries of the Battle of Pavia’, FMR 106 (2000)’, 67–110, and Iain Buchanan, ‘The “Battle of Pavia” and the Tapestry Collection of Don Carlos: New Documentation’, Burlington Magazine, 144/1191 (June 2002), 345–51.

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Figure 2.9. Anonymous, after Maerten van Heemskerck, Ciclo di Carlo V at the Villa Margone: Battaglia di Pavia. (Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

Estates General held in Brussels in 1532.131 Although more recent research has shown there to be no direct evidence of such a gift having been made, it is known for certain that by 1549 the tapestries hung in the Palace of Binche, which the emperor had offered to his sister Mary of Austria in 1555.132 For whomever the tapestries were first intended, it is clear that they are closely associated with Charles V and that they naturally espouse the Imperial (as opposed to French) point of view. They are not unlike tapestries that sing epic heroes—such as Perino del 131 The first hypothesis (that the tapestries were a gift to Alfonso d’Avalos) was put forward by various nineteenth-century studies that underlined the presence of the series at Avalos’s palace in Naples, beginning with Domenico Romanelli, Napoli antica e moderna (Naples: Angelo Trani, 1815), 106, up to Salvatore Di Giacomo, ‘I Sette Arazzi della battaglia di Pavia’, Emporium, 34 (October 1897), 300–8. The second hypothesis (that the tapestries were offered to Charles V) was advanced by Alphonse Wauters, Les Tapisseries bruxelloises: Essai historique sur les tapisseries et les tapissiers de haute et de basse-lice de Bruxelles (Brussels: Imprimerie de Ve Julien Baertsoen, 1878), 95, and, by the same author, ‘Les Tapisseries de Bruxelles et leurs marques’, L’Art, 27 (1881), 25, 108, 221, 241, and recently questioned by Jozef Duverger and Erik Duverger, ‘Aantekeningen betreffende de zestiendeeeuwse Brusselse tapijwever Jan Ghieteelse’, Archivium Artis Lovaniense (1968)’, 242–4. 132 On the presence of the tapestries at the palace of Binche, see Emmanuel Raoul d’Astier de la Vigerie, La Belle Tapisserye du roy (1532–1797) et les tentures de Scipion l’Africain (Paris: Champion, 1907), 21, and Heinrich Göbel, Tapestries of the Lowlands (New York: Brentano’s, 1924), 527.

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Figure 2.10. Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia; Defeat of the French Cavalry (c.1530). (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte / Photo # Luciano Pedicini, Archivio dell’Arte.)

Vaga’s Aeneas tapestries realized for the Palazzo Doria in Genoa133—save the fact that the battle represented here is historic and contemporaneous. Moreover, as well shall see, military might is not the tapestries’ focus. What, then, is the story that the seven Van Orley tapestries tell about the Battle of Pavia? They certainly depict French defeat with an intensity that grows in everincreasing pathos throughout the series.134 There is, in the first tapestry, an initial hint at French confidence and even might: we see François Ier slaughtering Ferrante Castriotta, the commander of the Imperial army, then charging off with sword held high as a sign of victory. Temporary triumph it is, though, for the king is in reality rushing towards his own defeat. The second tapestry shows the French cavalry being vanquished, with many a bloody cadaver to bring the point home (Figure 2.10). The third displays the capture of François Ier, brought down and 133 See Bernice Davidson, ‘The Navigatione d’Enea Tapestries Designed by Perino del Vaga for Andrea Doria’, Art Bulletin, 72/1 (March 1990), 35–50. 134 I will refer to the tapestries that make up the series with the following abbreviated titles: 1. Advance of the Imperial Troops; 2. Defeat of the French Cavalry; 3. Capture of François Ier; 4. Invasion of the French Camp and Flight of Women and Children; 5. Flight of French Civilians; 6. Flight of the French Army; 7. French and Swiss Survivors Leave Pavia.

Figure 2.11. Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia; François Ier Vanquished (c.1530). (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte/Photo # Luciano Pedicini, Archivio dell’Arte.)

Figure 2.12. Bernard van Orley, The Battle of Pavia; Flight of the French after Defeat (c.1530). (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte/Photo # Luciano Pedicini, Archivio dell’Arte.)

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helped away from the crushing weight of his fallen horse by three benevolent imperial knights (Figure 2.11). The subsequent tapestries emphasize, more than the military defeat itself, the panic and flight that ensued: foot soldiers try to escape across the Vernavola River, civilians attempt to escape through a hole in the wall; woman and children rush from the French camp (Figure 2.12), as does a monk with fear on his face; the king’s brother, the Duke of Alençon, having crossed the Ticino River, rides away to safety, while a French soldier makes a seemingly futile attempt to destroy the bridge (essentially wooden planks placed atop small boats). As even this quick summary makes clear, the emphasis is placed squarely not so much on the valour or might of the imperial forces, but on the defeat and, more precisely, the startled flight of the terror-stricken French. The series offers nothing less than a highly emotional portrait of French despair. It is obvious, then, that throughout the late 1520s and the 1530s Habsburg artists invested much energy into the fashioning of imperial identity, drawing on the 1525 victory over the French. It is not difficult to imagine why rebutting such representations might have seemed like a good way to secure patronage from François Ier.

EPIC VICTORY A T M ARIGNANO With these images still in mind, let us return to Dolet to ask how he wrote the Battle of Pavia in such a way as to transform this portrait—and others like it—of French despair. To make sense of Dolet’s epic in this respect, it is first necessary to examine how the text deals not with defeat—but with victory, for the strategies put into play are, as we shall see, very similar. It is, I believe, in the transferability of narrative strategies between moments of victory and failure that their power lies. Let us recall that the Latin title of the epic—Fata—makes clear the fact that the text narrates not historical events per se, despite its chronicular origins, but rather their inscription within a divine scheme. The key word of Dolet’s title—fatum—is reiterated many times throughout the Latin text, reminding the reader exactly what kind of narrative is being deployed. Thus, one reads of ‘malignum Fatum’ (‘Spiteful Fate’), ‘crudelia Fata’ (‘cruel Fates’), ‘Fata . . . dura’ (‘harsh Fates’), ‘Fata improba’ (‘wicked Fates’), ‘Fatis . . . impiis’ (‘impious . . . Fates’), a tightly woven network to which are also connected various related terms, such as ‘Sors caeca’ (‘blind Fortune’).135 From even this brief sampling, it is clear that, most of the time, Dolet is bemoaning Fate’s lack of support for both François Ier and the French nation—a distinct echo of his blaming Fortune for military defeat in his speech as a student, as discussed at the start of this chapter. Already we glimpse the potential in such an epic for recuperating defeat and failure. As we shall see, it is precisely the king’s partial lack of control over destiny that allows the text to sing of France’s greatness and to function as both chronicle of defeat and praise of victory, and thus to counter the triumphalism of the Ciclo di Carlo V, the Van Orley 135

Dolet, Fata, 36, 42, 45, 45, 55, 63.

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tapestries, and other foreign representations of French annihilation. Here, as elsewhere, epic narrative functions along both a horizontal axis (the events narrated) and a vertical axis (the way in which those events relate to the divine plans of destiny), and, thus, to narrate the king’s fata is a different undertaking from faithfully chronicling his victories and defeats. Here, destiny subsumes and explains both. As we shall see, victory and defeat can thus both be saved from the categories of the merely accidental and the purely historical. Let us turn then to the Battle of Marignano, which took place in September 1515, just south-west of Milan, and which resulted in French victory. The French, allied with German troops, were fighting against the Swiss, then in control of Milan despite the titular presence of Duke Massimiliano. The French goal was to recapture a city that served as France’s doorway to Italy. The account of the battle in La Mer des chroniques, Dolet’s source of historical knowledge, is concise: on the second and final day of battle, the Swiss defenders of Milan are said to be fighting strongly, partly because of their losses of the previous day, and all would have been lost for the French ‘neust este lartillerie q[ui] faisoit merueilles d[e] tirer & occioit a chacû coup q[u’e]lle tiroit grant nôbre de Suysses’ (‘had it not have been for the artillery which performed great marvels: with each shot, many Swiss were killed’).136 The French, says this chronicle, won the battle because of their artillery. The text continues by telling us that the Swiss flee: ‘ils tournerêt le dos et sen fouyrêt vers millan & a bref dire tout le remanêt fut occis’ (‘they turned around and ran off towards Milan. In a word, everyone who remained behind was killed’).137 Dolet’s epic, in both Latin and French, reworks this basic information to transform it from a historical to an epic event. In the Fata, the same narrative events are recounted—but in quite a different manner. The Swiss are still shown to be vigorous in battle, but the battle is written into an epic structure that connects the deeds of mortals to the whims of the Pagan gods and thus into the overarching story written by destiny. Dolet, like the chronicle, relates French military victory to the appropriate marshalling of artillery, using the Latin term tormenta (a war engine used to hurl stones). However, he adds to the account in the Mer des chroniques not only that this artillery is ‘nova bellica cladis | Materies’ (‘a new instrument for military destruction’), but also that it is ‘imitata Iovis penetrabile fulmen’ (‘fashioned after Jupiter’s piercing thunderbolts’).138 In addition to the weapons being crafted after the flashing darts of the king of the Olympian gods, François Ier himself is likened by Dolet to ‘Ægæon qualis’ (‘some kind of Aegaeon’)—that is, that ‘creature of the hundred hands’,139 who was a god of sea storms and ally of the Titans. To the gods he was known as Briareus and was said by Hesiod in his Theogony to have ‘mighty strength . . . that was dreadful’.140 François Ier, then, is cast by Dolet as a modern 100-armed epic creature, as if he too fought alongside 136 Robert Gaguin, La Mer des cronicques et mirouer hystorial de France (Paris: Jacques Nyverd, 1530), fo. ccxliiiiv. 137 Gaguin, La Mer des cronicques, fo. ccxliiiiv. 138 Dolet, Fata, 21. 139 Homer, Iliad 1:397. 140 Hesiod, Theogony: Works and Days. Testimonia, ed. and trans. Clenn W. Most (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, coll. Loeb Library, 2006), 147–53.

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Jupiter against the Titans. The story told here ends up being slightly different from the chronicle: it is no longer the historical—France’s possession of good artillery— that decides France’s victory at Marignano. It is, rather, the fate of François Ier that situates him in the epic realm and as an equal to Jupiter. It is important to underscore that the events, in Dolet’s account, depend not on the king himself, not even on artillery, but on the gods and on fate. This is confirmed by the way the end of the battle is narrated. At first, ‘incerto nutu Mauortis eunt res’ (‘things occur according to the dubious nod of Mars’):141 the Swiss think they are going to win, then the French believe victory is theirs. It is finally Mars who decides: ‘Mars partibus hærens | Gallis, Helvetios linquit’ (‘Mars, clinging to the Gallic side, leaves the Helvetians’). The Swiss are beaten and are compared, in lines borrowed from the Aeneid, to a snake that has been run over by the brazen wheel of a passing cart.142 Mere military might in the Mer des croniques is transformed into an epic battle controlled by Mars; and a regular war engine makes of François Ier an epic creature with 100 arms wielding thunderbolts like those wielded by Zeus. At this point, we must turn to Dolet’s French translation of this episode. It is useful to remember the general context of that translation. As Valerie Worth has suggested, while the Fata were probably aimed at an international Latin-speaking audience, the Gestes were crafted for the domestic market and thus aimed at telling the story of the French king for the French themselves.143 The translation seems to have been popular—more popular indeed than the original Latin text, despite the potential for greater circulation—that is, beyond Francophone borders. The Gestes were published in Lyons, then again in Paris, twice, by two different publishers— namely Alain Lotrian and Nicolas de Burges.144 It is worth noting in particular that Alain Lotrian was well known for his publication of romans de chevalerie and of moralizing tales aimed at less-erudite readerships and thus that Dolet’s epic (now fashioned more as a prose chronicle) would probably have been read by more popular and (relatively) less-educated audiences. The paradigm shift can be located, as a first indication, in the preface. In Latin, Dolet expresses his hope that the king will be ‘Apellis manu pingaris’ (‘painted by the hand of Apelles’), the most famous painter of Ancient Greece, who painted a picture of Alexander holding one of Zeus’ thunderbolts and who even painted Aphrodite herself; in the French text, on the other hand, Dolet writes merely that he hopes François and the French be painted by ‘Painctres’—any painters willing to take up the challenge, it would seem. As regards the episode in question at present (victory at Marignano), it can be stated as a preliminary summary that Dolet’s French text is much closer to the Mer

141

142 Virgil, Aeneid 5:273–9. Dolet, Fata, 22. Worth, ‘From a Neo-Latin Epic Poem’, and Worth, Practicing Translation in Renaissance France, 68–72, 152–64. 144 A copy of the edition by Alain Lotrian can be found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France: Sommaire et recueil des faictz et gestes, du Roy Francoys premier de ce nom, tant contre L’empereur que ses subiectz, et autres nations estranges, dedans lequel oeuure on peult congnoistre tout ce qui a esté faict par les Francoys depuis Lan mil cinq cens treize, iusques à présent (Paris: par Alain Lotrian, 1543) [BnF LB30-2]; a copy of the Nicolas de Burges edition is at the Arsenal: Sommaire et recueil des faictz et gestes, du roy Francoys premier de ce non (sic) (Paris: chez Nicolas de Burges), 1543 [Arsenal 8-H-6075]. 143

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des chroniques than the Latin text. Not only are numerous words borrowed directly (corroborating the Mer as a definite source for both Latin and French texts), but certain (although not all) of the epic elements that we have seen here being grafted onto the bare historical facts are removed. On the one hand, just as the Latin text asserts that ‘Mars partibus hærens | Gallis, Helvetios linquit’ (‘Mars, clinging to the Gallic side, leaves the Helvetians’),145 so the French text concludes that ‘a la fin Mars commenca a adherer a la partie des Francoys, & delaisse les Suisses’ (‘in the end, Mars began to lend his support to the French and abandoned the Swiss’).146 On the other hand, the French translation is bereft of many of the heroic strategies adduced above regarding the Fata. Of the final day of fighting at Marignano, a colourful and loud picture is drawn: ‘Tabourins, Fifres, & Trompetes commencent a sonner asprement des deux costés’ (‘Drums, flutes, and trumpets began to sound loudly on both sides’).147 The Swiss troops (as in the Latin text), although fully engaged in battle, ‘furent recullez & fort endommagez par l’artillerie [qui] feit merueille de bien tirer’ (‘were pushed back and heavily injured by artillery that performed marvels with each shot’).148 Whereas the Latin text, as noted above, compares the French artillery to Jupiter’s thunderbolts and the French king to the 100-armed Aegaeon, the French text makes no such claims. Just as the reference to Apelles disappears in the preface, so here classical mythology is banished. Moreover, this change is accompanied by another one: the successful French artillery is said specifically to be under ‘la conduicte du Seneschal d’Armignac’ (‘the leadership of the Seneschal of Armagnac’)—that is, Galiot de Genouillac (1465–1546), who was grand maître de l’artillerie de France from 1512 until his death.149 The French text, crafted for a domestic audience, locates victory more as the result of the successful French management of artillery. Genouillac appears as the story’s more humansized figure. The overall victory, in French as in the original Latin, is, however, put in the hands of Mars, the god of war. The consequences of this use of fatum are essential for understanding how Dolet would provide a means of coping with defeat and with countering foreign artistic representations of Charles V’s victory at Pavia.

EPIC ERASURE OF D EFEAT In competition with the sister arts, as he says clearly in the prefatory letter examined above, Dolet offered a unique response to the question of how to produce a monument for a king whose most recent military expedition was a failure. While the ornate façades and Italianate decoration of François’s palaces were a response to military defeat, all direct allusions to that defeat were effectively erased, both within the paintings that hung inside the palaces and more generally in sixteenth-century French-produced iconography. Dolet, on the other hand, as we shall see, chose quite a different approach for his historically based epic. It is to this difference that 145 148

Dolet, Fata, 23. Dolet, Gestes, 31.

146 149

Dolet, Gestes, 32. Dolet, Gestes, 31.

147

Dolet, Gestes, 31.

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we turn here. In contrast to French erasure of the defeat and Imperial artists’ exaltation of that same event stands Dolet’s epic response.150 The departure lies in the fact that the same strategies used to tell the story of victory at Marignano in 1515 are also deployed by Dolet in the storytelling of military defeat. Let us proceed then to how Dolet’s epic writes failure in such a way as to narrate the nation in a positive light, how epic here functions as recuperative narrative implicitly in competition with the Ciclo Carlo V and the tapestries of Van Orley. From victory at Marignano, we thus shift our focus to discomfiture at the Battle of Pavia, fought ten years later and in which François Ier’s troops clashed with the Spanish–Imperial army. As already noted, the French were surprised in the middle of the night by the Imperial forces; by noon the next day the battle was over and the French army had been put to rout. The French forces, indeed, were brutally butchered, and the French king was taken captive. In the Mer des chroniques, Dolet’s historical source text already discussed above, the final outcome is summed up concisely: finablement fortune qui par plusieurs fois aux francoys auoit fauorise leur tourna . . . son triste . . . visaige Car leur armee deffaicte en cheualeureusemêt combatât fut le cheual du magnanime roy treschestiê occis & luy detenu prisonnier. (In the end, Fortune which had several times favoured the French turned towards them . . . its sad . . . face For, their army defeated in hot combat, the magnanimous king’s horse was killed and the king was taken prisoner.)151

Dolet’s epic narrativization of La Mer des chroniques’ account inscribes the bloody and the terrestrial within François Ier’s destiny, of which he is not, of course, wholly in control. As previously with victory at Marignano, the failure at Pavia as it is narrated by Dolet is explained through an interwoven narrative that relates mortal events to immortal control, the historical event being transposed and elevated into the realm of divinely decided Fate. In order to tell the story of French defeat, Dolet calls upon Mars, Jupiter, and Allecto. As in La Mer des chroniques, the French are said to be fighting and seemingly winning. The king is said to call out for victory against his enemy and mentions by name that victory be won over Charles de Bourbon, who, originally appointed Constable of France, had more recently defected to support Emperor Charles V, François’s rival—a fact to which we shall return. The king rallies his troops and commands: ‘ductu exuperamus, & armis’ (‘let us secure victory by leadership and in arms’).152 The single most important element of Dolet’s story about Pavia is what comes next.

150 For a wider perspective on how contemporary literature reacted to the Battle of Pavia, see Angelo Cerri, ‘La battaglia di Pavia nella letteratura contemporanea’, in Storia di Pavia: Dal libero comune alla fine del principato indipendente (Milan: Banca del Monte di Lombardia, 1990), vol. 3, 2:71–156. 151 Gaguin, La Mer des cronicques, fo. ccxxiiv. 152 Dolet, Fata, 33.

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Læta inclinabat sensim victoria, cum Mars Famæ diffidens priscæ, quæ debita Regi Esse videbatur Gallo, sic omnipotentem Patrem obtestatur. Si per tua numina poßit (O genitor Divum, hominum) manere perennis Noster honos, nobis qui se conferre potest iam Rex, modo sternatur tantis cum uiribus: hæret Nostra ad metas fama, nisi id concesseris ultro. (Happy victory inclined gradually towards the Gauls When Mars, fearful for ancient fame—fame that seemed To be the Gallic king’s due—thus entreats his all-powerful Father: ‘If by your divine will our public esteem should (O father of both gods and men) remain intact forever, Then may that king be struck down with might so great (A king who can already compare himself to us). Our fame has reached its limits, unless you end this of your own accord.)153

The plea is summed up by a printed marginal annotation: ‘Mars famæ suæ | diffidens ad Io-|uem adit’ (‘Mars, fearing for his reputation, goes to see Jupiter’).154 Readers of epic are used to the whims of Juno, with which the Aeneid opens, for example, but Dolet’s invention here is strikingly different: the god of war, jealous of François Ier, is given a kind of inferiority complex.155 Jupiter agrees with Mars— ‘Iusta petis’ (‘You plead a just cause’)—and acquiesces that ‘Nolumus immortalem mortali inferiorem’ (‘We do not want the immortal to be inferior to the mortal’).156 The obvious implication is that François Ier’s military force is so great that it would outstrip that of even Mars. To put his plan into action and to have François Ier be defeated (essentially by his own might), Mars looks towards Tartarus, that dark and gloomy pit of torment situated beneath the underworld and which Dolet describes as being the home of ‘tristia bella, | Iræ, insidiæ, & crimina noxia cordi’ (‘grievous wars | And wrath, and treachery, and sins noxious to the heart’).157 From Tartarus, Dolet summons one of the Erinyes (or Furies)—namely, Allecto, whom he describes as ‘luctificam’ (‘calamitous’). Mars assigns Allecto a specific task: ‘invictum concute robur | Galli animi’ (‘strike the invincible strength of the | Gallic spirit’).158 To accomplish this, Allecto, who is said to have ‘Mille nocendi artes’ (‘a thousand arts for causing harm’), is told to ‘invictum concute[re] robur | Galli animi’ (‘strike the invincible strength of the Gallic spirit’) by spraying these ‘mentes invictas’ (‘unconquered minds’) with ‘tremore | Horrifico’ (‘horrible trembling’).159

153

154 Dolet, Fata, 34. Dolet, Fata, 33. For a similar situation, one might turn to Polynices’ comments in Statius’ Thebaid regarding who is responsible for the death of Tydeus: ‘(num fallor?) et ipse | Inuidit pater et tota Mars impulit hasta’ (‘The father himself—surely I am not wrong?—Envied you, and Mars struck you down with his spear’s full force’) (quoted in William J. Dominik, Speech and Rhetoric in Statius’s Thebaid (New York: Olms-Weidmann, 1994), 51–2). 156 Dolet, Fata, 34. 157 Dolet, Fata, 35. 158 Dolet, Fata, 35. 159 Dolet, Fata, 35. 155

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This she does, raining down ‘horrificantes guttas’ (‘terror-causing drops’) onto the otherwise fearless French troops, thus making French victory impossible. Dolet, of course, is drawing here on Aeneid 7, where Allecto’s role is central to the advancement of the narrative. Dolet’s appropriation reworks Virgil in significant ways.160 Virgil had already used the term luctificam to describe the Fury.161 In the Aeneid, Juno turns to Allecto, because she had been previously unable to secure help from the gods above (superos)—‘Acheronta movebo’ (‘I will set Hell in motion’).162 Allecto next embarks upon a reign of terror. Juno puts the Fury’s Gorgonian hatred to full use by sending her to infuse Amata (Latinus’ wife) with hatred for Aeneas and the Trojans, with an eye to slowing down Aeneas’ progress. She flings onto Amata a snake plucked from her hair: ille inter vestis et levia pectora lapsus volvitur attactu nullo, fallitque furentem vipeream inspirans animam. (Gliding between her clothes and her smooth breasts, [the snake] winds its way unfelt and, unseen by the frenzied woman, breathes into her its viperous breath.)163

Further on, disguised as an old woman with hoary locks, Allecto visits Turnus as he sleeps, leaving him in monstrous fright, sweating from bone and limb.164 As Turnus, originally referred to as ‘audax’ (‘bold’), goes on to become the rabid fighter who incites his countrymen to war, he is thus following the will of Allecto and, upstream, that of Juno.165 Allecto’s terrible mission connects Turnus’ actions to the will (or whims) of Juno. He is not, in a sense, responsible for his actions. Allecto also visits the son of Aeneas, Ascanius; she throws upon his hounds a ‘subitam rabiem’ (‘sudden frenzy’), thus kindling the ‘bello animos . . . agrestis’ (‘rustic spirit to war’).166 It is worth underlining the rather obvious (but important) fact that divine intervention in the Aeneid, in all its various forms and here, too, as regards Allecto sent by Juno, deals ‘not with Aeneas’s personal destiny, but with the mission [that] he embodies’.167 And, within the various interventions, Allecto’s is indeed a ‘key symbol of violence and furor, of all that opposes pietas and humanitas in the Iliadic Aeneid’; she is the ‘sower of civic and military violence’.168

160 Useful reading for thinking through the connections between Dolet’s text and Aeneid 7 includes: Michael C. J. Putnam, Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 246–85, and Nicholas Horsfall, Virgil, Aeneid 7: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2000). 161 Virgil, Aeneid 7:324. 162 Virgil, Aeneid 7:312. It is interesting to recall in passing that it is this verse that Freud used as an epigraph to his Interpretation of Dreams. 163 Virgil, Aeneid 7:349–51. 164 Virgil, Aeneid 7:406–67. 165 Agathe Thornton, The Living Universe: Gods and Men in Virgil’s Aeneid (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 112. 166 Virgil, Aeneid 7:479–82. 167 Richard Heinze, Virgil’s Epic Technique, trans. Hazel Harvey, David Harvey, and Fred Robertson (Boston: Bristol Classical Press, 2004), 242. 168 Brooks Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 323.

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To tell the story of François Ier’s defeat, Dolet thus draws on Allecto’s terrible mission in the Aeneid and recasts it to fit his own purposes. He was neither the first nor the last Renaissance poet to do this, as one sees by turning to Vida, Tasso, and others, who exploit especially the ‘imagery of demonic possession’ contained in Allecto’s intervention in the Aeneid.169 Dolet’s purpose is not, significantly, to show the French possessed by the devil (as in several other Renaissance poets), nor to sow violence (as in Virgil), but rather to freeze an army in its military prowess, with the goal of explaining why the French would lose, curiously situating François Ier in a position not wholly dissimilar from that of Turnus—hardly the Aeneid’s hero. Dolet’s story of Pavia thus continues with the king and his soldierly raging furiously against the enemy. The king is the embodiment of virtue and tenacity: sic obrutus undique telis Rex nubem belli dum constans detinet, omneis Sustinet, & dicto increpitat, retinet fugaces. (thus overwhelmed on all sides by spears The king, while he firmly holds off the cloud of war, sustains all, And exhorts them with a word, and holds back those who flee.)170

Moreover, he is not alone; the French soldiers also fight on, ‘omnes, fulmina belli’ (‘all of them thunderbolts of war’), seemingly (for now) unaffected by the shower of fright-inspiring rain.171 The French show their bravery, rushing into war and possible death in order to save national honour and win the battle. But, the moment comes when the fear spread by Allecto’s horrific cloudburst takes its toll on even the bravest: ‘tunc, tunc | Fluctuat ira intus’ (‘then, then, wrath undulates inside’), a progression whose suddenness and inevitability are signalled by the repetition of tunc (‘then, thereupon’).172 We read on: ‘rumpuntur nescia uinci | Pectora: tunc totis in vulnera viribus itur’ (‘hearts which do not know how to be conquered are broken: then there are wounds in the powers of all’).173 French defeat is now unavoidable—and it had nothing to do, in Dolet’s story, with any shortcoming of the French soldiers or their king. Defeat was ordered by Mars (fearful for his reputation) and thanks to the fury Allecto (who caused the French army to be frozen in its tracks). Dolet’s narrative thus makes coextensive an extended epic aristeia (that is, the battle scene in which the warrior king’s prowess is shown) and a case of military defeat.174 Above, we saw that the French translation of victory at Marignano suppressed certain epic elements of Dolet’s Latin story. Something similar happens in the 169

Gregory, From Many Gods to One, 71–2. 171 Dolet, Fata, 36. Dolet, Fata, 36. 172 Dolet, Fata, 36. 173 Dolet, Fata, 36. 174 A good example of aristeia in classical epic is the one related to Achilles in Iliad 21. There, of course, Achilles is successful, almost single-handedly vanquishing the Trojan army. One might also think of the aristeia devoted to Nisus and Euryalus in the Aeneid—their night-time mission in the Rutulian camp ends, however, with Euryalus’ capture and the death of Nisus. This latter example is thus somewhat closer to the overlapping of victory and defeat in Dolet. 170

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French version of defeat at Pavia, where again the fate of the French army is given a human face (rather than a heroico-mythological one). This time, the face is not that of the maître d’artillerie Genouillac, but rather that of Charles de Bourbon, a hero of Marignano who, as noted above, later fled France to join the ranks of François Ier’s enemy Charles V (as of 1523).175 He is mentioned throughout the Latin text: there named Borbonius, he is called a ‘proditionis aman[s]’ (‘lover of treachery’) and a ‘proditor audax’ (‘proud traitor’),176 for ‘insectatur Iberus, | Borbonio ducente’ (‘the Spanish enemy advances, with Borbonius leading’).177 Dolet’s story, however, is not just that Bourbon committed treason and that he fought for the enemy camp against the French. Rather, his emphasis is that, by doing so, he allowed the Imperial forces to win— Solum sustinuisse Hispanas tempore longo Turmas, atque acies: solum misisse sub Orcum Plus ter centum animas (You alone sustained the Spanish squadrons at a long interval and the battlelines, you alone sent three hundred souls under Orcus)178

—and thus that French defeat was really, in a curious sort of illogical fidelity to historical fact, French victory. As Dolet sums up, ‘Gallica virtus | Virtuti Gallæ cedit’ (‘Gallic courage falls to Gallic courage’), such that—in conclusion to the whole story of defeat, Dolet can affirm: ‘victoria Galla est’ (‘victory is Gallic’)179— even though the French lost. In Dolet’s strategic storytelling, like an Orwellian slogan, defeat becomes victory. Consistent with the changes in the French text related to victory at Marignano, the French translation here suppresses the story of Mars summoning Allecto who discourages the French troops with her ‘horrificantes guttas’, with the corollary that Bourbon’s treachery is given centre stage. It is his disloyalty—which is simultaneously his French valour—that explains French defeat (or victory!). The French text offers an explanation similar to the Latin: ‘on peult dire que les Francoys furêt uaincuz par la uertu Francoyse . . . & non par les Hespaignolz: qui au parauant n’auoient peu auoir aulcun aduantage sur les Francoys’ (‘it can be said that the French were vanquished by French valour . . . and not by the Spanish who, before that point, had had no advantage over the French’).180 Dolet, keen to point out how this defeat was ordained by the gods, adds that ‘Il fault croire aussi, que Dieu permist ceste defortune, pour manifester le pouuoir du Royaulme de France’ (‘It must be believed that God allowed this misfortune in order to demonstrate the power of the kingdom of France’).181 In other words, God—here the Christian God (in the singular), not the pagan gods (in the plural)—planned that the French be victorious by having the French army beaten

175 For a recent (and revisionary) account of Bourbon, see Vincent Joseph Pitts, The Man who Sacked Rome: Charles de Bourbon, Constable of France (1490–1527) (New York: Peter Lang, 1994). 176 Dolet, Fata, 27. 177 Dolet, Fata, 36. 178 Dolet, Fata, 37. 179 Dolet, Fata, 37–8. 180 Dolet, Fata, 50. 181 Dolet, Gestes, 50.

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by a French soldier who defected to the enemy side, causing French defeat! The French have nothing to fear, says Dolet: les ennemys ayent faict tout effort d’opprimer, & inuahir le Royaulme, toutefoys ils l’ont trouué si puissant, qu’a la fin se sont ueuz frustrez de leurs entreprinses . . . & pour toutes leurs inuasions, le Roy, & Royaulme ne laisse d’estre aussi florissant que iamais. (the enemies having made such great efforts to oppress and invade the kingdom, still they found it so powerful that in the end they saw themselves frustrated in their undertakings . . . And despite all their invasions, the king and kingdom flourish as much as ever before.)182

Dolet’s story: defeat is victory. The final image of defeat at Pavia, present in both the Latin and French versions, depicts the king as he faces destiny. It is a somewhat extended epic simile (of which the text contains numerous other examples), here comparing François Ier to a boar (aper, sanglier): Fulminat hic tum Rex armis: ubi strata suorum Corpora spectat humo: ceu, cùm post funera prolis Ductæ per campos (postquam sat fortia membra Gressu) desperatus Aper, si indagine retis Cingatur, furit immani vel dente, vel ungue: Sed tamen hunc nimius tandem vi conficit Umber, Copia vel Venatorum transuerberat ingens: Sic densato oppressus turbine concertantm Rex capitur. Quis enim fatis instantibus obstet? (Then the king storms here with his arms: where he sees The bodies of his men strewn on the ground: as when, after the Death of its offspring, led through the fields (after his strong Legs are tired with the going), the desperate boar, if he should be Surrounded by the enclosure of the net, he rages whether with a savage Tooth or nail, but nevertheless at length the Umbrian destroys him by Force, indeed a multitude of hunters pierces him through: Thus overwhelmed by the thickened whirlwind of fighting men The king is captured. For who may oppose importunate fate?)183 Comme ung Sanglier, qui meine ses petits apres soy, s’il aduient que par les Veneurs ils luy soient prins, ou meutris, alors ce n’est que fureur de luy, tant il escume, & faict fouldre de la dent. En telle sorte le Roy uoyant ses gens en partie opprimez par les ennemys, ne s’espergnoit aulcunement, & se monstroit plein d’ung cueur inuincible. Mais finablement par une Destinée aduerse, & fortune mauluaise, l’armée de France fut deffaicte, & le cheual du Roy occis soubs luy, & luy prins prisonnier en combatant magnanimement. (Like a wild boar, who leads his young along, if it so happens that the hunters steal them away or kill them, then he is nothing but fury, for he foams greatly at the mouth and he flashes his teeth. In such a way the king, seeing his men partly beaten by the enemies, spared no effort and showed his heart to be invincible. But in the end, because of adverse Destiny

182

Dolet, Gestes, 50.

183

Dolet, Fata, 37.

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and bad Fortune, France’s army was defeated and the king’s horse was killed under him and he was taken prisoner while fighting most courageously.)184

The final image of the Battle of Pavia, which could never have been present in anything of a similar form in the Galerie François 1er, is very specific: it is not just that the king has been hunted down like an animal, but that he has been hunted down like an animal who sees his offspring (prolis; ses petits, ses gens) injured and killed. The king’s soldiers are finally beaten by the horror-inducing rain sprinkled by Allecto, but the king himself is only finally vanquished—in a kind of rage (furit; il escume) not unlike that Allecto caused in her victims in the Aeneid—by the vision of defeat embodied by his overcome soldiers—that is, by the vision of ‘strata suorum | Corpora . . . humo’ (‘the bodies of his men strewn on the ground’) that brings the final moment of defeat. In Dolet’s story, not only is the king’s defeat not his fault, but he is also depicted as a leader of men whose final rage and capture occur only when he looks on at what happened to his troops. As with the victory over the Swiss at Marignano, then, which was due to the gods, the defeat at Pavia is equally beyond the control of the French. The king cannot be blamed—his only contribution to the failure was to be so good at war as to give Mars an inferiority complex. Winning or losing, goes Dolet’s story, France is great and the king is beyond reproach, a powerful rebuttal of the triumphalism that members of Charles V’s circles would have seen in paintings and tapestries. Dolet thus tells the story of victory at Marignano (1515) and defeat at Pavia (1525) with strikingly similar strategies and towards similar ends—that is, to situate François Ier and the French within the epic spaces of fate and destiny. It is this exploitation of such notions that, I argue, and rather than conformity with any preexisting epic tradition, defines Dolet’s two texts as epic. Moreover, the differences between the two texts—the Latin always more mythological, more classical; the French more human—do not alter the inscription of historical events within an epic teleology that competes with contemporary productions in the sister arts, both directly in the preface and indirectly via a certain shared aesthetics and an implicit dialogue with paintings and tapestries of the Battle of Pavia.185 The military ups and downs of François Ier’s reign are written in such a way as to allow for the recuperation of defeat. The portrait of French despair in the Ciclo Carlo V, the Van Orley tapestries, and elsewhere, is here replaced by an epic version of François Ier that represents defeat while at the same time offering a triumphalist portrait of the king. The Fata and the Gestes are epics for their time, suited to François Ier’s aesthetics, to his desire to rebuild France, and to his very real clamouring for 184

Dolet, Gestes, 48. Kenneth Lloyd-Jones argues that the French text plays down the determinism of the Latin text, based largely on the omnipresence of the term fatum. While the two titles certainly point in different directions (Fata towards destiny; Gestes towards historically determined actions), the French text defines and uses throughout the word Destinée. As has been shown in the present chapter, Dolet assigns defeat to the uncontrollable (destiny, fortune, etc.) in both Latin and French texts. See Kenneth Lloyd-Jones, ‘Etienne Dolet, fidèle traducteur de lui-même?’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 35/2 (1973), 315–22. 185

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authority following major military failure. Dolet is free to include all events, good and bad, a praise strategy and institution du prince different from that promoted by Erasmus and Budé and a kind of epic story that, in close formal proximity to Virgil’s Aeneid in many ways, employs imitative strategies to produce triumphalism in the face of very real defeat, in order to establish rather than merely echo royal power. Dolet crafts a narrative about the king’s destiny that contributes to the literary project of ‘l’illustration de France’ (‘the glorification [i.e. making illustrious] of France’), a project to which Dolet tells the king he has dedicated himself so that ‘toutes Nations estranges congoistroient, de quel comble de Vertu tu es eminent par sus toutz aulres Prince’ (‘all foreign nations might know to what heights of Valour [or: Virtue] you have risen beyond all other princes’).186 Just as Charles V was, on his visit to France, guided around Fontainebleau, so that he might witness how France had reasserted itself following the Battle of Pavia, so readers from the emperor’s circle could, without visiting France, learn a similar lesson by reading Dolet’s Fata. The stories of French despair familiar from paintings and tapestries would thus be challenged. The readers of the French Gestes, too, without entering into the royal palace, would receive a similar message.

186

Dolet, Gestes, 3.

3 Ronsard’s Franciade: From National Genealogy to Tragic Love Story In Pierre de Ronsard’s Franciade, a son of Hector named Francus survives the Trojan War, sails across seas, slays a giant, falls in love (twice), and founds France.1 Or rather, he almost founds France—Ronsard published only four of the planned twenty-four books, and Francus remained stranded on the island of Crete.2 However, as I argue in this chapter, that sudden interruption is in many respects irrelevant when it comes to the conception, publication, and reception of Ronsard’s epic. Time and again, critics have struggled to understand why the text failed as text, rather than how it succeeded as part of a project spanning not only many decades, but also various art forms.3 In the pages that follow, I demonstrate that works of sculpture, architecture, and painting reveal themselves to be essential for understanding what Ronsard was trying to do, why, and what he actually accomplished. To explore these ideas, I will follow the ‘prince of poets’ from a moment when, early in his career, he first formulated the idea of an epic about the French Aeneas. I trace his progress through a period of public anticipation and impatience that attended the poem’s long gestation, of which I locate traces in the sister arts, and up to its publication. The chapter closes with a discussion of how the most thorough and informed early modern response to the Franciade came not from other writers but in the form of a large series of paintings executed after Ronsard’s death. Thus reinscribed within its sustained dialogue with the sister arts, Ronsard’s epic asks to be evaluated according to new criteria, and, ultimately, its full impact on French letters and French art can begin to appear.

1 Unless otherwise noted, all references are to Pierre de Ronsard, La Franciade, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: Nizet, 1983), xvi. It should be noted that Laumonier reproduces the text of the Franciade published in 1572, a significant point, given that Ronsard would shorten his epic in each subsequent edition. The text of the Franciade included in the latest Pléiade edition of Ronsard’s Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), i. 1013–186, is thus significantly shorter and quite a different text in many respects. The last part of the present chapter will shed light on why I have felt it was best to focus primarily on the 1572 text. English translations are adapted from The Franciad, ed. and trans. Phillip John Usher (New York: AMS Press, 2010). 2 On the Cretan setting of the Franciade, see Phillip John Usher, ‘Non haec litora suasit Apollo: La Crète dans la Franciade de Ronsard’, La Revue des Amis de Ronsard, 22 (May 2009), 65–89. 3 On the unfinished state of the Franciade, see Phillip John Usher, ‘Introduction,’ in The Franciad, ed. Usher, pp. liii–lviii. See also Jean-Claude Ternaux, ‘La Franciade de Ronsard: Echec ou réussite?’, Revue des Amis de Ronsard, 13 (2000), 117–35.

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T HE BIRTH OF THE FRANCIADE The central claim of the Franciade—that the French, via Francus, have Trojan origins—goes back at least as far as the seventh century when it was put into circulation in a chronicle by (Presudo-)Fredegar. In the early sixteenth century, the writer Jean Lemaire de Belges had given new currency to this fictional genealogy in Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye (‘The Illustrations of Gaul and Singularities of Troy’) (1511–13), apparently one of Ronsard’s favourite books.4 When, in 1549, Ronsard first wrote about his planned epic, it was thus as the latest in a long line of French poets seeking to give the French Trojan origins. The year 1549 was, by all accounts, one of monumental change, and the birth of the Franciade must be situated in relation to several contemporaneous events. That same year, Du Bellay published his Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (Defence and Glorification of the French Tongue), the Pléiade’s poetic manifesto, which made the production of a long poëme, as discussed in this book’s Introduction, central to the renewal of French literature. Also in that year, Henri II, king since 1547, made his official entry into Paris as part of an elaborate celebration made possible by the collaboration of poets, painters, and architects. The contemporaneity of these events, I suggest, is far from coincidental. Central to all these events is Henri II’s entry into Paris. The celebration, a traditional ceremony during which the king takes official possession of the city and in which the city in turn welcomes the king, happened on 16 June 1549. The twoyear delay between coronation and royal entry not only allowed artists and poets sufficient time to prepare for the event; it may also have been a way for the king to diminish the city’s claims on him—he would set the date and the agenda, not the city.5 Despite their dedication to the new king and although they were already the leaders of a nascent new generation of poets, Ronsard and Du Bellay played no direct role in the celebrations. Both poets, of course, were still young—in their midtwenties. The royal entry was instead largely designed, and its inscriptions written, by a collaborative team made up of artists, writers, and artisans who belonged mainly to a previous generation. The team worked under the leadership of Jean Martin and Thomas Sebillet.6 Jean Martin was a voracious translator of classical and contemporary literary texts, including most importantly versions of Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1504, trans. 1544) and Francesco Colona’s Songe de Poliphile 4 See Claude Binet, Discours de la vie de Pierre de Ronsard, ed. Helene M. Evers (Philadelphia: J. C. Winston, 1905), 45–6. 5 Lawrence M. Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual, and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1986), 38–9; Doranne Fenoaltea, Du Palais au jardin: L’Architecture des Odes de Ronsard (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 7. 6 The modern edition of the entry is Ian D. McFarlane, The Entry of Henri II into Paris, 16 June 1549 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1982). On the poetics of this entry and in particular on the rivalry between Sebillet and the Pléiade in this context, and upon which the present reflections draw, see Verdun-Louis Saulnier, ‘L’Entrée de Henri II à Paris et la révolution poétique de 1550’, in Jean Jacquot (ed.), Les Fêtes de la Renaissance (Paris: CNRS, 1956), 31–59. For Jean Martin, see Marie-Madeleine Fontaine, ‘Jean Martin traducteur’, in Prose et prosateurs de la Renaissance (Paris: Sedes, 1988), 109–22.

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(1467, trans. 1546).7 He was also the French translator of Vitruvius’s Architecture, ou Art de bien bastir (1547), the only architectural treatise to survive from Antiquity and here translated into French for the first time. Martin’s translation of Vitruvius reveals why he was a good choice to direct the complex celebrations, which demanded knowledge of various complementary art forms—his career indeed situated him at the intersection of literature, art, and architecture.8 Despite the fact that Jean Martin would collaborate on an edition of Ronsard’s Odes, authoring a short explanatory text for the first edition of the poems in 1550, for Henri II’s entry Martin collaborated instead with Thomas Sebillet.9 Despite also the fact that the details of the celebrations in some ways echo key precepts advanced in Du Bellay’s Deffence, et illustration (1549), the manifesto’s author also played no role.10 One wonders what Du Bellay and Ronsard thought of the entry, especially given that, whereas emphasis had been placed, in medieval celebrations of this kind, on making connections between the king and the Church, for Henri II the significant link to be made public was between early modern France and Ancient Rome, the very same connection made by Du Bellay in his Deffence as well as (later) in his collections of Roman poems, the Regrets (1558) and the Antiquitez de Rome (1558). Du Bellay and Ronsard—and not Sebillet, whose Art poétique (1548)11 was largely a theorization of the poetics of Clément Marot—might seem to have been (at least in hindsight) even better choices as Martin’s collaborators. But they, as already noted, were young and still at early points in their careers. It is worth belabouring the overlap between the Deffence and the entry, for it reveals a space within which the Pléiade would come to inscribe itself. To begin with, the Deffence and the official record of the celebrations were both published in April 1549.12 Both patently valorized neoclassical forms. Both made significant use of the Gallic Hercules myth, which emphasized the hero’s eloquence rather than his brute strength.13 The final lines of Du Bellay’s text, for example, ask the reader to remember ‘votre Hercule Gallique, tyrant les Peuples après luy par leurs Oreilles avecques une Chesne attachée à sa Langue’ (‘your Gallic Hercules, drawing his populations along behind him by means of a chain attached to his tongue’).14 Likewise, as part of the royal entry, on the triumphal arch at the Saint-Denis Gate, the late François Ier, Henri II’s father, was cast in the role of Gallic Hercules (Figure 3.1). As the official programme records, the new king’s father was ‘Vestu de 7 The former is available in a modern edition as Jacques Sannazar, L’Arcadie, traduction de Jean Martin, ed. Jean-Claude Ternaux (Reims: Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2003). 8 Vitruvius, Architecture, ou Art de bien bastir. 9 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 1475. 10 This position is argued by François Gébelin, ‘Un manifeste de l’école néo-classique en 1549: L’Entrée de Henri II à Paris’, Bulletin de la société d’histoire de Paris, 51 (1924), 35–45. 11 Thomas Sebillet, Art poétique françois pour l’instruction des jeunes studieus et encore peu avancez en la poésie françoise (Paris: Gilles Corrozet, 1548). 12 Fenoaltea, Du palais au jardin, 7. 13 Pierre Champion indeed situates his chapter on Henri II’s entry under the banner of Gallic Hercules, in his Paganisme et réforme (Paris: Champion-Lévy, 1936), 113. For a wider study of this figure, see Marc René Jung, Hercule dans la littérature française du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1966), 73–93. 14 Du Bellay, La Deffence, et illustration, 180.

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Figure 3.1. François Ier as Gallic Hercules at Henri II’s Royal Entrance (1547), from C’est l’ordre qui a este tenu a la nouvelle et ioyeuse entrée (Paris: Jacques Roffet, 1549), fo. 4r. (Typ 515.49.274, Houghton Library, Harvard University.)

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la peau d’un Lyõ’ (‘dressed in the skin of a lion’); he held in his hand ‘vne lance entortillée d’un serpe[n]t, recouuert d’un rameau de Laurier’ (‘a lance around which is wrapped a snake and a laurel branch), as an indicator of the value of prudence in matters of war. Most importantly, ‘de sa bouche partoyent quatre chaisnes, deux d’or, & deux d’arge[n]t, qui s’alloye[n]t attacher aux Oreilles des personnages’ (‘from his mouth ran four chains, two of gold and two of silver, which attached onto the ears of the characters’). The reference, of course, is to François Ier’s eloquence and role in renewing the study of ‘les lãgues Hebraique, Grecque, Latine, & autres’ (‘Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and other tongues besides’), most publicly in his creation of what would later be renamed the Collège de France.15 Gilles Corrozet would likewise call François Ier the ‘restaurateur des bonnes artz & lettres’ ‘(restorer of good arts and fine letters’), praising him too for his architectural undertakings.16 It was in making this and other associations understandable that Sebillet’s verses were to play a role. Not everyone, for example, understood the meaning of the chains that linked Hercules to those around him: some cynical viewers apparently interpreted these chains as signalling the idea that the new king would reduce the states of the kingdom to servitude.17 Poetry was to eschew such misinterpretations. The verses that Sebillet wrote for the occasion, painted in gold characters on a black tablet, visible to Parisians at the celebrations, aimed at demonstrating how François Ier and Henri II were models of royal virtue. In his verses, Sebillet had the deceased king talk of how he was celebrated for ‘[sa] doulce eloquence et royale bonté’ (‘gentle eloquence and royal goodness’) and about how his successor would likewise be followed not out of fear but ‘de franche volunté’ (‘of our honest free will’).18 While Sebillet was writing these verses for public display as part of the new king’s entry into Paris, Du Bellay and Ronsard, not part of Martin’s collaborative efforts, dedicated themselves to celebrating the new king in verse published not on monuments, but in books. Their verses would not be part of the entry, they would not be printed in large gold characters—but the space of the book offered consolation. Both Du Bellay and Ronsard would author poems narrating the king’s entry, as if jostling for a place alongside Martin and Sebillet in a public festival in which they played no official role. Du Bellay would write a ‘Prosphonématique au roi treschrestien Henri II’ (‘Prosophonematics for the Most-Christian King Henri II’), in which he commented on the royal entry. The river Seine, wrote Du Bellay, awoke from its sleep as it felt the new king approaching its banks, as if to cry out to the king ‘Tu es uenu finablement ô Prince!’ (‘Finally, oh Prince, you have arrived!’).19 Ronsard, too, 15 C’est l’ordre qui a este tenu a la nouvelle et ioyeuse entrée, que treshault, tresexcellent, et trespuissant Prince, le Roy treschrestien Henry deuzieme de ce nom a faicte en sa bonne ville et cite de Paris . . . le seizieme iour de Iuin M. D. XLIX (Paris: Jacques Roffet, 1549), fo. 3r [BnF Rés. 4-L831-20 and Gallica]. The text is subsequently reprinted by Jean Dallier, later the same year, with the same title and only minor orthographic differences [BnF Smith Lesquef R-173(5)]. 16 Gilles Corrozet, Les Antiquitez, histoires et singularitez de Paris (Paris : G[illes] Corrozet, 1550), fo. 156v. 17 Ian D. McFarlane, ‘Introduction’, in The Entry of Henri II, 30. 18 C’est l’ordre qui a este, fo. 3v. 19 Joachim Du Bellay, ‘Prosphonématique au roi treschrestien Henri II’, in Recueil de poesie, presente à très illustre princesse Madame Marguerite, seur unique du Roy (Paris: Guillaume Cavellat, 1549), 7–15 [BnF Rés. Ye-1733].

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authored verses on the occasion of Henri II’s entry, titled ‘Avantentrée du roi treschrestien’ (‘The Pre-Entry of the Most Christian King’).20 Ronsard’s poem, in particular, brings the reader into the ceremony, evoking how ‘du plus haut des fenestres’ (‘from the highest of windows’) are thrown ‘Les lis, les fleurs, les roses en la rue’ (‘lilies, flowers, and roses, down into the street’). In line with the original emphasis on the royal entry, Ronsard invited the king to discover the capital: ‘Haste tes pas, trop longue est ta demeure: | Viens voir Paris la grand cite roialle’ (‘Hasten your pace, your arrival is long overdue. | Come see Paris, the great royal city’). While not part of the official celebrations, Ronsard and Du Bellay set about writing verse for, or at least about, the royal entry. Unlike Sebillet’s, their verse would not itself be displayed in public. It was thus in this context—a new king and a moment of literary rebirth as two young poets stand poised to dislodge a previous generation—that the Franciade was born.21 Keeping in mind, then, the first two significant events of 1549 (the publication of the Deffence and the royal entry), let us now turn to Ronsard’s first written account of the future Franciade, in his ‘Hymne de France’ (‘Hymn to France’).22 Ronsard not only authored verses about the royal entry; he also conceived of an epic project that can arguably be seen as a parallel to, or an extension of, such celebrations. Although an occasional piece motivated by French victory over British troops at Boulogne-sur-Mer, a port that the British (under Henry VIII) had seized during the Anglo-French War of 1542–6, the ‘Hymne de France’ is much greater in scope.23 The hymn in part reworks Virgil’s praise of Italy in the Georgics.24 Just as Virgil spoke of Italy as a land ‘gravidae fruges et Bacchi Massicus umor | implevere’ (‘filled with teeming crops and Bacchus’ Massic juice’),25 so Ronsard would cast France as ‘heureusement fertile’ (‘blessedly fertile’),26 its fields full of ‘Mille troupeaux frisez de fines laines’ (‘A thousand herds of sheep with fine curly wool’).27 But Ronsard went further to particularize his celebratory hymn, evoking, for example, the lemons of Marseilles and Provence and the horses of Meung-sur-Loire.28 Weaved together with echoes not only of Virgil but also of Pindar, Horace, Ovid, and Catullus, the hymn thus offers praise not merely of a singular event (success at Boulogne-sur-Mer), but of the nation, naturally fertile and favoured by the gods, that made such victory inherently possible and even fated. 20 Quotes from Ronsard’s ‘Avantentrée’ are from Pierre de Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 988–91. On this poem, see Alfred Pereire, ‘Un exemplaire unique de Ronsard’, Trésors des bibliothèques, 1 (1927), 10–12. 21 Verdun-Louis Saulnier clearly states that he sees here a moment of poetic rivalry. See his ‘L’Entrée de Henri II à Paris’, 40. 22 References to the ‘Hymne de France’ relate to verse numbers in Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, ii. 647–52. 23 For further information on these events, see David Potter, ‘The Treaty of Boulogne and European Diplomacy, 1549–50’, Bulletin of the British Institute of Historical Research, 55/131 (1982), 50–65. 24 Virgil, Georgics 2:136–76. 25 Virgil, Georgics 2:143–4. 26 Ronsard, ‘Hymne de France’, v. 103. 27 Ronsard, ‘Hymne de France’, v. 71. 28 Ronsard, ‘Hymne de France’, vv. 78–9, 89–96.

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It is in the middle of this hymn that Ronsard first mentions the Trojan origins of France that he would celebrate at length in the Franciade. More specifically, it is while discussing French military might that Ronsard first invokes France’s Trojan origins. The invocation is made in relation to two metals: brass, he writes, is ‘bon à faire . . . trompettes tortues’ (‘good for making curly trumpets’)—the instrument taken on a hunt, to war, but also the epic tuba of the muse Calliope; and iron that, he continues, ‘sert pour corriger l’audace | De l’ennemy, qui en vain nous menace’ (‘is used to check the enemy’s | Audacity which threatens us in vain’). The sound of the battle against the enemy is concretized when Jupiter à main gauche a tonné, Favorisant le François, qu’il estime Enfant d’Hector, sa race legitime (Jupiter thunders to the left, Favouring the French man whom he considers A child of Hector, his legitimate race.)29

In these verses, Ronsard’s Francus—as yet unnamed—is born! If the enemy’s efforts are in vain, the poem claims, it is because of France’s Trojan ancestors, a belief that Jupiter makes visible by launching a thunderbolt as a good omen, supposedly inspiring in the French something like Aeneas’ feeling at a similar omen.30 The verses quoted above are followed by the assertion that Jupiter a juré de nous donner des Rois, Qui planteront le lis jusqu’à la rive Où du soleil le long labeur arrive. (swore to give us kings Who will cultivate the lily as far as that shore Where the sun’s long labour comes to an end),

echoing Jupiter’s promise about Romulus, made to Venus, Aeneas’ mother, in the Aeneid: ‘imperium sine fine dedi’ (‘I have given empire without end’).31 It is tempting to see the birth of the Franciade as a kind of consolation for, or supplement to, the 1549 royal entry for which Sebillet—and not Ronsard—wrote the official verse. Over the following years, Ronsard would renew his commitment to his epic project. To the 1555 edition of his Odes, Ronsard added an address to Henri II in which he requested that the king accept the present work as he waits for ‘Un present plus parfait et plus digne d’un Roy, | Que ja ma Calliope enfante dedans moy’ (‘A present more perfect and more fit for a king | To which my Calliope is already giving birth within me’)—that is, as the king waits for the Franciade.32 Ronsard 30 Virgil, Aeneid 2:693–729. Ronsard, ‘Hymne de France’, vv. 103–16. Virgil, Aeneid 1:279. 32 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 589–91; for details on the evolution of the Odes and at which point various texts entered or left the collection, see the table at i. 1479–88. Useful readings of the text are provided by Dominique Bertrand (ed.), Lire les Odes de Ronsard (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2002), and Julien Goeury, Lectures des Odes de Ronsard (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2001). 29 31

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announced that he longed to ‘Amener ton Francus suivy de mainte trope | De guerriers, pour donter les Princes de l’Europe’ (‘Lead on your Francus, with many troops in tow, | So they might subdue the princes of Europe’); but he warned, echoing Callimachus’ ‘Hymn to Zeus’, that ‘il te faut payer les frais de son arroy’ (‘you must pay the cost of outfitting his ship’). Even though Francus was a fugitive (that is, he escaped from Troy), says Ronsard, ‘il ne veut venir qu’en majesté de Roy’ (‘he wishes to journey only with the trappings of a king’). In other words, Ronsard sought royal patronage. Ronsard would also talk of his epic project, and again ask for support, in the ‘Ode de la paix’ (‘Ode to Peace’), an occasional piece celebrating the peace agreement between France’s Henri II and England’s Edward VI: ‘toy qui es riche, | Toy, Roy des biens, ne sois point chiche’ (‘You who are rich, | You, an affluent king, do not be stingy’). ‘Ne te lasse point de donner’ (‘Do not tire of giving’), he repeats.33 Given the contextual connection between Henri II’s entry, with Sebillet’s poetry accompanying public art, and the birth of Ronsard’s Franciade at the same time, it is not surprising that, as one progresses through the books of Odes, allusions to the epic project increasingly interweave with mentions of poetry’s architectural latency and of its superiority—unlike architecture, poetry is eternal. In other words, as Ronsard’s epic project enters into public knowledge, it is clear that it will be part of an ongoing collaboration between poetry and the sister arts. Thus, while the first ode of the second book begins: Je te veux bastir une Ode, La maçonnant à la mode De tes Palais honorez (I want to build an Ode, Fashioning it in the manner Of your honoured palaces);

so the first ode of the third book includes a new call for royal sponsorship of the Franciade: Pour toy seul je mettray dedans les yeux la poudre A tous mes envieux, s’il plaist à ta grandeur (Si digne au moins j’en suis) de me faire tant d’heur Qu’un jour me commander (d’un seul clin) que je face Ma Franciade tienne (For you alone I will throw up dust into the eyes Of those who envy me, if your greatness should allow [if I am indeed worthy] to do me such grace As to one day order from me [with a mere blink of the eye] that I should finish My Franciade),

33 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 603. On Ronsard’s repeated demands for patronage from Henri II, see Paul Laumonier, Ronsard, poète lyrique (Paris: Hachette, 1909), 143.

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a call for support that Ronsard completes with a new reminder of the epic’s underlying claim—that is, that Francus is Henri II’s (and France’s) ancestor.34 Ronsard’s initial announcements of his epic project—in the ‘Hymne de France’ and at various points in the Odes—are thus inscribed within poetic works that are, as other critics have shown, particularly hewn through with pictorial and architectural latencies.35 Henri II’s entry into Paris and the publication of Du Bellay’s Deffence, et illustration both took place in 1549. Both Du Bellay and Ronsard published texts in praise of Henri II which, more or less directly, emulated or echoed the encomium of the entry, thus rivalling the outdated poetics of Sebillet (and, through him, Marot). Du Bellay’s call for epic and Ronsard’s answering of that call thus situate the Franciade, as a project, at the point of contact where literature meets other art forms.

C A L L I O P E A T TH E L OU V R E The project of the Franciade would, very soon, be visible to a wider audience and a subject of discussion at the king’s dining table. At the beginning of the 1555 edition of the Odes, as noted above, Ronsard says that his epic muse was already at work on the Franciade, described as a ‘more perfect present’ than the Odes.36 Already in the original 1550 edition, the second book had included an ode addressed to Calliope that married together serious and more playful tones, with lyricism at once sublime and tempered.37 The beginning of that poem—‘Descen du ciel Calliope’ (‘Descend from the heavens, Calliope’)—draws on the fourth of Horace’s Roman odes, which begins ‘Descende caelo et dic age tibia | Regina longum Calliope melos’ (‘Descend from heaven, O Queen Calliope, and play upon the flute a long melody’).38 In the closing quatrain of the 1550 version of the ode, Ronsard announced his desire to write a new, graver, kind of poetry: ‘ie changerai mon stile | Pour les uertus de Henri raconter’ (‘I will change my style | In order to sing of Henri’s virtues’) and, thus doing, ‘cultivant un terroir si fertile | Jusques au ciel le fruit pourra monter’ (‘cultivating such fertile land | The fruits will grow so high as to touch the sky’).39 Ronsard was probably thinking of epic, here, but we are not told so directly. By 1555, however, it is clear that the generic change evoked by Ronsard is indeed a turn towards epic and towards the Franciade, for Ronsard changes the ode’s ending to read as follows: Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 679, 725–6. For the Odes, see Fenoaltea, Du Palais au jardin; for the Hymnes, see Ford, Ronsard’s Hymnes. 36 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 591. 37 As noted by the editors of the Pléiade edition (Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 1474), the Quatre Premiers Livres des Odes, whose privilège dates from 10 January 1549, was Ronsard’s first major work. 38 Horace, Odes, ed. and trans. Niall Rudd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, coll. Loeb Library, 2004), ii. 4.1–2. 39 Ronsard, Les Quatre Premiers Livres des Odes de Pierre de Ronsard (Paris: G. Cavellart, 1550), fo. 43r. 34 35

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d’un haut stile plus rare Je veux sonner le sang Hectorean, Changeant le son du Dircean Pindare Au plus haut bruit du chantre Smyrnean. (in a rarefied style I want to sing of Hector’s blood, Swapping the sound of Dircean Pindar For the grander noise of that singer from Smyrna [i.e. Homer].)40

Between 1550 and 1555, then, Ronsard changes his Odes to reflect his growing commitment to a Franciade for Henri II, and he does so via the figure of Calliope. Around the same time as Ronsard announced to Henri II that Calliope was busy inspiring him to work on the Franciade, the architect Pierre Lescot was at work redesigning the Louvre, then the king’s official residence. Lescot was officially put in charge of the renovations on 2 August 1546, and most significant work had been completed by 1556, a time span that overlaps with both the royal entry and Ronsard’s growing commitment to the Franciade.41 Probably in 1554, a conversation took place between Lescot and the king about a detail of the Louvre’s new façade, sculpted by Jean Goujon.42 The detail in question was a sculpture that, according to several contemporary accounts, represented Ronsard’s epic muse, Calliope, the order for which was placed on 31 May 1553.43 That sculpture can be seen to this day, to the right-hand side of an oculus (small round window) to the left side of the Façade Henri II, as can be seen in Figures 3.2 and 3.3. It is indeed with reference to this muse that the whole epic will begin: Muse qui tiens les sommets de Parnasse, Guide ma langue, & me chante la race Des Roys Francoys yssuz de Francion, (Muse atop the summits of Parnassus, Steer my speech and sing for me that race Of French kings descended from Francion),44

echoing the celebrated opening of the Aeneid (‘Musa, mihi causas memora . . . ’ (‘Muse, tell me the causes . . . ’).45 In his Abbrégé de l’art poetique (1565), Ronsard will underscore that Calliope is essential for epic, for she will remember feats that men will forget. While nothing suggests that Ronsard had a direct say in the iconographic programme of the Louvre’s new façade, the poet’s turn to epic poetry and the Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 684. Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 157–60. For fuller accounts of the Louvre at this time, see Christiane Aulanier, ‘Le Palais du Louvre au XVIe siècle: Documents inédits’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français (1951), 85–100; Catherine Grodecki, ‘Les marchés de construction pour l’aile Henri II du Louvre (1546–1558)’, Archives de l’art français, 26 (1984), 19–38. 42 On this hypothetical date, see Isidore Silver, Ronsard and the Hellenic Renaissance in France (St Louis: Washington University Studies, 1961), i. 416–17, 425. 43 Aulanier, ‘Le Palais du Louvre au XVIe siècle’, 88. 44 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:1–3. 45 Virgil, Aeneid 1:8. 40 41

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Figure 3.2. Façade Henri II of the Louvre, Paris, in 2009. (# Phillip John Usher.)

Figure 3.3. Ronsard’s Epic Muse. Detail of Façade Henri II of the Louvre, Paris, in 2009. (# Phillip John Usher.)

sculptor’s choice to give the façade a strikingly triumphal character seem both to go hand in hand with, and to be emblematized by, the presence of Ronsard’s muse.46 The architect himself confirms the fact that this figure on the Louvre’s façade was a 46 See W. McAllister Johnson and Victor E. Graham, ‘Ronsard et la “Renommée” du Louvre’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 30 (1968), 7–17.

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depiction of Calliope, she who inspired the verses of the Franciade. Three different texts include traces of Pierre Lescot’s conversation with the king. Ronsard’s biographer, Claude Binet, tells how Henri II asked Lescot at dinner what was meant by the ‘Deesse en forme de Renommée, qui embouche une trompette’ (‘Goddess fashioned like Renown and who blows into a trumpet’), to which Lescot replied that he was referring to Ronsard and that the trumpet was to evoke ‘la force de ses vers’ (‘the strength of his poetry’).47 Such was the account given by Binet in 1586. Eleven years later, Binet would amend his account to be more specific, noting that the trumpet referred to ‘la force de ses vers, et principalement de la Franciade’ (to the strength of his [Ronsard’s] poetry, and principally that of the Franciade).48 Another account of the conversation, this time by poet Robert de la Haye, was included in the 1555 edition of the Odes.49 Echoing Ronsard’s own affirmation of a turn towards epic poetry, La Haye states that Lescot was right to give Ronsard’s muse on the façade not ‘plectrum et citharam’ (‘lyre and plectrum’), but rather a ‘tubam’ (‘a trumpet’), in that Ronsard was set, with the Franciade, to sing ‘nostri grandiloquus trophaea regis’ (‘the triumphs of our king in a grandiloquent fashion’).50 La Haye says that Ronsard was right to abandon lyric verse in order to ‘tubam Clanii tonanter inflet’ (‘sing like thunder with Lescot’s trumpet’).51 Finally, Ronsard himself speaks of the Louvre muse in a poem included in the Second livre des poèmes (1560), dedicated to Pierre Lescot.52 There, Ronsard speaks of how Lescot fi[t] engraver sur le haut Du Louvre, une Déesse, à qui jamais ne faut Le vent à joue enflée au creux d’une trompete .... . . . pour figurer la force de mes vers (had sculpted high up on The Louvre, a Goddess who never failed To have her cheek inflated as she blew into a trumpet .... . . . to represent the strength of my poetry),

anticipating Binet’s future comments of 1586. What is clear, despite the slight differences between these accounts, is that readers, fellow poets, and the king himself saw Ronsard making a choice to switch from the lyric to the epic mode—and that this change was, at least in the ways that people spoke about it, represented by a sculpture on the façade of the new Louvre. In just a few years, then, a major turn had occurred. If in 1549, Ronsard’s verses—and Du Bellay’s— about Henri II’s royal entry were only contextually related to the collaboration

47 48 49 50 51 52

Claude Binet, La Vie de P. de Ronsard, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: Hachette, 1910), 22. Binet, La Vie, 22. Ronsard, Les Quatre Premiers Livres, fo. 132r. Ronsard, Les Quatre Premiers Livres, fo. 132r. Ronsard, Les Quatre Premiers Livres, fo. 132r. Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, ii. 793–7.

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between art and poetry, by the mid-1550s Ronsard’s new epic project was now displayed on the façade of the king’s Parisian residence. The rise of the new generation clearly took the form of a commitment to epic poetry and to collaboration with the period’s most prestigious artists. As well as the king and his court, certain Parisians and even foreign visitors would thus have been able to see the Franciade’s muse on the Louvre’s façade since the 1550s. One can imagine Henri II, furnished with the explanation given to him by Lescot and in a manner similar to François Ier at Fontainebleau, walking important visitors around the courtyard, pointing out not only the Italianate architectural details, the aligned windows, and the génie of Lescot and Goujon, but also the trumpet-blowing muse and the epic whose future publication it announced.

F R A N C US I N PA R I S Less than two decades later and still before the epic was published, not only Calliope but Francus himself would be in Paris. After Henri II died at a jousting contest in 1559 and following the short reign of François II (1559–60), Ronsard rededicated his Franciade—this time to a very young Charles IX. In 1571, the year before the first four books were finally published, the connection between the epic and its new sponsor was made public on the occasion of the king’s royal entry, in the form of a statue of Francus atop a triumphal arch situated at the Saint-Denis Gate (top left in Figure 3.4). Many parallels can be drawn between Charles IX and Francus. The French king was only ten years old when he ascended to the throne in 1560 and he thus found himself submitted to the power of his mother, the regent Catherine de Médicis; likewise Ronsard’s Francus is a young hero accused by Mercury of wasting his youth in Epirus, unable to escape the (anti-imperial) parental power exercised by his mother Andromaque and his uncle Helenus (also called Hélénin). Fittingly, it has often been suggested that the royal entry was, at least in part, designed to show to the inhabitants of the capital that their young king was now fully in charge of his royal mandate.53 Another key parallel is that both Charles IX and the fictional Francus would marry a German woman, as part of an attempt to secure the mixing of royal bloodlines and of the empires associated with them. In history, Charles IX would marry Elisabeth of Austria, daughter of Emperor Maximilian II and granddaughter of Charles V—she would make her own entry several weeks later.54 And 53 Pierre Champion’s claim that Charles IX, until his marriage, was a timid character, wholly beholden to his mother, Catherine de Médicis, has been questioned by Michel Simonin, who suggests rather that, while the marriage marks a moment of singular affirmation, Charles IX had already shown himself to have an individual political will. Pierre Champion wrote that Charles IX was until this point ‘un timide et un faible, habitué à obéir à sa mere’ (‘a timid and a weak man, used to obeying his mother’) (Pierre Champion, Charles IX (Paris: Grasset, 1955), ii. 293). Cf. Michel Simonin, Charles IX (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 237. 54 On the wedding itself, see Jean-Pierre Masson, Entier discours des choses qui se sont passées en la reception de la royne et mariage du roy (Paris: Dumont, 1570).

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Figure 3.4. Pharamond and Francus atop a triumphal arch. From Simon Bouquet’s Bref et sommaire recueil de ce qui a esté faict & de l’ordre tenu à la joyeuse & triumphante Entrée du très-puissant, très-magnanime et très-Chrestien Prince Charles IX (Paris: De l’imprimerie de Denis du Pré, pour O. Codoré, 1572). (Typ 515.72.231, Houghton Library, Harvard University.)

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in Ronsard’s poem, Francus is destined to ‘espouser l’heritiere d’un Roy | de Germanie’ (‘marry the daughter of a king | Of Germany’), such that les grands roys de France D’un sang meslé prendront un jour naissance Conjoinct ensemble au Troyen & Germain. (the great kings of France From mixed blood will one day be born, Joining together Trojan with German.)55

Ronsard’s secretary, Amadis Jamyn, was well aware of the parallelism between Francus’ story and that of Charles IX. In a wedding poem—his Avant-Chant Nuptial (1570)—Jamyn explored just that connection, by substituting Charles IX into and over Ronsard’s epic: the German–French alliance, he notes, was not primarily ‘pour Francus qui vint en Franconie, | Et gendre fut d’un Roy de Germanie’ (‘for Francus who came to Franconia, | And who was the son-in-law of a king of Germany’), but for Charles Roy de la terre Gauloise, Tige de Ducs, de Roys, & d’Empereurs, Princes guerriers, du monde conquéreurs. (Charles, king of the Gallic land, A young seed of dukes, kings, and emperors, Warrior princes, who will conquer the world.)56

Charles IX’s wedding was celebrated by the king’s royal entry into Paris on 6 March 1571. His arrival was marked by an elaborate decorative programme, which consisted of triumphal arches, sculptures, and paintings.57 In contrast to Ronsard’s non-participation in Henri II’s entry, for which king he originally began the Franciade, this time the prince of poets would play a key role in the shape that the festivities took. Ronsard, one might say, played the role his youth had prevented him from playing in 1549.58 This time, Ronsard and fellow Pléiade poet Jean Dorat (1508–88) were the designers of the decorative programme, alongside Simon Bouquet, an échevin and former secretary of Jeanne d’Albret. The entry’s painter was Nicolò dell’Abbate (c.1509–71) and its sculptor Germain Pilon (c.1528–90). Together, they took on ‘le faix et charge de la facture et composition de la poésie, 55

Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:179–80, 1:181–3; see also 3:411–15, 3:384, and 4:835. Amadis Jamyn, Avant-chant nuptial faict sur le mariage du Roy et d’Elizabeth d’Austriche (Lyons: B. Rigaud, 1570), fo. A4 ro. For further discussion of the echoes between Charles IX and Francus, see Denis Bjaï, La Franciade sur le métier: Ronsard et la pratique du poème héroïque (Geneva: Droz, 2001), esp. 136–8. 57 The primary sources for the king’s entry are Simon Bouquet, Bref et sommaire recueil de ce qui a esté faict & de l’ordre tenu à la joyeuse & triumphante Entrée du très-puissant, très-magnanime et trèsChrestien Prince Charles IX (Paris: De l’imprimerie de Denis du Pré, pour O. Codoré, 1572), the various documents published in the Registres des délibérations du Bureau et la Ville de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1891), 6:236–45, as well as manuscript Fr. 11691 (and its copy 11690) at the BnF, titled ‘Compte particulier à cause des fraiz faictz par la ville de Paris pour les entrées nouvelles des Roy et Royne de France, faictes en ladicte ville au moys de mars MVe soixante unz’. 58 See Simonin, Charles IX, 251, and McFarlane, The Entry of Henri II. 56

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ordonance et deviz de la perspective, sculpture et paincture’ (‘the weight and charge of making and composing the poetry, design and plans for perspective, sculpture, and painting’) and all paintings and sculptures would be ‘composées et devisées par lesditz poetes’ (‘composed and designed by the aforementioned poets’).59 As Frances Yates has shown through close analysis of contemporary documents (especially the devis or written estimates), Ronsard played a particularly central role in the king’s entry: he was paid 270 livres tournois for the ‘Inuentions & Inscriptions quil a faictes pour les dites Entrées’ (‘Creations and Inscriptions that he created for the aforementioned entries’), as well as another 54 livres tournois for ‘ce quil a faict pour lentree du Roy’ (‘that which he contributed to the king’s entry’).60 As already noted, the primary aim of the entry was to celebrate the king’s marriage to Elisabeth of Austria. Throughout the celebration, two main themes prevailed that made of the joining of two individuals something more universally significant: the newly found peace between Protestants and Catholics, following the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 5 August 1570; and the joining-together of two political units—that is, France and the Holy Roman Empire. Regarding the first of these two themes, the Protestant chronicler Simon Goulart wrote, ‘tant pour faire acroire à ceux de la Religion que desormais le Roy ne vouloit que penser à la paix, comme toutes les figures et inscriptions de ceste entrée le demonstroyent’ (‘as much to have Protestants believe that the king wanted only to think of peace, just as all the figures and inscriptions of this entry demonstrated’).61 Already in August 1570, Ronsard had produced a series of poems celebrating the end of the third civil war and France’s newly restored peace.62 One, for example, resounds: Io la paix nous chantons, Et de Charles nous vantons Le sceptre invincible et riche. (Hey! We sing of peace And we praise Charles’s Invincible and rich sceptre.)63

It is specifically the second theme (the joining of French and German bloodlines) that is of greater interest to me here, for Ronsard chose to illustrate it in relation to the Franciade. The traditional path for the king’s entry led the king from outside the city through the Saint-Denis Gate, along the rue Saint-Denis as far as Châtelet, then across the Pont-au-change, and finally to the Palais de Justice on the île de la Cité, a 59 Registres des délibérations, 6:233, quoted in Frances A. Yates, ‘Poètes et artistes dans les entrées de Charles IX et de sa reine à Paris en 1571’, in Jacquot (ed.), Les Fêtes de la Renaissance, 61–84, at 63. 60 Details from a manuscript kept at the BnF (Fr. 11691), fo. 88r–v, quoted in Yates, ‘Poètes et artistes,’ 62. 61 Quoted in Simonin, Charles IX, 256. 62 John T. D. Hall, ‘Ronsard et les fêtes de cour en 1570’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 35 (1973), 73–7. 63 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, ii. 250.

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Figure 3.5. Map of sixteenth-century Paris. Georg Braun, Lutétia, vulgari nomine Paris, urbs galliae maxima (1572). (Bibliothèque nationale de France.)

path visible in Figure 3.5. The Saint-Denis Gate was thus of central importance in the entry, for it marked the city’s threshold—and Francus’ statue was thus made particularly central to the overall design of the celebrations. The Saint-Denis Gate was habitually the site at which the entering king would witness the first and often most striking of the event’s pageants. The current triumphal arch in Paris’s tenth arrondissement was designed in 1672 by François Blondel, director of the Royal Academy of Architecture, and celebrates the glories of Louis XV.64 The triumphal arch constructed for Charles IX’s entry in 1571 was somewhat different (see Figure 3.4). The woodcuts executed by Olivier Condoré for Simon Bouquet’s printed account of the royal entry allow us to get an idea of how it might have appeared to Ronsard’s contemporaries.65 The theme depicted by the collaborating artists on and around the Saint-Denis Gate was normally that of kingship, but the details would change constantly over time, such that the Christ Child depicted at this gate in 1389 gave way to a ‘ship of state’ in 1431 and to a depiction of Francus in 1571.66 The arch as it stood in 1571 thus made public 64 Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Histoire de l'architecture française (Paris: Mengès, 2003), ii. 317–18. 65 See Bouquet, Bref et sommaire recueil. A further description of this first arch is provided by Charles de Navières, La Renommée, sus les receptions à Sedan, marriage à Mezieres, couronnement à Saindenis et entrées à Paris du Roy et de la Royne (Paris: Mat. Prevost, 1571), iv. 263–344 [BnF Rés Ye 1809]. 66 For a history of royal entries at the Saint-Denis Gate, see Bryant, The King and the City, 125–39.

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the epic’s main character and the genealogical fiction of France’s Trojan origins. Simon Bouquet described the Saint-Denis Gate arch as being ‘rustic’ (that is, its stones appeared to be cut with rough faces) and as being in the Tuscan style. It was an imposing arch indeed—approximately 9 metres wide and 10 metres high.67 Upon the frontispiece was an azure shield decorated with three golden fleurs-de-lys and topped by a golden crown. The figure in the top left, wearing armour and holding an impressive sword around which—as if hovering—rests a king’s crown, is the hero of Ronsard’s epic—that is, Francus. The corresponding figure on the right-hand side is Pharamond, the first king of the Franks, whom Ronsard will also depict in his poem.68 Francus and Pharamond were two milestones in Ronsard’s history of the French monarchy, leading from Hector’s son Francus to the first truly French King (Pharamond) and right up to Charles IX, a trajectory that quite literally stood for a time in the streets of Paris for all to see. Ronsard’s ‘livre plein de Rois’ (‘book full of kings’), as he once referred to it himself, thus gave rise to the two figures of this arch.69 The entry’s arches were not really made of stone—as Yates and Doglio pointed out, they were, rather, huge painted canvases draped over a supporting structure— that is, some form of wooden scaffolding.70 This royal entry was not the first time that France’s supposed Trojan origins were celebrated in public.71 The theme had also been recently illustrated by Antoine Caron.72 Still, Francus’ presence here marks a key moment in the history of the Franciade, whose first four books would be published the following year. The triumphal arch was, according to Bouquet, also to have been decorated by verse written by Ronsard. Although perhaps not Ronsard’s most polished verses ever, they successfully function as an accurate abrégé of his epic. Therein, Ronsard references specific moments of his text: the building of ships, Francus’ journey, the founding of Sicambria on the banks of the river Danube, marriage with a German woman, the founding of the city of Paris in honour of Francus’ uncle of the same name, Francus’ death, the central role of King Pharamond, the alliance between Trojan and German blood, and the walls of Paris.73 The role of the verses on the arch was indeed clearly to connect the statuesque and public Francus to the literary hero of the Franciade. The nature of 67 This translates the measurements given by Simon Bouquet (‘cinq toises en largeur, sur cinq toises et demie de hault’) (Bref et sommaire recueil, fo. 8r). 68 Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:992–1000. 69 Ronsard, ‘A luy-mesme luy, luy donnant sa Franciade’, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 444. 70 Mariangela Mazzocchi Doglio, ‘La collaborazione di Ronsard e Nicolò dell’Abate per l’entrée di Carlo IX a Parigi (1571)’, in Ronsard e l’Italia, atti del 1 Convegno del Gruppo di Studio sul Cinquecento francese, Gargnano, 16–18 ottobre, 1986 (Fasano: Schena Edit., 1988), 133; Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Pimlico, 1975), 155. 71 On fifteenth-century dramatic representations of the theme, see Josèphe Chartrou, Les Entrées solennelles et triomphantes de la Renaissance (1484–1555) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1928), 24–5, 49–50; on the presence of the theme in Henri II’s royal entrance (1549), see pp. 50, 138. 72 Joseph Guiffrey, Les Dessins de l’Histoire des Rois de France par Nicolas Houel (Paris: Champion, 1920), planche II [BNF-4-V-8778]. 73 For the various moments see Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:525–608 (building of ships), 1:1209–48 and 2:1–370 (Francus’s journey), 4:747–50 (the founding of Sicambria), 4:751–4 (the German woman), 1:203–4 (the founding of Paris), 1:217–22 (Francus’s death), 4:992–1000 (King Pharamond), 1:224–8 and 4:835 (the alliance between Trojan and German blood), 1:240–3 (the walls of Paris).

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the relationship between the arch and the Franciade has received comment from various scholars. For some, the arch was a means for publicizing the upcoming publication; for others, it was rather that the epic was a reflection of the entry.74 It strikes me that influence most likely flowed in both directions. Bouquet tells us that, owing to lack of space, Ronsard’s verses were, however, included only in Bouquet’s Recueil. Even though the statue of Francus remained, Ronsard’s verse was replaced by a quatrain written by Bouquet himself: De ce grand Francion, vray tige des Francoys, Vint jadis Pharamond le premier de nos Roys, Lequel print des Troyens et Germains sa naissance, Dont la race aujourd’huy se renouvelle en France.75 (From this great Francion, true seed of the French, Descended Pharamond, the first of our kings, Who was born of Trojan and German stock, And whose race today is renewed in France.)

Although concise to the extreme, Bouquet’s verses certainly capture the central claim of the Franciade—namely, that Francus was the legendary ancestor of the kings of France and that from him descended Pharamond, the first of the Frankish kings who, according to Ronsard, was the son of Francus and a ‘Royne laissée | En Franconie’ (‘queen | Left behind in Franconia’).76 Bouquet picks up on the epic’s central claim, but also on Ronsard’s vocabulary. In the Franciade, Ronsard indeed speaks of Francus as the ‘Tige futur d’une race si belle’ (‘future seed of a race so fine’).77 Although Bouquet’s quatrain replaced Ronsard’s much longer verse summary of his own soon-to-be-published epic, Francus was nevertheless central to the events of 1571. The Franciade was once again in public circulation thanks to another collaboration between art and poetry—but still not in print.

BEAUTIFUL O BJECTS As the previous sections of this chapter suggest, the Franciade was much anticipated.78 When it finally came into print, most of its readers probably had some, albeit perhaps vague, idea of what to expect. Already in 1552, Joachim du Bellay had written of how the reading public could soon expect Ronsard to produce ‘ie ne sçay quoy plus grand, que l’Iliade’ (‘something—I do not know what—even greater 74 In favour of the entry as publicity are Henri Chamard (Histoire de la Pléiade (Paris: Didier, 1940), 3:96) and Raymond Lebègue (whose remarks are reported in Yates, ‘Poètes et artistes’, 83); Yates speaks rather of how the entry was reflected in the Franciade (p. 64); Katherine Maynard’s balanced opinion is that the poem and the entry reflect each other (Katherine Maynard, ‘ “Avec la terre on possède la guerre”: The Problem of Place in Ronsard’s Franciade’, in Usher and Fernbach (eds), Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance, 237–57). 75 Bouquet, Bref et sommaire recueil, fo. 10 ro–vo. 76 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:226–7. 77 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:226–7. 78 On the impatience of fellow poets for this epic, see Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, iii. 95–108.

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than the Iliad’).79 By 1558, his impatience reached new heights: in a mocking sonnet in his Regrets, he says to Ronsard that Francus may well have made preparations for his journey—building a ship and consulting the stars—but that he finds himself nonetheless ‘encor . . . sur le Troyen rivage’ (‘still . . . on the shores of Troy’).80 And, as we just saw, a much wider public knew of and waited for the epic thanks to both the façade of the Louvre and the royal entry of Charles IX. My attention now turns to what readers found in the first four books published in 1572. I assert in particular that we must pay attention to the Franciade’s numerous beautiful objects, by which I mean especially the detailed descriptions (ekphrases) of objects and individuals with which the pages overflow. It is as if, I suggest, Ronsard saw his Franciade not just as a narrative of Francus’ journey from Troy to Crete and France—a political narrative, a version of which would probably have been familiar to the epic’s first readers—but as a museum or palace for the poetics and aesthetics of both the Pléiade and of their royal sponsors. Ronsard’s text tells the (verisimilar, not true) history of France’s kings and does so in a way that suggests comparison— perhaps even competition—with other artistic realizations. We might even surmise that Ronsard himself saw his text in such a manner—such is what the reader might think who turns to the posthumous 1587 edition of the Franciade, wherein Ronsard included a ‘Preface sur la Franciade, touchant le Poëme Heroïque’ (‘Preface on the Franciade, on the subject of epic poetry’), or what Binet, his first biographer, referred to as ‘un discours en prose sur le Poëme heroique, assez mal en ordre’ (‘a rather disorganized prose discourse on epic poetry’). Disorganized though it may be, the preface certainly sheds much light on how Ronsard understood the text he published in 1572. Having discussed his choice of the decasyllable, the necessity in epic of circumlocution, and the relative merits of Homer and Virgil, Ronsard describes therein his project in terms of a kind of architectural rehabilitation that recalls those of his various royal sponsors: ‘d’une petite cassine’ (‘from a small outhouse’) epic poets can make ‘un magnifique palais’ (‘a magnificent palace’)—just, we might add, as Loire Valley hunting lodges or a medieval fortress (the Louvre) could become magnificent Italianate palaces. Moreover, the poetic palace, as Ronsard pictured it, would be adorned inside and out. Authors, says Ronsard, ‘enrichissent, dorent, & embellissent [ce palais] par le dehors de marbre, jaspe, & Porphire, de guillochis, ovalles, frontispices & piedsestals, frises & chapiteaux’ (‘enrich, gild, and embellish [this palace], on the outside, with marble, jasper, porphyry, guillochis, ovals, frontispieces, and pedestals, friezes, and capitals’); and on the inside, the palace will be full of ‘Tableaux, tapisseries eslevees & bossees d’or & d’argent’ (‘paintings and tapestries raised and embossed with gold and silver’)—the paintings, says Ronsard, will be ‘raboteux & difficile[s] a tenir és mains’ (‘rough and difficult to hold in one’s hands’) because of the ‘rude engraveure des personnages qui semblent vivre dedans’ (‘harsh engraving of characters who 79 Joachim Du Bellay, letter to Jean de Morel at the beginning of Du Bellay’s Le Qvatriesme Livre de l’Eneide de Vergile (Paris: Vincent Certenas, 1552), 12. 80 Joachim Du Bellay, Les Regrets: Les Antiquités de Rome. La Défense et illustration de la langue française, ed. S. de Sacy (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), sonnet xxiii, v. 13.

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seem to come to life therein’).81 In Jean Braybrook’s words, the definition ‘evokes a highly ornate poem full of different episodes’.82 The epic-as-palace, as Ronsard formulates it, is indeed a rich building. Its gilded surfaces will glisten in the sunlight, coloured by precious stones, specifically the red-brownish hue of jasper and the purple tones of porphyry, a stone already essential for the imperial buildings of ancient Rome and since associated with monarchy. The façades will feature numerous neoclassical architectural details, such as frontispieces, friezes, and columns and their capitals. And on the inside there will be paintings and tapestries. In other words, Ronsard defines epic poetry in terms of an architectural and decorative project familiar from Renaissance palaces. As if to include this definition of epic poetry via a mise en abyme within the epic poem itself, Ronsard figured the palace of Prince Dicée, on the island of Crete, in terms that anticipate the metaphor of the 1587 preface. Ronsard’s Crete is, of course, not particularly—or at least only partially—Cretan. For sure, it draws on contemporary travel accounts like those of Pierre Belon, especially as regards the descriptions of certain ceremonial practices, but the spaces and sites owe much more to the court culture and court aesthetics of Renaissance France.83 And this is nowhere truer than for the poem’s description of the residence of Prince Dicée. As he arrives there, Francus is said to feast his eyes on its architectural features: ‘Francus alloit le palais regardant, | Festes, festons, gillochis, & ovalles’ (‘Francus inspected the palace—the roof ’s ridges, | The engraved borders, the guillochés and oval details’).84 The mention of guillochis, in particular, calls attention to itself, signalling the very Frenchness of the palace. Called guilloché in modern English, this feature is an ornamental pattern of two or more interlacing curved bands—a design frequently executed by Renaissance artisans on the façades of French edifices of the period. If we chose to see Dicée’s palace as a rewriting of Dido’s temple to Juno in the Aeneid, then the Frenchness of this Cretan structure becomes all the more apparent. Virgil describes Aeneas as seeing a structure ‘aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina, nexaeque | aere trabes, foribus cardo stridebant aenis’ (‘bronzecoloured with its threshold rising on steps; bronze plated were its lintel beams, on doors of bronze that creaked the hinges’).85 In his description of Dicée’s palace, Ronsard thus describes not just the structural, not even just the decorative, but rather the specifically French decoration of the structure. The fact that Ronsard describes the ‘gillochis & ovalles’ of Dicée’s palace and that he then evokes the ‘guillochis, ovalles, frontispices & piedsestals, frises & chapiteaux’ in his metaphorical description of epic poetry, guillochis and ovalles forming a collective unit, is surely not coincidental. By inference as of 1572 and explicitly since 1587, the Franciade thus describes, in Dicée’s palace, a building that is to stand as a

81

Ronsard, La Franciade, p. 340. Jean Braybrook, ‘The Aesthetics of Fragmentation in Ronsard’s Franciade,’ French Studies, 43/1 (January 1989), 2. 83 See Usher, ‘Non haec litora suasit Apollo’. 84 Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:824–5. 85 Virgil, Aeneid 1:448–9. 82

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metonymy for the poem’s very poetics and as an emblem of the collaborative nature of the relationship between literature and other art forms. This overlap between poem and poetics is confirmed when Ronsard describes the inside of Dicée’s palace: En ce chasteau par bandes fremissoient Prompts serviteurs, dont les uns tapissoient D’ouvrages d’or les superbes murailles, Longs arguments d’anciennes batailles (Crews of speedy servants moved around In this château. Some of them hung Works made of gold on the proud walls, Which told long tales of ancient battles),

while others ‘chargeoient les hauts buffets dorez | De grands vaisseauz d’histoires honorez’ (‘loaded the sumptuous golden tables | With great vessels decorated with stories’).86 The serviteurs are thus not merely servants in the strict sense, but rather members of the royal household whose responsibilities extend to decoration. These serviteurs are surely avatars of Primaticcio and other artists employed by French kings to decorate royal spaces. The interior walls of Dicée’s palace are thus covered with narrative depictions of battles, echoing the 1587 preface definition of epic poetry as containing paintings and tapestries that offer lifelike depictions of great heroes. And, as if extending upon the comments on François Ier’s salt cellar in this book’s Introduction, Ronsard describes how not only the walls but also the tableware exhibits such narrative qualities. Several specific tableware objects are described. First, an esguiere (ewer) that features ‘Des Corybans . . . la race’ (‘the genealogy of the Corybants’)—that is, Dicée’s ancestors, in particular Briareus, also known as Aegaeon, the 100-armed storm god already featured by Dolet and discussed in Chapter 2. Ronsard describes him as falling in love with a beautifuleyed daughter of Poseidon, Cympolea, and as giving birth to Dicée’s forebears. Ronsard’s contention that Briareus ‘à la fin se change[a] en serpent’ (‘in the end turned himself into a snake’), in order to impregnate Cympolea, is largely Ronsard’s own invention, based on similar stories in Hesiod.87 Secondly, there is a small basin engraved with the story of Saturn, depicted, again building on Hesiod’s Theogony, as being ‘En cheveux blancs, de vieillesse agravé’ (‘with white hair and weighed down by age’) and with a jaw ‘Du sang des siens toute relante & noire’ (‘black and stinking from the blood of his children’)—that is, because he ate them.88 And around Saturn and Jupiter, son of Saturn saved by Rhea, the vessel also depicted

86

Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:887–90, 2:895–6. Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:907. For more details on this innovation, see Laumonier’s note in Ronsard, La Franciade, p. 139, n. 1. 88 Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:912–13, 2:914. 87

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The noise, says Ronsard, drowned out ‘la voix de l’enfançon, | Craignant Saturne’ (‘the voice of the young child [i.e. Jupiter], | Who feared Saturn’).90 Thus, the two tableware objects, which will be set out on Dicée’s table as part of the feast organized in Francus’ honour, tell histories of Dicée’s ancestors. Like the castle itself, they function to inscribe the Franciade project within the poem itself, offering a metonymical reprise of Ronsard’s own work.91 The reader is thus invited into the Franciade as if into a palace, to look at the prized objects that relate to the reigning monarch. Ronsard’s initial plans in 1549, to write an epic celebrating monarchic genealogy, thus grew into something more complex and ultimately more seductive, an epic text that celebrates monarchic genealogy as if it were a palace containing rich objects that, in turn, recount and publish the very project that has now come to fruition. The correspondence between Ronsard’s metaphor for describing epic poetry in his 1587 preface and the interior and exterior of Prince Dicée’s castle in the text itself highlights the status of ekphrastic objects within the epic. Throughout, the latter end up serving as reminders that, as elements contained within the epic palace, the Franciade as a whole exists as an extension of, and in dialogue with, other art forms and especially that, as much as a château, the epic contains aesthetic objects. The Franciade is full of such reminders. The construction of Francus’ fleet of ships, with which he will sail from Buthrotum, is depicted not only in minute detail, but with an emphasis on the artifice or workmanship of the manouvrier (‘workman’): ‘D’un art maistrier [le manouvrier] les vieux sapins transforme, | Et de vaisseaux leur fait prendre la forme’ (‘With masterly art [the artisan] transforms the old fir trees, | Shaping them into sailing vessels’).92 Ronsard details the tools: the compas (compass), the ligne (spirit level), the clous (nails), the espron (sharp chisel), the marteaux (hammers); he aligns the artisan, his tool, and his intellectual grasp of the object’s disegno: ‘le fer au poing, | L’œil sur le bois, & en l’esprit le soing’ (‘iron tool in hand, | Eye on the wood and the mind full of careful concentration’); and he offers an almost baroque close-up of the process, as when he spends eight lines detailing how the ship’s rope is made.93 Many other such ekphrastic moments could be adduced, each reminding the reader to pay attention to the epic objects as

89

90 Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:924–25. Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:921–23. In a different although not incompatible reading, Katherine Maynard sees these objects as providing ‘Francus with models of action’ (Katherine Maynard, ‘Epic Lessons: Pedagogy and National Narrative in the Epic Poetry of Early Modern France.’ PhD diss., University of Washington, 2003, 56–67.) 92 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:561–2. 93 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:571–2, 1:577–84. 91

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well as to the epic’s overall claim about Trojan origins. Supplementing the numerous ekphrastic descriptions of objects, the 1572 Franciade also features many passages that, while not describing an object per se, remain ekphrastic and nevertheless function as visual depictions of things or people. Thus, for example, the descriptions of Mercury, Cybele, Venus, or even Francus all linger over the (human) object they evoke, turning it into a vivid artwork on display in the epic palace.94 Perhaps the most enduring beautiful object in the Franciade is, though, Francus’ very name. Not the hero, but his name. As Francus sets out from Buthrotum on his journey to found France, Francus is said to be ‘tout flamboyant en l’esclair du harnois’ (‘in his armour that gleams like lightening’); later on, Ronsard offers a much more detailed account: Francus’ armour is said to be made ‘des mains d’un maistre artizan’ (‘by the hands of a master artisan’); the armour ‘comme l’esclair d’un tonnerre luisoit’ (‘shone like thunder’s lightening’).95 Not only Francus, but also his army’s armour, is described in great detail: the helmets, pikes, and bright blades ‘Une lumiere envoyoient jusqu’aux Cieux’ (‘Shone light up to the heavens’).96 Ever interested in the flourishes, Ronsard adds that this light ‘qui cà qui là comme à poinctes menus | En tramblotant s’esclatoit dans les nuës’ (‘here and there in tiny points, | Shook and erupted in the clouds’).97 Of the many instances where action in the Franciade essentially pauses in order to allow for the ekphrastic depiction of a beautiful object, the lines that Ronsard spends describing the gleaming armour of Francus and his soldiers are particularly eloquent in suggesting how such passages are never purely decorative.98 The passage immediately opens into the naming of the hero: Voulant sa main d’une lance charger, D’Astyanax en Francus fit changer Son premier nom, en signe de vaillance Et des soldats fut nommé Porte-lance, Pheré-enchos, nom des peuples vaincus Mal prononcé, & dit depuis ‘Francus’. (keen to take up a lance in his hand, He changed his name from Astyanax (His first name) to Francus—as a sign of valour. By the soldiers, he was called ‘Lance-bearer,’ In Greek: Phere-Ankos, pronounced incorrectly By the vanquished peoples as Francus.)99

The fanciful etymology of the hero’s name thus includes a piece of armour— ‘lance’, ‘enchos’—that is, Greek for lance)—which we can assume to shine as much as that which Francus himself wore. Via this careful shift from ekphrastic 94 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:305–22 (Mercury), 1:393–416 (Cybele), 2:733–50 (Venus), and 2:811–22 (Francus). 95 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:199, 1: 926, 1:927. 96 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:936. 97 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:937–8. 98 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:925–44. 99 Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:948–52.

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description of armour to fanciful etymology that itself ‘contains’ military arms, Ronsard makes of his hero’s name another beautiful object. It is the ultimate gesture of binding together epic teleology and a certain poetics and aesthetics: Francus’ very name, which circulates throughout the epic, attaching itself to deeds and dreams, shines like the hero’s armour. Moreover, it does so with its family ties—Francus, as the son of Hector, is the nephew of Paris, another name with whose etymology Ronsard plays: Francus, he writes, ‘en l’honneur de son oncle Pâris, | Aux bords de Seine ira fonder Pàris’ (in honour of his uncle Paris | On the banks of the Seine, he will found Paris’).100 Ronsard, who did not play a role in the 1549 celebrations organized for Henri II in Paris, has here appropriated the city and made himself at home there by explaining the city’s legendary founding—Paris, too, is one of the epic’s beautiful objects. We have thus seen that, when the first four books were published in 1572, the Franciade was a kind of richly wrought casket, which like a Renaissance château contained all sorts of ornate and beautiful objects, including first and foremost the name of its hero. Aligned with the aesthetics of Fontainebleau (and hence with Henri II and Charles IX), the epic functions not only to tell the story of how Francus travelled from Troy to France, but also to do so in a manner consistent with how Renaissance palaces themselves contained narrative objects. The fact that the ewer and basin put on the table for Ronsard’s feast at Prince Dicée’s palace both tell stories of the latter’s ancestors points the reader to look at the text he holds in his hands in a similar way—as an aesthetic object upon which is inscribed his own ancestry and genealogy. The publication, of course, occurred at just about the worst time possible—in 1572, shortly after the bloody Saint Batholomew’s Day Massacre, during which tens of thousands of Protestants were put to death in the French capital. Nevertheless, and as Jean-Claude Ternaux recently phrased it, it is ‘historically inaccurate’ to think that the Franciade was not a success upon publication—by all accounts, it fared well, despite the political situation.101 There are numerous textual traces of how the epic was received—poets such as Pontus de Tyard, Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, Marc-Claude de Buttet, Pierre Boton, and Jean de la Gessée wrote about it;102 the Protestant Reveille-Matin used the Franciade to forward a religious agenda quite different from that of Ronsard and his circle; and François de Belleforest, in his Histoire de France, quoted Ronsard’s epic, as I will discuss further below. When Ronsard died in 1585, the Franciade remained unfinished. In fact, not only did it remain unfinished but it also, as Ronsard reworked the original 1572 text over the next thirteen years, got shorter and shorter. As a result, the text changed in significant ways: Ronsard abridged in particular the canzoniere-like passages of the love plot. He also pruned the epic similes and worked at reducing the overall impression of copia.103 In this light, the 100

Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:203–4. Ternaux, ‘La Franciade de Ronsard: Echec ou réussite?’, 117. 102 See Usher, ‘Introduction,’ in The Franciad, ed. Usher, p. lviii. 103 See Claudine Jomphe, Les Théories de la dispositio et le Grand Œuvre de Ronsard (Paris: H. Champion, 2000), 363, and Bruce R. Leslie, Ronsard’s Successful Epic Venture, the Epyllion (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1979), 47–78. 101

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need to explain why the epic was like a ‘palace’ with a rich façade and priceless collection within becomes clear—he needed to explain what he had already accomplished. Which Franciade, then, would go down in history? My contention is that it is not the shortened, less exuberant, version, but the original and rich 1572 text, with all its poetic flourishes. And for this most thorough, colourful, and animated reaction to the Franciade, we must now turn away from the text to focus on a series of paintings. F RA NC US ’ P I CTO RI A L AF TE R LI FE Toussaint Dubreuil (1558/1561–1602), a painter recently celebrated by an exhibition at the Louvre, executed a series of paintings based on the Franciade for the new château commissioned by Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. By exploring the content and context of these paintings, it will be shown how an epic conceived for Henri II and Charles IX took on, via these paintings, a new meaning for Henri IV. The pruning of the love plot that took place in subsequent editions is sometimes seen as a sign that Ronsard recognized his supposed failure. Dubreuil and workshop, however, remain attached to the 1572 text and seem not to subscribe to the idea that the epic failed. The following must first be noted: that Henri IV commissioned a series of paintings based on the Franciade should probably surprise us. Henri IV, after all, was the dedicatee and/or central figure of many a Henriade! Among the authors of epic works carrying that or similar titles were Sébastien Garnier (1593), Pontaimery (1594), Jean Le Blanc (1604),104 Charles de Navières (1606), Balthazar de Vias (1606), Séguier (1609), Guillaume Ader (1610), Jean Métezeau (1611), and Jean Prévost (1613).105 One can also add, from before Henri de Navarre became King Henri IV, the Henrias of Jean de la Gessée (1573).106 One might thus have expected Henri IV to encourage Dubreuil to select a text by Jean de la Gessée, Garnier, or Pontaimery for painterly depiction in his new castle—but he did not. To understand the context in which Dubreuil created these paintings for Henri IV, it is necessary to take a step back and to remember Henri IV’s essential role in 104 On this see: Hélène Charpentier, ‘Jean le Blanc: De la Henriade et de quelques autres Poèmes’, Grand genre, grand œuvre, poème héroïque, special issue of Nouvelle Revue du seizième siècle, 15/1 (1997), 119–35. 105 Sébastien Garnier, La Henriade, contenans les faicts merveilleux de Henry, roy de France et de Navarre (Blois: B. Gomet, 1593–4); Alexandre de Pontaimery, Le Roy troimphant, où sont continues les merveilles du tres-illustre et invincible Prince Henry IIII (Cambray: P. de Bordes, 1594); Jean Le Blanc, Le Premier Livre de la Henriade (Paris, 1604); Charles de Navières, Chant de la Henriade sur la trompete de guerre (Paris: G. Lombard, 1606); Balthazar de Vias, Henricaea, ad christianissimum Galliae et Navarrae regem Henricum IIII (Aix: J. Tholosan, 1606); Jérôme Séguier, Daphnidium, sive Henrici IIII Regis Christ. heroica (n.p., 1609); Guillaume Ader, Lou Gentilome Gacoun (Toulouse: R. Colomiez, 1610); Jean Métezeau, La Henriade, published in Tombeau de Henry le Grand, IIII du nom (Paris: R. Thierry, 1611); Jean Prévost, Apothéose du Tres-Chrestien Roy de France et de Navarre Henri IIII (Poitiers: J. Thoreau, 1613). 106 Jean de La Gessée, Henrias: Variis Poematum et Carminum generibus illustrata (Paris: Gilles Blaise, 1573).

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reshaping France at the turn of the seventeenth century. Henri IV (1553–1610), then, was first the Protestant King of Navarre (1572–1610) and subsequently the Catholic King of France (1589–1610); his reign was famously cut short when the extremist François Ravaillac assassinated him.107 He has gone down in history as the king who brought peace and order to France during a period of torment, in particular quelling the Wars of Religion.108 In a nutshell, as it was recently and usefully summarized: ‘Within the first five years of his reign, Henri IV effectively ended the Wars of Religion that had divided France for nearly thirty years.’109 Mark Greengrass’s recent study clearly delineates the multifarious difficulties the new king faced (riots, insurrection, agricultural and financial disasters) and the skills (judgement, leadership) with which he triumphed over them.110 Beyond this general influence on the course of French history, he is probably best remembered for two things: (1) as the Protestant Henri de Navarre who married the Catholic Marguerite de Valois, an event quickly overshadowed by the bloody Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; and (2) for converting to Catholicism upon becoming King of France, an action he justified by his memorable (although perhaps apocryphal) ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ (‘Paris is surely worth a mass’).111 The king’s decision to abandon Calvinism, the religion of his mother, Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, came only after many years of trying to bring peace to the kingdom first as a committed Calvinist, then as leader of the Huguenot party (as of 1576).112 Most of all, his reign was a period of reconstruction,113 a term to be understood in both the general sense of repairing a broken nation and in the very concrete sense of (re)building, for Henri IV was indeed responsible for a very ambitious set of building projects.114 In Paris alone, Henri IV redeveloped the Louvre complex, the Place Royale (now Place des Vosges), the Place Dauphine, and the Hôpital Saint-Louis.115 107 The latest interpretation of this murder is provided by Jean-Christian Petitfils, L’Assassinant d’Henri IV: Mystères d’un crime (Paris: Perrin, 2009). 108 A useful perspective on how the king was seen after his death can be gained from Jacques Hannequin, Henri IV dans ses oraisons funèbres ou la naissance d’une légende (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977). 109 Hilary Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 2. 110 In his recent study of the period, Mark Greengrass notes the following: ‘It is a central theme [of his study] that [Henri IV] took [seriously] the irrational fears which were engendered by [the prospect of religious change, i.e. the Reformation] and that he ministered a healing balm to them’ (Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henri IV (London: Longman, 1995), 3). 111 Michael Wolfe, The Conversion of Henri IV: Politics, Power, and Religious Belief in Early Modern France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), offers a pertinent account of the king’s conversion, in particular how it was publicized for consumption by Catholic loyalists and how this religious decision played out politically as a central element in the development of what would become Bourbon absolutism. 112 Richard S. Love’s study, Blood and Religion: The Conscience of Henri IV 1553–93 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), makes a convincing case for just how committed a Calvinist was Henri IV, suggesting that the seemingly happy quip ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ (Paris is well worth a mass), which in any case Henri IV probably never said, fails really to capture much about the personal torment that accompanied the king’s decision. 113 The following exhibition catalogue provides a useful point of departure on this topic: Henri IV et la reconstruction du royaume (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1989). 114 See Jean-Pierre Babelon, Henri IV (Paris: Fayard, 1982), 797–837. 115 The most complete study in this respect is Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV.

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As art historian Hilary Ballon has demonstrated, Henri IV’s building programme for Paris alone was unprecedented and anticipatory of the scale of Haussman’s introduction of boulevards several centuries later. The programme was additionally part of a ‘multi-tiered effort to centralize the power of the crown’ that also included fiscal reform and urban administration.116 When Henri IV ascended to the throne, Paris was a ‘ravaged city’, further suffering from a ‘crippled infrastructure’.117 His buildings, as Ballon has explained, ‘were far more than decorative backdrops; they played a major role in defining the history of the city’.118 The most intense period of reconstruction occurred between 1603 and 1610.119 The restoration of a Château-Neuf at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was part of this wider context of reconstruction and rebuilding. Saint-Germain was already the site for the celebration, in 1514, of the marriage of François Ier to Claude de France. In 1539, François Ier, as he had done elsewhere, ordered that work begin on turning the original structure into a truly Renaissance palace. Following François’s death, Henri II continued work, opening the ‘grande salle de bal’ (grand ballroom) or ‘salle de Mars’ (Mars’s Room) in 1547. In 1557, Henri II decided that the palace was too small for the royal household and that a Château-Neuf should be built on the grounds: ce Roy, pour amplifier [ce lieu] de beauté & commoditez, feit commêcer vn edifice ioignant la riuiere de Seine, auec vne Terrace, qui a son regard sur ladite riuiere & le Chasteau: ensemble les fondemens d’vn bastiment en maniere de Theatre. (this king, to make [this place] more beautiful and handsome, ordered construction of a building next to the river Seine, with a terrace that looks out over said river and the palace. Foundations were also laid for a kind of theatre.)120

The initial architect of this project was Philibert De l’Orme, the king’s architect since 1548, although Primaticcio would take over in 1560, following De l’Orme’s fall from grace.121 The Château-Neuf was to be right next to the river Seine. When he became king in 1593, Henri IV began spending much time at the palace and immediately ordered that the building work commenced by his predecessors continue. It is as part of this renewed interest in the Château-Neuf, which led to a renewal of construction work in 1594 and which was mostly completed by 1599 and fully finished by 1604, that the king ordered from Dubreuil a series of paintings based on the Franciade. To get a glimpse of the château for which the paintings were commissioned, one can turn to the accounts of various early modern travellers. When John Evelyn, the

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117 Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV, 5. Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV, 4. 119 Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV, 251. Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV, 12. 120 Androuet du Cerceau, Le Premier Volume des plus excellents bastiments de France, fo. 5v. 121 For an introduction to Philibert De l’Orme, see Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 402–19. For further reading, see Philippe Potié, Philibert De L’Orme: Figures de la pensée constructive (Marseilles: Editions Parenthèses, 1996), and Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Philibert De l’Orme, architecte du roi, 1514–1570 (Paris: Mengès, 2000). 118

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seventeenth-century British writer, gardener, and diarist, ‘took horse to see St Germain-en-Laye’, which he calls ‘a stately country house of the king, some five leagues from Paris’, he arrived late, having spent more time than planned admiring the garden, vineyards, and groves of Cardinal Richelieu’s villa at Rueil.122 On arrival at Saint-Germain, Evelyn was aware of encountering two distinct edifices, the old one and the Château-Neuf. Ever interested in landscaping, Evelyn comments on the six terraces of the new building’s court, which gradually descend towards the river and whose vaulted grottos show such figures as Orpheus, Neptune, and Perseus and Andromeda. These terraces were largely the design of the painter and engraver Etienne Dupérac, better known for his plans and engravings of Rome, I vestigi dell’antichità di Roma (1575). As for the Château-Neuf itself, Evelyn notes that it had ‘many fair rooms’, which were all ‘well painted’ and which led ‘into a very noble garden . . . in the midst of which, on one side, is a chapel, with stone cupola, though small, yet of a handsome order of architecture’.123 Again, Evelyn’s interest is focused on the gardens.124 And indeed, the gardens were splendid, an early incarnation of the French formal garden whose emphasis on symmetry and geometry would predominate in the seventeenth century, especially in the designs of André le Nôtre at Versailles.125 But already at Saint-Germain-enLaye, the gardens were impressive. It is thus in such a cadre—a recently restored palace completed by an ordered and thoroughly French landscape next to the Seine—that the Franciade would be represented in a series of over seventy paintings. Although only six of these paintings still exist, an idea of the whole can be garnered thanks to the large number of still extant preparatory sketches and thanks to several written catalogues.126 The series’s painter, Toussaint Dubreuil, learned his craft at Fontainebleau alongside Rugiero de’ Rugieri.127 Most pertinent to his creation of a pictorial series based on the Franciade is his previous work beginning in 1589 on updating Fontainebleau’s Galerie d’Ulysse. In 1594, he became Henri IV’s official painter. Among other significant projects were his participation in decorating the Pavillon des Poesles (starting in 1593) with a series of paintings depicting the Travaux d’Hercule (Labours of Hercules) and around 1600 he put his talents to work at the Galerie des cerfs at Fontainebleau (still extant) and also at the Petite Galerie at the Louvre (destroyed by fire in 1660). For the Petite Galerie, Dubreuil 122

John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray (London: Walter Dunne, 1901), 51–2. Evelyn, Diary, 53. 124 Cf, with the account of Peter Heylyn, A Full Relation of Two Journeys (London: Printed by E. Cotes for Henry Seile, 1656), book 3. 125 See further mention of these gardens in Claude Mollet, Théâtre des plans et jardinages (Paris: C. de Sercy, 1652), and Olivier de Serres, Le Théâtre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs (Paris: Jamet Métayer, 1600). 126 In 1777, Louis XVI gave the palace to the Count of Artois, who had many of the buildings destroyed to make space for new construction. An inventory of 1788 shows that most of Dubreuil’s Franciade paintings had already disappeared by this point. For details and locations of the surviving paintings, see Dominique Cordellier, Toussaint Dubreuil (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2010), 69. 127 The following comments on Toussaint Dubreuil draw on Sylvie Béguin, ‘Toussaint Dubreuil, premier peintre de Henri IV’, Art de France, 4 (1964), 86–107, and, by the same author, L’Ecole de Fontainebleau (Paris: Editions d’Art Gonthier-Seghers, 1960), 119–23. 123

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contributed a series of portraits and, for the gallery’s vaulted ceiling, a gigantomachy in which Henri IV appears as Jupiter and where the Catholic Ligue is beaten down by an army of giants. As was common at the time, Dubreuil often took a back seat in the production of the paintings attributed to him, with other painters (most often Flemish) being responsible for actually putting brush to canvas. What, then, of the paintings themselves? The paintings depict episodes from all four books of the Franciade, from Francus’ flight from Troy up until the moment when Hyante is to begin her prophecy of France’s future kings. The fact that Dubreuil chose not to represent Ronsard’s ‘livre des rois’ (‘book of kings’)—that is, the genealogy of French kings in the epic’s fourth book—is immediately significant, suggesting that Henri IV was more interested in Ronsard’s poem as a poem than in its claims for the fantastical origins of the French monarchy. To explore the choices made by Dubreuil and Henri IV, we must first note that the four books are not treated equally. For that reason, it is useful and indeed necessary to treat each book in turn. Despite the fact that Dubreuil leaves aside the long evocation of royal genealogy, he clearly finds books 3 and 4 the most interesting. Paintings based on the first book included such scenes as an Assembly of the Gods, Mercury’s descent to reprimand Helenus, Francus’ departure for his mission, the sacrifice of a bull to Neptune, and Francus’ ship.128 Dubreuil and his assistants obviously had Ronsard’s text at hand as they prepared the overall schema of the paintings. The episodes selected from book 1 clearly relate the central narrative, both the events themselves (setting out for the journey from Epirus to France) but also the epic teleology that organizes them (Mercury’s initial descent and scolding of Helenus). The paintings dedicated to book 2 testify to a similar attention to detail and a similar fidelity to the narrative’s linear unfolding. Moments taken up from the second book include Neptune’s wrath and Francus’ subsequent shipwreck,129 the latter image seemingly based on Perino del Vaga’s Shipwreck of Aeneas130 but also taking up motifs already present in a painting by Rosso at Fontainebleau.131 Other key moments selected for depiction were Prince Dicée finding Francus on the shore and the banquet held in Francus’s honour.132 In the first two books, Dubreuil is thus clearly interested in following the key moments of Francus’ journey. More than Francus as ancestor, however, it is in Francus himself, as a fully fledged literary character, that holds his collaborators’ attention. The choices made in regard of books 3 and 4 appear quite different. Rather than selecting key plot moments, Dubreuil and his team seem to have made choices based on themes and aesthetics. It is as if they now wanted to linger over the text 128 I refer to the paintings based on the numbers assigned in Nicolas Bailly, Inventaire des tableaux du roi 1709–10, ed. F. Engerand (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899), 287–95. For book 1 of the Franciade: Assembly of the Gods (Bailly, Inventaire, no. 35; Ronsard, La Franciade, 1:17–286), Mercury’s descent to reprimand Helenus (no. 36; 1:287–392), Francus’ departure for his mission (no. 34; 1, passim), the sacrifice of a bull to Neptune (no. 33; 1:1049–84), and Francus’ ship (no. 32; 1:1209–20). 129 Bailly, Inventaire, no. 22 and no. 23; Ronsard, La Franciade 2:325–36. 130 On this painting, see Pamela Askew, ‘Perino del Vaga’s Decorations for the Palazzio Doria, Genoa’, Burlington Magazine, 989–635 (February 1956), 46–53. 131 See Béguin, ‘Toussaint Dubreuil’, 104. 132 Ronsard, La Franciade, 2:489–92, 2:887–1096.

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itself. The drawings and paintings based on the third book number more than twenty and retrace events from the love-induced insomnia133 up to the moment when Clymène dies by chasing after a wild boar disguised as Francus at the end of the book. The animal throws itself into the sea and Clymène follows; she dies and is welcomed by Ino and Glaucus.134 Considering the series of paintings for the third book as a whole, several things become apparent. For sure, a number of moments essential to Francus’ mission are represented, in particular the prophecy of the sea nymph, Leucothea.135 The latter addresses Francus as ‘Enfant royal qui doi[t] donner naissance | A tant de rois’ (‘Royal child who must give birth | To so many kings’) and she makes clear that Francus is to build a city ‘au milieu | Des bras de Seine’ (‘between | The arms of the Seine’) and that he must court a prophetess (that is, Hyante) who will show him his ‘future lignée’ (‘future lineage’).136 Also selected for inclusion in the programme is Prince Dicée welcoming Francus and offering him the hand of his daughter, a moment that concretizes Leucothea’s words and that explains Francus’ preference for Hyante over Clymène.137 However, much more central than Francus’ story to the pictorial depiction for Henri IV is the story of Clymène’s passion, rejection, and death. It is the fate of the scorned female lover that really seems to have interested Dubreuil. One might surmise that he was more a fan of Euripides’ or Apollonius’ stories of Medea than of the Aeneid. Preparatory drawings and the extant written inventory tell us that the moments of passion and despair occupy a particularly central role in the overall programme. Thus, a visitor to the Château-Neuf would have seen Clymène telling her sister Hyante that ‘aimer estoit un vice’ (‘love was a vice’), in an effort to dissuade her from loving Francus so that she herself might win his heart; fully two paintings showing Clymène’s tormented sleep; a painting that combines two narrative moments: Clymène selecting a poison with which to commit suicide and, dissuaded from that act by her nursemaid, her subsequent writing of a letter to Francus, and so on.138 Love and romance thus overshadow the epic hero’s teleology (Figure 3.6). It is tempting, if obviously a little simplistic, to see in this preference for romance an echo of Henri IV’s notorious love for women. Henri IV was indeed a skirtchaser, and his reputation won him the nickname ‘Le Vert Gallant’ (‘The Lusty Gallant’). He has been referred to as the ‘man with fifty-one mistresses’.139 According to his (perhaps over-)psychologizing biographer Jean-Pierre Babelon, Henri IV was driven in his pursuit of women by both his physical desires and a deep

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Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:7–11. The sisters’ insomnia (Bailly, Inventaire, no. 43); Clymène’s death (no. 77). See Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:1489–1514. 135 Bailly, Inventaire, no. 21. 136 Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:269–70, 3:276–7, 3:302. 137 Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:369–74. 138 Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:66, 3:823–49, 3:1061–1102, 3:1173–262. Corresponding images: Clymène discouraging Hyante’s love for Francus (Bailly, Inventaire, no. 70); her tormented sleep (no. 68 and no. 69); the poison and the letter (no. 71). 139 Danièle Thomas, Henri IV: Images d’un roi (Paris: Héraclès, 1996), 373. 134

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Figure 3.6. Toussaint Dubreuil, Clymène, Dissuaded from Poisoning herself, Writes to Francus. Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over black chalk, heightened with white. Photo: JeanGilles Berizzi. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.)

feeling of solitude.140 In any case, his most famous mistress was Gabrielle d’Estrées, but he had many others, with first names spread across the alphabet.141 His affair with Gabrielle d’Estrées, which lasted from November 1590 to the latter’s death in April 1599, overlaps approximately with the works undertaken at Saint-Germainen-Laye and with Dubreuil’s elaboration of the Franciade cycle, so it is not impossible to see the gallery’s emphasis on love as somehow related to Henri IV’s relationship to his primary mistress.142 Another distinguishing characteristic of Dubreuil’s depiction of the events recounted in book 3 is how the paintings pick up on and communicate not just Clymène’s story but also the very aesthetics of Ronsard’s poem as it details that love story, especially in the 1572 edition, which, as I noted above, was more verbose and convoluted. One of the surviving paintings in particular underscores how Dubreuil read Ronsard’s poem as a poem and for its poetics, rather than for its overarching political and genealogical claim. The painting in question shows Prince Dicée’s two

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Babelon, Henri IV, 628. See the list of mistresses’ names in the index of Babelon, Henri IV. 142 For these dates, see Thomas, Henri IV, 374, and Béguin, ‘Toussaint Dubreuil’, 99. On Gabrielle d’Estrées, see Philippe Erlanger, Gabrielle d’Estrées (Paris: Perrin, 2000), Michel de Decker, Gabrielle d’Estrées: Le Grand Amour de Henri IV (Paris: Pygmalion, 2003), and Janine Garrisson, Gabrielle d’Estrées: Aux marches du palais (Paris: Tallandier, 2006). In the School of Fontainebleau painting, Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa sœur la duchesse de Villars (Presumed Portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrées and of her Sister the Duchess of Villars), the famous nipple pinch is perhaps an allusion to Gabrielle’s pregnancy: in 1594, she would give birth to César de Vendôme, an illegitimate child conceived with the king. The painting certainly shares aesthetics with the Franciade series of paintings. 141

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Figure 3.7. Toussaint Dubreuil, The Toilette of Clymène and Hyante. Photo: Thierry Le Mage. Oil on canvas. (RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.)

daughters, Hyante and Clymène, primping and preening (Figure 3.7).143 The richly wrought canvas, overflowing with ornate details, depicts the two sisters shortly after they have woken up. One sister (probably Clymène), still in bed, is about to rise; an attendant stands poised with a robe for her. The other sister (probably Hyante), already seated at a dressing table and before a mirror, has her hair combed by one attendant while two others busy themselves with her clothes; still another stands by to adorn her with jewellery. The painting captures not just— indeed, not mainly—the action (that is, the sisters are beginning their day), but more especially Ronsard’s fastidious and fetishistic attention to the details of the scene. The verses here illustrated speak of ‘ces deux soeurs, ainçois ces beaux printemps’ (‘These two sisters—no: these fine springtimes’), of how they spend time in front of the mirror, combing their hair and adorning themselves, highlighting in particular the sisters’ hair:

143

Bailly, Inventaire, no. 42.

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En cent facons ils tordent leurs cheveux Ondez, crespez, entrefrizes de noeuds, Et d’un long art mille beautez s’attachent. (In a hundred ways they curl their hair, Into waves and crinkles and knotty flourishes With patient art they dress in a thousand fineries.)144

These verses obviously stand out from the text in that they seem to emblematize the style of Ronsard’s love poetry. A reader familiar with Ronsard might think directly back to any number of poems from the Amours.145 For example, a verse depiction of a lady at her toilette is provided by sonnet 61, which begins ‘Quand au matin ma Deesse s’habille’ (‘When in the morning my Goddess gets dressed’) and which details her ‘beaux cheveux blons’ (‘beautiful blond hair’), which she ‘En cent façons en-onde et entortille’ (‘In a hundred ways she en-curls and twists’), ‘les frizant en mille crespillons’ (‘curling them in a thousand ringlets’).146 Dubreuil’s painting depicts a moment from the Franciade that is decidedly lyric, whose purpose is less plot advancement than an aestheticization and idealization of female beauty that reminds us just how close Ronsard’s epic is at certain points to his other writings.147 Even the picture’s small details, such as the most visible comb, suggest such a rapprochement with the Pléiade poets. In the Franciade, Ronsard writes specifically how the two sisters spend a lot of time having their hair combed.148 In the painting, the one sister who has reached this stage of her toilette sits while her attendant holds her blond hair and combs it. The comb, an ‘agent of metamorphosis’, was in Pléiade poetry ‘a precious relic to be envied and worshipped because it enjoys the intimacy with the lady that [the male lover-poets] desire to have’.149 As Ronsard wrote elsewhere, ‘j’aime tes beaux cheveux’ (‘I love your beautiful hair’) to the point that ‘[je] suis jaloux du bon-heur de ton peigne’

144

Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:131, 3:135–7. The reader of the description of the Franciade’s sisters at their toilette might also think of sonnet 94, the first two quatrains of which read as follows: ‘Soit que son or se crespe lentement, | Ou soit qu’il vague en deux glissantes ondes, | Qui ça qui là par le sein vagabondes, | Et sur le col nagent follastrement: | | Ou soit qu’un noud illustre richement | De maints rubis et maintes perles rondes, | Serre les flots de ses deux tresses blondes, | Mon cueur se plaist en son contenement’ (‘Whether her gold locks curl slowly, | Or whether they glide in two flowing waves, | Falling now here, now there, over her breasts, | Float playfully on her neck, | | Or whether a knot richly ties into them | Many rubies and many round pearls, | Bringing the hair into two blond tresses, | My heart enjoys its enjoyment’) (Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 71). For two alternative translations of this poem, on both of which I draw here, see Pierre de Ronsard, Selected Poems, ed. and trans. Malcolm Quainton and Elizabeth Vinestock (London: Penguin, 2002), and Conley, The Graphic Unconcious, 95. 146 Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 45. 147 The ‘intrusion’ of lyric into epic has won Ronsard detractors, of course. One critic has said of these canzoniere-like passages, which often obey the rhythms and constraints of Petrarchan love poetry, that they disrupt the narrative economy. She goes so far as to say that they function not only ‘thanks to’ the main narrative, but especially ‘despite it and against it’ (Jomphe, Les Théories de la dispositio, 361). 148 Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:133. 149 Elise Goodman-Soellner, ‘Poetic Interpretations of the “Lady at her Toilette” Theme in Sixteenth-Century Painting’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 14/4 (1983), 432. 145

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(‘I am jealous of your comb’s happiness’).150 Other poets, such as Antoine du Baïf, also indulged this same topos.151 Obviously, Dubreuil’s painting belongs to an iconographic tradition that spans the sixteenth century, stretching back to works like Giovanni Bellini’s Lady at her Toilette (1516) and in which ideals of beauty often borrow from poetic models.152 As Elise Goodman-Soellner has summarized, such pictures are not allegorical—Vanity is not allegorized, Prudence is not personified.153 On the other hand, the objects that surround the lady can serve as similes and metaphors for female beauty.154 Dubreuil’s painting thus announces itself as a celebration not just of the Franciade’s plot, but also of the aesthetics of Ronsardian/Pléiade love lyric. The choices that Dubreuil made regarding book 4 are just as revealing of a specific programmatic stance. Dubreuil’s paintings based on the fourth book were mostly large in format (approximately 2 metres by 4 metres). One might have expected these paintings to include a series of portraits of French kings, thus enacting pictorially the gallery-like quality of the fourth book, thus connecting Charles IX (and later Henri IV) to their royal ancestors. As already noted, however, no such portraits were included in the decorative programme. The paintings here focus rather on imagining the interaction between Hyante and Francus. Among other moments, paintings taken up from book 4 show Hecate’s temple, which Hyante shows to Francus, Hyante dressing ready for their meeting, Hyante setting off to the temple in a horse-drawn coach, Hyante making a sacrifice, Francus’ arrival at the place designated by Hyante for the revelation, Hyante showing Francus the valley where she will reveal his future, Hyante picking herbs in preparation for the prophecy, in imitation of Medea, Francus perfuming himself with incense, and so on.155 The detailed depiction of the fourth book’s events continues until Hyante’s prophecy begins. In contrast to this detailed and step-bystep picturing of Francus’ arrival at the moment of prophecy, there is absolutely no evidence that Dubreuil represented a single moment of the prophecy itself.156 Based on surviving documents, it would seem that Dubreuil did not depict the ‘fosse cavée | A grande gueule en abysme crevée’ (‘a hollowed-out trench, | A big mouth cleaved open like an abyss’) from which rise ‘maints cris, maints traisnems de fer, | Et maint fer’ (‘many shouts, much clanking | Of iron’), a true ‘soupirail Ronsard, Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, i. 337. See Antoine du Baïf, Les Amours de Francine, ed. Ernesta Caldarini (Geneva: Droz, 1966), 109. 152 For discussion of the Petrarchan idealized female portrait in poetry, see Leonard Forster, The Icy Fire: Five Studies in European Petrarchism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 1–32. On the overlap in Italy between painting and poetry in this respect, see Elizabeth Cropper, ‘On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style’, Art Bulletin, 58 (1976), 374–94. 153 Goodman-Soellner, ‘Poetic Interpretations’, 427. 154 Goodman-Soellner, ‘Poetic Interpretations’, 430. 155 Hecate’s temple (Bailly, Inventaire, no. 12; Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:122–5); Hyante dressing (no. 9; 4:137–66), Hyante setting off in a coach (no. 13, 4:167–98), Hyante making a sacrifice (no. 8; 4:201–2), the site of revelation (no. 15; 4:281–301), Hyante showing Francus the valley (no. 16; 4:533–4), Hyante picking herbs (no. 18; 4:537–41), Francus perfuming himself (no. 17; 4:554–8), etc. 156 Dominique Cordellier, ‘Dubreuil, peintre de La Franciade au Château Neuf de Saint-Germainen-Laye’, Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France (December 1985), 372. 150 151

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d’Enfer’ (‘mouth of hell’).157 Nor does Dubreuil depict the frenzied Hyante, who, like prophetesses of Ancient epic, burns with rage and ‘aparut plus grand que de coustume’ (‘appear[s] larger than normal’), as if swelled by the voice of prophecy.158 And, there is no proof that the decorative programme in any way took up Hyante’s specific future goals for Francus: that he will go to Gaul, that he will fight the Goths, that Trojan blood will mix with German.159 In other words, Dubreuil was clearly more interested in setting the scene for Hyante’s prophecy (Figure 3.9), the (failed) love story of Hyante and Francus, than in the contents of the revelations—that is, the History of French Kings. The meeting between love-smitten Hyante and duty-bound Francus is seemingly of much greater import than the exempla provided by a millennium of Frankish and French kings. As with those based on book 3, the paintings inspired by book 4 are more of a homage to Ronsard the love poet who masters both the lyric and the epic mode than to France’s history, destiny, or future. The depiction of Francus’ arrival at the site of revelation is a case in point (Figure 3.8). The painting shows Francus just as ‘luisant de beautés et de graces’

Figure 3.8. Toussaint Dubreuil, Hyante Greets Francus. Photo: Jean-Pierre Lagiewski. Oil on canvas. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.) 157

158 Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:709. Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:649–60. Francus goes to Gaul (Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:723), he fight the Goths (4:760), Trojan blood mixes with German (4:835). See also 1:179–80, 3:411–15, 3:384. 159

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Figure 3.9. Toussaint Dubreuil, Hyante Shows Francus the Valley where he will See his Descendants, the Future Kings of France. Photo: Jean-Gilles Berizzi. (RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.)

(‘gleaming with beauty and grace’) as in Ronsard’s text.160 Whereas Ronsard, however, in Petrarchan mode, spends many verses discussing ‘les rayons de ses yeux’ (‘the rays of light shining from [Francus’] eyes’), which, in a long simile, are compared to the light from a star in heaven that ‘Jette de nuit une espesse lumiere’ (‘Throws out by night a thick light’), pouring thirst and fever into humans, Dubreuil turns Francus away from the viewer, so that we cannot see his eyes.161 Hyante, too, has changed. In the Franciade, Hyante looks on at Francus through a veil: ‘Par le travers du crespe l’aperceut’ (‘She saw him through a gap in the fabric’), based on a similar moment in the Argonautica when Medea, to glimpse Jason’s beauty and grace, ‘look[s] at him with stealthy glance, holding her bright veil aside’.162 Ronsard’s Hyante, as she looks on at Francus, is shot down by love, she blushes and ‘tout le corps comme fueille [sic] luy tramble’ (‘Her whole body shook like a leaf ’).163 The surviving painting shows only Francus and Hyante, the attendants visible only in the preparatory drawing. This separation is curiously closer to Ronsard’s text, in which, upon Francus’ arrival, the company of attendants

160 161 162 163

Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:281. Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:283, 4:286. Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:291, 3:444–5. Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:301.

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se recula de crainte, Et se cachant sous le boucage ombreux Sans nul tesmoing les laisserent tous deux (edged backwards In fright and hid in the shady grove, Leaving the two lovers alone without witnesses),

another passage indebted to the Argonautica.164 In any case, Francus has his back to us, and it is Hyante (and her bared breast) that retain the viewer’s attention. Dubreuil’s treatment of book 4 can be better understood by setting it in contrast against other responses to the Franciade—namely, those of François de Belleforest and Claude Garnier. On the one hand, the historian Belleforest earnestly took up the fourth book’s history of French kings; on the other hand, there is Garnier, the author of the Livre de la Franciade, à la suite de celle de Ronsard (The Book of the Franciade). Garnier’s sequel was itself interrupted and seemingly did not garner much support from Henri IV. Belleforest’s Les Grandes Annales et histoire générale de France (The Great Annals and General History of France) (1579) is a history of France from the arrival of the Franks up to the reign of Henri III (crowned king in 1574).165 Although he did not agree with Ronsard’s fiction of the French nation’s Trojan origins, Belleforest quoted abundantly—twenty-seven times—from the fourth book of the Franciade. The quotations of the Franciade in the Grandes Annales provided vividness to an otherwise dry enumeration of kings, by bringing poetic relief in descriptions of characters and military exploits. Garnier, on the other hand, does not particularly value the Franciade as history. Just as Homer’s epics were followed by Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica, written in the second half of the fourth century and which recounted events from the death of Hector up to the fall of Troy, so Ronsard’s epic would have its story variously extended by a number of authors. Garnier’s was the first to be published. Garnier, we recall, was an admirer of Ronsard. He would edit Ronsard’s Œuvres in 1623 and would, moreover, defend Ronsard’s poetic honour when Théophile de Viau attacked it.166 Garnier’s text, written in decasyllables like Ronsard’s, was dedicated to Henri IV and offers a continuation of the exchange between Francus and Hyante. Hyante announces that there is a French king who will surpass all others (that is, Henri IV) but says too that she is unable to speak of his exploits. She thus calls upon Hector’s

164 Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:314–16. Cf. with Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, ed. and trans. Robert C. Seaton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, coll. Loeb Library, 1912), 3. 965–6. 165 See François de Belleforest, Les Grandes Annales et histoire générale de France, dès la venue des Francs en Gaule jusques au règne du roy très-chrestien Henry III (Paris: G. Buon, 1579) [BnF Rés FOL-L35-65(1) and (2)]. On Belleforest’s quoting of Ronsard, see Donald Stone, ‘The Boundaries of History and Literature: Belleforest’s Les Grandes Annales and Ronsard’s Franciade’, Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, 28/3 (1988), 207–13, from which many of the following details are borrowed. 166 See Frédéric Lachèvre, ‘Théophile et Claude Garnier (juin 1623–mars 1624)’, in Le Procès du poète Théophile de Viau (Paris: Champion, 1909), ii. 33–69 and, by the same author, ‘Une première attaque inconnue de Claude Garnier contre Théophile de Viau’, in Mélanges sur le libertinage au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1920), 178–97.

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shade to prophesy the first Bourbon king.167 Francus, whom Hector hesitates to recognize as his son, must first prove his identity by retelling the exploits as Ronsard had written them. It is thus Hector who plays the role of prophet to announce the arrival of Henri IV, but before he starts to discuss him, the epic is interrupted—at the exact moment Hector opens his mouth to speak of Henri IV.168 Adonc Hector ouurit sa bouche, preste A reciter les destins de henry, De la fortune & des Cieus fauori (At which Hector opened his mouth, ready To tell of henry’s fates, Favoured by Fortune and the Heavens),

after which the poet expresses the wish that a ‘vent second’ (‘second wind’) will push the poetic project forward beyond this interruption.169 As Bruno Méniel has remarked, Garnier’s text is marked by a much more evident emphasis on praising the monarch and, rather than advancing Ronsard’s text, adds details (on Francus’ childhood, on Hector’s armour, and so on).170 Méniel makes the further convincing argument that Garnier here crafts an image of Astyanax–Francus that is antiheroic or anti-epic, in that Garnier, imitating a passage from the Iliad, shows a son frightened by his father’s blood, sweat, and armour on return from war: when Hector reaches out for the young Francus, ce poupin . . . Coulloit sa teste au sein de la nourrice, Criant, pleurant, tout effrayé (this little one . . . Would bury his head in his nurse’s bosom, Shouting, crying, all afraid).171

Méniel concludes by suggesting that Garnier, while admiring Ronsard’s poetic vigour, is a product of his time, happy about the end of the Wars of Religion, and thus that Garnier considers poetry in praise of war displaced.172 Like Garnier, then, and unlike Belleforest, Dubreuil paints the moment of prophecy, but not the prophecy itself. The paintings for books 1 and 2 detail Francus’ departure and announce his mission (in the form of Mercury’s descent to scold Helenus), but those for book 3 focus almost entirely on Clymène’s despair and book 4 deals not with royal genealogy but with the coming but postponed moment of prophecy. 167

Hector’s summoning is comparable to that of Anchises at the Aeneid 6:700–2. Bjaï, La Franciade sur le métier, 290. Beyond noticing it, Bjaï offers no analysis of this interruption. Klára Csűrös also offers little in the way of analysis of this interruption. See her Variétés et vicissitudes, 76–7. 169 Claude Garnier, Livre de la Franciade, à la suite de celle de Ronsard (n.p., 1604), 48. [BnF Rés Ye-7561]. 170 Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 233. 171 Claude Garnier, Livre de la Franciade, 36–7. Méniel (Renaissance de l’épopée, 233, n. 393) suggests comparison with Homer, Iliad 6:466–70. 172 Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 234. 168

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The Franciade, here, loses some of its epic character. What is retained is not so much the extolling of French kings and their warrior prowess but romance and aesthetics. Announced in 1549, at a point when Ronsard and fellow Pléiade poet Du Bellay did not take part in the celebrations organized for King Henri II’s royal entry into Paris, the Franciade grew to occupy positions just as public via various collaborations with France’s artists and artisans. From its inception, the epic was part of both a national and a royal project and in constant dialogue with other arts. Very soon, in addition to verse by Ronsard and his contemporaries about the promised epic, the trumpet-blowing figure on the Louvre’s recently designed façade would become associated with the epic muse of the Franciade, and Francus would be, likewise, depicted in the streets of Paris on the occasion of Charles IX’s entry in 1571. Upon publication, readers were faced with a text that, more than just delivering a royal genealogy or celebration thereof, was actually like a Renaissance château full of beautiful objects, including Francus’ own name. The most thorough and telling reaction to the text came in the form of Dubreuil’s paintings executed for King Henri IV. The 1549 skeletal overview of the forthcoming epic highlighted France’s Trojan origins, something still essential in the 1571 entry for Charles IX, but in the paintings at Saint-Germain it was rather the poem’s very poetics, and not just the general project of an epic about France’s Trojan origins, that would be featured and implicitly praised. Over a half a century, then, the fate of Ronsard’s epic was intimately tied to the sister arts. Originally, it was the idea of the epic that was at the heart of that connection, but with Dubreuil’s paintings it was Ronsard’s text itself that was celebrated. At least according to Henri IV and his painter, France now did possess a long poëme—unlike earlier French monarchs, he did not have to look back to antiquity for a source of an epic gallery; Ronsard had, despite his later critics, actually delivered.

4 D’Aubigné’s Tragiques: A Wasteland of Graffiti The peace that Henri IV brought to France would not last—nor would it contain or silence the story of past troubles. With this turn for the worse, a new form of epic art would soon implicitly challenge Toussaint Dubreuil’s amatory and nonmilitaristic recuperation of Ronsard’s Franciade: France’s next major epic would be angry, bloody, and partisan; and its relationship to the sister arts would have little to do with the kinds of opposition or rivalry seen in previous chapters. From a painter taking up an epic’s love story, as in the case of Dubreuil vis-à-vis Ronsard, we move in the present chapter to study a vociferous author whose poetics share much with the practices of graffiti and defacement. Let us first recall, then, that in the first decade of the seventeenth century, civil strife greatly intensified: Henri IV was assassinated on 14 May 1610 and Protestant leadership was in disarray. The rise at the French court of Concino Concini, the husband of one of Marie de Médicis’s close friends, brought with it a renewed closeness of ties between France and the papacy, firing up Protestant anger amid a largely triumphant Counter-Reformation.1 French Huguenots were, again, in the line of fire. It is within these circumstances that Agrippa D’Aubigné published, in 1616, a long poëme called Les Tragiques.2 D’Aubigné actually composed much of the epic in the last decades of the sixteenth century, setting to work soon after he was seriously injured while fighting at Casteljoux in June 1577. Speaking of himself in the third person in the ‘Avis au lecteur’ (‘Address to the Reader’), D’Aubigné announces that ‘se tenant pour mort pour les plaies receües en un combat, il traça comme pour testament cet ouvrage’ (‘taking himself for dead because of the wounds received in battle, he composed this work as a testament’).3 Begun in the 1570s, the work was finished

1 For a general history of the Wars of Religion, see Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion 1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). On the early seventeenth century, see Arthur Herman, ‘The Saumur Assembly 1611: Huguenot Political Belief and Action in the Age of Marie de Medici.’ PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1984. 2 The short form of Agrippa D’Aubigné’s name is sometimes given as D’Aubigné, sometimes as Aubigné. I will adopt the former. 3 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Les Tragiques are from: Agrippa D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, ed. Jean-Raymond Fanlo (Paris: Champion, 2006). I have also made use on numerous occasions of the notes provided in Agrippa D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, ed. Frank Lestringant (Paris: Gallimard, coll. Poésie, 2003). Here: D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 22. See also Aggripa D’Aubigné, Sa vie à ses enfants, ed. Gilbert Schrenk (Paris: STFM, 2001), 103.

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and subsequently published only some four decades later.4 Although opinions differ as to whether that delay made the epic more or less relevant, recent critics tend to concur that publication in 1616 happened because the text would resonate with contemporary difficulties.5 Generic definition and the topic at hand—that is, epic art—must go hand in hand. To begin, we must ask, naively, what kind of epic this is. D’Aubigné’s text consists of seven books. They recount not a linear story, but a kind of anxious and vitriolic re-presentation of Calvinist suffering as an anticipation or even proof of future victory—all born perhaps, as generations of critics have reasserted, from the eight-year-old D’Aubigné’s horror at seeing the punishment and assassination of his co-religionaries at Amboise in March 1560: ‘il veit les testes de ses compagnons d’Amboise encores recognoissables sur un bout de potence’ (‘he saw the heads of his Amboise companions still recognizable atop the gallows’).6 The first book, Misères, offers a general tableau of Huguenot misfortune; Princes satirizes France’s Catholic kings, depicted as power-hungry and corrupt; the Chambre dorée tells of God’s descent to Paris, an echo of the apocalyptic Justice that supposedly awaits Protestants at the end of time; the following book, Les Feux, is a form of martyrology; in Les Fers, the iron swords of the Wars of Religion are put on display, in particular those of the bloody Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (August 1572); God’s anger at the unjust treatment of Protestants takes centre stage in Vengeances; and the final book, Jugement, offers a vision of the end of the world and of ultimate Protestant victory. The reader thus progresses from ‘le visage meurtry de la captive Eglise’ (‘the bruised face of our besieged Church’) to a beatific vision of justice and peace.7 The poem’s ending probably reminds us of Dante, whose Paradiso concludes with an ecstatic absorption of the poet’s soul within God’s love that animates the whole universe—

4 Details of the epic’s composition are given by Armand Garnier, Agrippa D’Aubigné et le parti protestant (Paris: Fischbacher, 1928). A more recent consideration of the issue is provided by Giancarlo Fasano, Les Tragiques: Un’ epopea della morte (Bari: Adriatica, 1970–1), ii. 9–78. In a huge display of erudition, Jean-Raymond Fanlo has detailed when various passages were probably composed based on textual analysis, in his edition of Les Tragiques, 35–118. In disagreement with earlier scholars (notably Henri Weber), Fanlo makes the convincing argument that the epic was nothing like complete by 1589. He identifies three main periods in the composition: the first (about which almost nothing is known), which coincided with Henri III’s arrival on the throne in 1573; the second, which began with the abjuration of Henri IV in 1576 and lasted until approximately 1602; the third, which began following Henri IV’s death in 1610. 5 Thomas Greene has suggested that, upon publication, the work was ‘already badly out-dated and of interest to none but the authorities who were ultimately to drive its author out of France’ (Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 255). David Quint disagrees, underscoring the fact that Les Tragiques appeared at a time ‘when it seemed to many French Protestants that they would have to begin their armed struggle all over again,’ with the consequence that the ‘appearance of the epic seemed to be a call for further resistance’ (Quint, Epic and Empire, 190.) Jean-Raymond Fanlo’s painstaking research, which clearly delineates how Protestants in the first decades of the seventeenth century suffered during a kind of pax catholica, surely confirms Quint’s assertion (Jean-Raymond Fanlo, ‘L’Œuvre dans son contexte’, in D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 119–45.) 6 D’Aubigné, Sa vie à ses enfants, 52. 7 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 1:14.

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Les Tragiques end with a similar form of rapture: Mes sens n’ont plus de sens, l’esprit de moy s’envolle, Le Cœur ravy se taist, ma bouche est sans parolle: Tout meurt, l’ame s’enfuit, et reprenant son lieu Extaticque se pasme au giron de son Dieu. (My senses have lost all feeling, my spirit flies away My ravished Heart is silenced, my mouth is wordless. Everything dies, my soul takes its leave and regains its place. In ecstasy, it swoons in God’s lap.)9

The Tragiques thus provided at least two things. First, a kaleidoscopic chronicle of Protestant suffering, beginning with the Massacre of Vassy (1562). Second, an inscription of these historical events within a timeline at once epic and eschatological and that articulates a prophecy of future Calvinist victory. In the pages that follow, my aim is to explore the relationship between this innovative epic and painting, architecture, and other forms of artistic production. Better to define the chapter’s stakes, it is useful to deal first with a paradox— namely, the fact that this Calvinist text is quite obviously fascinated by the possibilities for representation afforded by the various sister arts. It is a paradox, because such a fascination surely means the text disregards the Reformation’s programmatic iconoclasm.10 My argument throughout this chapter is, in many ways, a response to this paradox. First of all, why can we talk about fascination? Most obviously, the seven books overflow with images. Very simply put, the reader is likely to follow D’Aubigné’s vivid and often painterly verses in dialogue with actual paintings to which the text may (but often does not or could not) allude directly. This is not just the present reader’s personal inclination—in an article on books 2 and 3 of the epic, the scholar Claude-Gilbert Dubois compares various moments in the text to paintings or engravings by a host of artists, including Goya, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens, Dürer, Baldung Grien, and Antoine Caron.11 Many other artists suggest themselves for comparison, from Hieronymus Bosch to Picasso

8

Dante, Paradiso, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 33:143–45. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 7:1215–18. In his edition of Les Tragiques, Frank Lestringant underscores the connection here with Catholic mystics such as Saint John of the Cross (1542–91) (p. 556, n. 1215). See also Michel de Certeau, La Fable mystique (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), ch. 4. 10 The most complete study to date on this issue is Olivier Pot, ‘Les Tableaux des Tragiques ou le paradoxe de l’image’, in Olivier Pot (ed.), Poétiques D’Aubigné (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 103–34. 11 Claude-Gilbert Dubois, ‘ “Dieu descend”: Figuration et transfiguration dans Les Tragiques, III, 139–232’, in Marie-Madeleine Fragonard and Madeleine Lazard (eds), Les Tragiques d’Agrippa d’Aubigné (Geneva: Slatkine), 86–111. For references to these artists, see pp. 94, 99, 104, and 107. 9

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(especially Guernica).12 Every reader is also likely to notice that, whereas Ronsard’s poetics owe something—perhaps much—to mannerist aesthetics, as discussed in the previous chapter, then the writing of D’Aubigné, as has often been noted, surely evokes a baroque sensibility.13 D’Aubigné’s images, most often infused with violence, generally depict specific moments, acts, or people, such that a contemporary reader may often have felt that, while reading the Tragiques, he was leafing through the engravings made by Tortorel and Périssin for their Histoires mémorables touchant les guerres, massacres et troubles (1569–70).14 As Thomas Greene has noted, D’Aubigné’s images often ‘resemble emblems’, both in that they frequently stand alone and that they adhere closely to the moral judgement they communicate.15 The nature and organization of D’Aubigné’s images create the impression of a somewhat jumpy and non-linear narrative—hardly surprising, given that D’Aubigné ‘seeks to undo the triumphalist historical narrative of the victors [and] to deny a meaningful epic teleology to that history and to break it down into nonnarratable violence’.16 The seeming paradox, then, is that Calvinists are known for their opposition to idolatry, for their iconoclasm, and for promotion of simple style. So, how could D’Aubigné, as a Calvinist, produce the text he did? As Marcel Raymond put it, Calvinist poets of Renaissance France ‘étaient esthétiquement des puritains qui répudiaient les beautés païennes et les ornements pour user d’un style dépouillé’ (‘were aesthetically Puritans, who repudiated Pagan decoration and ornaments, preferring rather a plain style’).17 Calvin delineated this simple style in his Institution chrétienne (1541); Clément Marot adopted that style in his translation of the psalms.18 D’Aubigné’s Tragiques appear not to fit this pattern. How can we respond? One can, first, remember that D’Aubigné refused Calvin’s idea of the author’s necessary self-effacement—he knowingly wrote in a different manner.19 More significantly—and such is the topic of this chapter—

12 Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 267. It can be insightful to rethink the D’Aubigné–Picasso connection in terms of Guernica’s relationship to those writers who were Picasso’s contemporaries. On this topic, see Susan Suleiman, ‘1937, 12 July: Committed Painting’, in Denis Hollier (ed.), A New History of French Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 935–42. 13 This aspect has been most thoroughly studied by Imbrie Buffum, Agrippa D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques: A Study on the Baroque Style in Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951). A wider perspective on the period’s literary connections to the baroque is afforded by his later study, Studies in the Baroque from Montaigne to Rotrou (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957). 14 See Jean Ehrmann, ‘Massacre and Persecution Pictures in Sixteenth Century France’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 8 (1945), 195–9, and Jean Adhémar, ‘French Sixteenth-Century Genre Paintings,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945), 191–5. 15 Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 271. 16 Quint, Epic and Empire, 188. 17 Marcel Raymond, Génies de France (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconnière, 1945), 80. Quoted in Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 276, n. 27. 18 See Pierre Pidoux’s introduction to his edition of the translation, Les Psaumes en vers Français avec leurs mélodies (Geneva: Droz, 1986). Gérard Defaux’s (almost hagiographic) introduction to his volume is also illuminating: Cinquante pseaumes de David mis en françoys selon la vérité hébraïque (Paris: Champion, 1995). 19 Such is the theme of Catharine Randall, Subverting the System: D’Aubigné and Calvinism (Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1990).

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D’Aubigné’s images and allusions to architectural structures are often there precisely to destroy other images and other architectures. In other words, D’Aubigné’s epic art is very much about textualizing the destruction of art via art. I will argue that the way in which D’Aubigné references other art forms is inherently connected—and perhaps more than in any other chapter—to his vision of the epic genre, about which a few words are thus necessary at this point. D’Aubigné’s text is, as every reader knows, difficult to categorize: like Lucan’s Pharsalia, it tells the story of the politically disenfranchised; like Dante’s Pardiso, it predicts one soul’s arrival before God; like Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, it tells of historical combats.20 As Bruno Méniel has concluded, the Tragiques ‘combines genres’, for it is part historical, part theological, part tragic, and part satirical—‘mais s’il est tout cela, il est aussi en partie épique’ (‘but if it is all that, then it is also part epic’).21 But how is it epic? Despite the beatific vision at the poem’s end, David Quint has argued that the Tragiques belongs to the category of losers’ epics—that is,

20 Tasso famously argues in his Discorsi del poema eroico (1594) that the proper subject matter for epic is history. For a brief introduction, see Giuseppe Mazzotta, ‘Italian Renaissance Epic’, in Catherine Bates (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 93–118. On the reception of Tasso in Renaissance France, see Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 84–7. 21 Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée, 183. The question of the work’s genre has caused much ink to flow. Emile Faguet states in 1924 that, while in his opinion the poem was ‘vraiment épique en son fond’ (‘truly epic in its deep nature’), D’Aubigné ‘semble avoir précisément évité l’aspect, l’allure et la disposition ordinaire de l’épopée’ (‘seems precisely to have avoided the normal aspect, allure, and organization of epic’) (Emile Faguet, Histoire de la poésie française de la Renaissance au romantisme (Paris: Boivin, 1924), i. 54). In the 1932–3 critical edition by Garnier and Plattard, it is stated that Les Tragiques is the only French work ‘que nous puissions opposer aux grandes epopées étrangères’ (‘that we can hold up for comparison with the great epics of other countries’) (Agrippa D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, ed. Armand Garnier and Jean Plattard (Paris: Droz, 1932), i, p. xi). Thomas Greene speaks of the text as ‘a monumental attempt to reinvigorate, even to recreate the heroic poem, to free it from academicism, to win a new version of the mysteries which had brought it into being . . . By refusing the traditional epic form he threw open his poem to formlessness and immobility’ (Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 275). Greene justifies his claim on theological grounds, developing the idea that life on Earth for a Calvinist, dependent on the Pauline metaphor of warfare in Calvin’s description of it in his Institutio Christianae Religionis (1536), is epic in nature, allowing a ‘powerful and fertile conception of Christian heroism which permitted D’Aubigné to reinvigorate the epic’ (pp. 283–4). Just as Virgil redefined heroism in terms of pietas, so D’Aubigné redefines heroism as Christian resilience and martyrdom. It is perhaps in rethinking heroism that we can rethink the epic in a non-formalistic manner. Greene concludes that the Tragiques are ‘an epic . . . of divine vengeance’ (p. 284). In 1964, J. A. Walker studied the genre of Les Tragiques, drawing a main line of thought from Imbrie Buffum’s notion that baroque literature refuses strict generic limits. He begins by asserting that Les Tragiques, while not an epic, contains ‘epic elements’ (p. 110), which he then enumerates in some detail, concluding that epic status, growing from the early books’ satire, is fully achieved in book 6, then surpassed in book 7 by the lyrical and mystical union with God that closes the work. (J. A. Walker, ‘D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques: A Genre Study’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 33/2 (January 1964), 109–24.) Jacques Bailbé calls the text ‘une magistrale ébauche d’épopée’ (a masterful sketch of an epic) (Agrippa D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, ed. Jacques Bailbé (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1968), 286). Michio Peter Hagiwara’s 1972 study (French Epic Poetry in the Sixteenth Century) notes that Les Tragiques ‘hardly resembles an epic’ (p. 180), for there is no protagonist in the conventional sense. Like Walker, Hagiwara proceeds to track down epic elements (battle scenes, feasts and banquets, allegorical figures, Homeric epithets, etc.). Hagiwara’s hesitant conclusion is that Les Tragiques is, despite what epic absences there are, the closest thing to an epic, as defined by Peletier du Mans and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye as a ‘mirror of the world’ (p. 220).

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to that epic tradition inaugurated by Lucan’s Pharsalia (discussed in Chapter 1). Lucan is indeed one of D’Aubigné’s obvious models and predecessors—much more so than Homer, Virgil, Apollonius, Dante, Tasso, or others—but the Tragiques is also something wholly new. In one sense a loser’s epic—the heroes after all are the numerous Protestants who suffered and frequently died at the hands of their enemies—the text also promotes the idea that they will be victorious.22 This is why much of the final book is written in the future tense: ‘Vos peres sortiront des tombeaux effroyables’ (‘Your fathers will rise from the hideous tombs’); they ‘[vous] reprocheront le present de voz vies’ (‘will upbraid you for your present lives’), and so on.23 The balance between (present) suffering and (future) victory is essential to, and articulated through, the text’s redefinition of epic and of its particular connection to the sister arts. The relationship is, I propose, constitutive of a process, repeated throughout, of placing future visions over present visuals. In this process, painting and architecture are essential modes. The oppositional nature and eschatological vision deployed in the Tragiques—a project we might describe as viewing a future that differs from a difficult present by systematically contesting that present—are articulated in large part via the text’s power to destroy, overwrite, or reconfigure existing artistic productions, whether real or invented. With the general hypothesis that D’Aubigné’s text behaves something like a graffiti artist or architectural vandal, I plot out the following course in the pages that follow. I look first at how D’Aubigné’s preface articulates an epic poetics that borrows its language and structural possibilities from architecture and that aims to appropriate for the Calvinist cause and by means of a kind of hollowing-out of forms of triumphal architecture. I next turn to the epic’s textualization of two Parisian buildings (the grandiose Palais de Justice and the adjoining Gothic Sainte-Chapelle) in such a way as to annex them from royal Catholic power. Following this, I focus on the way the epic reconfigures two other Parisian buildings (the Louvre and the Tuileries), both essential monuments in the evolution of French architecture and which D’Aubigné here again appropriates in order to assert future victory. In a final moment, my attention turns to D’Aubigné’s elaborate reworking of paintings by the Catholic painter Giorgio Vasari.

TEN SIO NS: INCULTUS O R T R O P B E A U? The verse preface at the beginning of the Tragiques delineates an aesthetics suitable for the Calvinist epic. It finds its means and modes in a dialogue with the sister arts. The very first lines— 22 Thomas Greene notes (in relation to God’s descent in the chambre dorée, to which I turn shortly) that ‘one could argue that [the poem] owes nothing at all to the Homeric–Virgilian convention’ (The Descent from Heaven, 258). On D’Aubigné’s debt to Lucan, see Quint, Epic and Empire, 190–9, and Bailbé, ‘Lucain et D’Aubigné’. 23 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 7:111, 7:116.

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—rework the celebrated beginning of Ovid’s Tristia, which commences ‘Vade, sed incultus, qualem decet exulis esse’ (‘Go, book so shabby, as befits the book of an exile’).25 Over Ovid’s appellation for his book—incultus—D’Aubigné inscribes his own: ‘tu n’es que trop beau.’ Several lines later, we read that D’Aubigné finds his book perhaps rather ‘mal en poinct’ (‘badly dressed’) for meeting kings, but he stands up for it: ‘Que la pauvreté de ta robbe | Ne te fasse honte, ni peur’ (‘May the poorness of your garb | Cause you neither shame, nor fear’).26 As one progresses through the preface, a definite tension emerges between the incultus and the trop beau, between, on the one hand, a lack of beauty, simplicity, or even roughness and, on the other hand, anxiety about over-ornamentation. The book is said, again via an echo of Ovid, to have a ‘couverture sans valeur’ (‘a cover with no value’) and a ‘trenche [qui] n’a or ne couleur’ (‘a binding with neither gold, nor colour’).27 D’Aubigné rails against the abuses of beauty, against the easy seduction that beauty can bring. He seemingly privileges the contentment of the soul over that of the eye: là où l’œil est contenté Des braves et somptueux vices, L’œil de l’ame y est tourmenté. (That which satisfies the eye via proud and sumptuous vices, torments the eye of the soul.)28

Instead, it is in the ‘monts ferrez, ces aspres lieux’ (‘iron mounts, these harsh places’) and which ‘ne sont pas si doux à nos yeux’ (‘are not so sweet for our eyes to see’), where ‘l’ame . . . trouve ses delices’ (‘the soul . . . finds its delights’).29 The fundamental question is really: where does Truth reside? D’Aubigné clearly answers that it is to be found in those spaces and upon those surfaces that seem, on first consideration, ugly and harsh. Truth, he says, ‘a coustume | D’accoucher en un lieu secret’ (‘is accustomed | to giving birth in a place that is secret’).30 It is in language borrowed from architecture that D’Aubigné argues his programmatic stance in more detail. More specifically, he articulates a set of oppositions between

24

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 1–3. Ovid, Tristia, ed. and trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, coll. Loeb Library, 1988), 1. 26 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 14–15. 27 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 31–2. 28 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 346–7. 29 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 343–5. 30 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 29–30. 25

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triumphal architecture of the kind associated with France’s kings and royal spaces, structures, and surfaces that might be described as hollowed or emptied out, as here: Dedans la grotte d’un rocher La pauvrette a voulu cercher [sic] Sa maison, moins belle et plus seure: Ses pertuis sont arcs triomphans, Où la fille du ciel asseure Un azile pour ses enfans. (Within the grotto of a rock Poor little Truth searched out Her home, less beautiful and safe. Its openings [pertuis] are triumphal arches, Where heaven’s daughter provides Asylum for her children.)31

The grotto, here given to Truth as its abode, is a peculiarly Calvinist space and structure. As Catharine Randall has argued, it is ‘the literal incarnation of the term sub-version, for it is beneath and [it] turns away from, established order’. She adds that it is ‘faithful to the apocalyptic vision of the world collapsing and crumbling as portrayed in Revelation’.32 Calvinist grottoes, such as those designed by Bernard Palissy, ‘secrete meaning within themselves’, privileging content over form.33 Palissy’s aesthetics—in his grottoes and in his writing—shares much with the tensions we are exploring in D’Aubigné: Palissy wrote that ‘j’aime mieux dire vérité en mon langage rustique, que mensonge en un langage rhetorique’ (‘I prefer to speak truth in my rustic tongue rather than lies in language enriched by rhetoric’).34 Not all grottoes are simple or plain, of course—the grotto of Wilhelm V of Bavaria contained paintings based on Ovid’s Metamophoses.35 Still, D’Aubigné’s textual grotto for Truth clearly seeks to borrow Palissy’s rustic (and Calvinist) simplicity, although, if the text itself is seen as a grotto, it surely has the spaciousness and exuberance of the Ovidian grotto just mentioned. D’Aubigné’s grotto—whose opening recalls a triumphal arch—is superimposed over more traditional triumphal arches: ‘Les triomphes des orgueilleux | N’entrent pas dedans ma logette’ (‘the triumphs of the proud | Do not enter into my little lodge’).36 D’Aubigné thus describes his own text in relation to a particularly Calvinist form of architecture,

31

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 121–6. Catharine Randall, Building Codes: The Aesthetics of Calvinism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 61. 33 Randall, Building Codes, 64. Palissy described his designs for a grotto for the Connétable de Montmorency in a text titled ‘Architecture et ordonnance de la grotte rustique de . . . Montmorency’ (‘Architecture and Design of the rustic grotto for . . . Montmorency’). See Bernard Palissy, Recepte veritable, ed. Keith Cameron (Geneva: Droz, 1988). 34 Palissy, Recepte veritable, 45. 35 Susan Maxwell, ‘The Pursuit of Art and Pleasure in the Secret Grotto of Wilhelm V of Bavaria’, Renaissance Quarterly, 61/2 (Summer 2008), 414–62. 36 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 106–7. Here the word triomphe refers to the triumphal festival as a whole, at which there would have been triumphal arches. 32

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further texturing that space as an appropriation of triumphal forms, a gesture that mimetically enacts the epic’s eschatological vision. The same opposition—between spaces of exile, in principle unsuited to construction, and an architectural structure—is repeated throughout the preface. The desert is ‘infertille’ (‘barren’) but also ‘bien-heureux’ (‘blessed’).37 This statement pertains moreover to the book itself: the first edition of the Tragiques did not carry the name of its author; the cover named the authorial agency merely via the acronym ‘L. B. D. D.,’ which stood for ‘le bouc du desert’ (‘the desert goat’). This blessed desert is, however, just like the grotto, the home and production site of Truth. The desert is a site for the reconciliation of opposites, for the writing of ‘la fertilité de France’ (‘France’s fertility’) over the ‘espineux chardons’ (‘thorny thistles’).38 This overwriting repeats the appropriation of the triumphal arch for the rustic grotto. The same constellation occurs yet again when D’Aubigné further qualifies the desert by asking a rhetorical question: Quel chasteau peut se bien loger? Quel roy si heureux qu’un berger? Quel sceptre vaut une houlette? Tyrans, vous craignez mes propos: J’auray la paix en ma logette, Vos palais seront sans repos. (What palace can be such a good home? What king is happier than a shepherd? What sceptre is worth a shepherd’s crook? Tyrants, you fear what I say— I will have peace in my little lodge And your palaces will be in turmoil.)39

These verses are, in one sense, praise for the rustic life.40 We should also see here a family resemblance with the contemporary blurring of boundaries between the pastoral and georgic modes.41 But more importantly, from our present perspective, D’Aubigné is putting into question the orthodoxy of heroic architecture, by claiming triumphal arches and castles for Calvinism. The gesture is repeated once again in the context of the apophétie (meaning a prediction made of an event that has already occurred) about the death of Henri IV, which D’Aubigné situates as the natural consequence of his abjuration of Protestantism on 25 July 1593. Writing,

37

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, v. 170. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 173–4. 39 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 181–6. 40 See Jacqueline Boucher, ‘Vrai ou faux amour de la campagne à la cour des derniers Valois?’, in Gabriel-André Pérouse and Hugues Neveux (eds), Essais sur la campagne à la Renaissance (Paris: La Société française des seiziémistes, 1991), 56–72; and Pierre Civil, ‘Le Thème de l’éloge de la vie rustique en Espagne au XVIe siècle’, in the same work, pp. 103–14. 41 See Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987); and Phillip John Usher and Isabelle Fernbach, ‘Introduction’, in Usher and Fernbach (eds), Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance, eds. Usher and Fernbach, 3–7. 38

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of course, after the fact and via a comparison with the biblical story of Samson’s suicide, D’Aubigné states how he sees ‘avec horreur’ (‘with horror’) the day when ‘au grand temple d’erreur’ (‘in the great temple of error’), the king will cause laughter and banish the ‘deux colomnes de la France’ (‘the two columns of France’)—that is, Piety and Justice.42 It is in an architectural space (the ‘temple of error’) and by a metaphor of architectural destruction (France’s ‘two columns’) that D’Aubigné evokes the king’s conversion to Catholicism. Although the biblical reference is the story of Samson— And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood . . . And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life43

—the architecture that D’Aubigné describes as he adds detail to his account of Henri IV’s abjuration is clearly that of the last Valois and first Bourbon kings. In opposition to Truth’s inhabitation of the grotto, Henri IV’s abjuration occurs in the following space: Dans ces cabinets lambrissez D’idoles de cour tapissez, N’est pas la verité connüe: La voix du Seigneur des seigneurs S’escrit sur la roche cornüe Qui est plus tendre que noz cœurs. (In these wood-panelled chambers Furnished with Court Idols, Truth is not known. The voice of the Lord of lords Writes itself upon the horned rock Which is more tender than our hearts.)44

These ‘cabinets lambrissez’ serve to name a place of hypocrisy and apostasy. As such, D’Aubigné is referencing a reality of sixteenth-century castles. When D’Aubigné compares ‘le logis de la peur’ (‘the house of fear’) with ‘les logis de la vérité’ (‘the houses of truth’), this is far from mere metaphor.45 The places of both fear and disguise, as well as those that house Truth, are related to actual types of architectural construction. It is not just that D’Aubigné speaks ill of triumphal arches or of ‘cabinets lambrissez’—rather, he appropriates them and establishes a kind of parallel architecture. I should like to suggest that this appropriative gesture echoes the very concrete relationship between Calvinists, images, and architecture in the late sixteenth century. In this respect, it should be recalled that France’s first Protestants had to worship where they could, often taking over Catholic churches 42 43 44 45

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 319–23. Judges 16:29–30. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 337–42. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 112, 120.

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or other buildings belonging to the community at large.46 The right to construct temples was in fact not even granted to French Calvinists until 1577—and, even then, various legal constraints remained. It is the Edict of Nantes in 1598 that marks the true beginning of temple construction—a short-lived story, of course, with the revocation of that edict being issued less than 100 years later in 1685.47 Although in such circumstances architectural design and its ability to manifest theology could be only a secondary concern for Calvinists, certain changes were regularly made to appropriated structures, and new structures generally shared certain elements, suggesting a nascent Calvinist aesthetics that sought to make material culture conform to and express theological design. At Montauban’s (formerly Catholic) Eglise Saint-Jacques, for example, not only were icons and images removed, but so was the church’s spire—thus eschewing the risk of human hubris—that is, from vertical rivalry with divine creation.48 The first purposefully built temples were marked by prominent pulpits (reflecting the importance of the Word), clear (as opposed to stained-)glass windows, and empty naves—an aesthetics marked both by simplicity and by the desire for a more direct and personal connection with God.49 Calvinist aesthetics, however, was much more than this. In stark contrast to the restricted development of Calvinist sacred architecture, much of the Renaissance renewal of France’s civil architecture—both in terms of actual structures and theory—was the work of members of the Reformed faith. Jacques I Androuët du Cerceau (d. 1585), a Calvinist, was appointed architect to François Ier’s sister, Marguerite d’Angoulême. He supervised construction for Henri II’s royal entrance into Orléans (1551) and published various works including a Livre des Grotesques (1564) wherein he clearly alluded to the religious troubles, as well as the Plus Excellents Bastiments de France (1576), a catalogue of France’s most important buildings.50 Salomon de Brosse (d. 1626), also a Calvinist, was responsible for the magnificent Luxembourg Palace (completed 1631). Still other 46 See Elie Benoist, Histoire de l’Edit de Nantes (Delft: Beman, 1693–5), ii. 544–5, and Philip Benedict, ‘The Dynamics of Protestant Militancy: France 1555–1563’, in Philip Benedict et al. (eds), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555–1585 (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999), 41. 47 See Andrew Spicer, ‘Qui est de Dieu oit la parole de Dieu: The Huguenots and their Temples’, in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 180–3. As Anthony Garvan has noted, the consequence of such a situation is that ‘the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and consequent destruction of Huguenot temples made French Protestant architecture the peculiar property of religious historians’ (Anthony Garvan, ‘The Protestant Plain Style before 1630’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 9/3 (October 1950), 5). 48 See Gaston Serr, Une église protestante au XVIe siècle: Montauban (Aix-en-Provence: La Pensée universitaire, 1958), 145–6. Serr refers to Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Histoire de monsieur de Thou, des choses arrivées de son temps mise en français par P. Du Ryer (Paris: A. Courbé, 1659), xxxii. 481. Further contemporary commentary on the events surrounding the Reformation’s impact in Montauban is provided by Théodore de Bèze, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1974), i. 215, i. 828, i. 844, i. 851. 49 See Hélène Guicharnaud, ‘Approche de l’architecture des temples protestants construits en France avant la Révocation’, Etudes théologiques et religieuses, 75/4 (2000), 477–504, and Bernard Reymond, L’Architecture religieuse des protestants (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1996). 50 See Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau, Livre de grotesques (Paris, 1566) [University of Pennsylvania Fine Arts Library Rare Book, 729 An26.2], and Le Premier Volume des plus excellents bastiments de

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examples could be adduced.51 D’Aubigné’s preface, then, I argue, engages both with the Protestant taking-over of existing buildings and with the Calvinist influence upon civil architecture. In these opening verses, the author clearly situates Truth within a struggle for control over representational spaces and artistic practices.

A COAT OF P AINT FOR THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE In the third book of his epic, D’Aubigné juxtaposes the corruption of terrestrial judges—the French who persecute Calvinists and the judges of the Spanish Inquisition52—alongside a prophecy of final judgement,53 resulting in a conclusion that adapts Psalm 58: ‘Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?’ or, as D’Aubigné might have read it in Clément Marot’s French rendering: ‘Est-ce iustice que vous faites?’ (‘Is this really justice that you are delivering?’).54 In verses inspired by Hesiod’s Works and Days and Ovid’s Metamorphoses and upon which Ronsard also drew in his ‘Hymne de la Justice’ (‘Hymn to Justice’),55 Justice, then, arrives in heaven, before God’s eyes, ‘en sueurs pantelante, | Meurtrie et deschiree’ (‘sweating and panting, | All bruised and ripped apart’).56 Her face ‘desolee’ (‘desolate, sad’), her hair ‘trempez’ (‘soaked’), she announces her arrival: ‘Vers toi j’ay mon recours, te voicy, ta Justice’ (‘Towards you, I come seeking refuge. Here you are, here is your Justice’) and explains that ‘Les humains ont meutry [ma] face reveree’ (‘Humans have bruised my venerable face’).57 As in Hesiod and Ovid, Justice is here accompanied by Piety, who is soon also followed by Peace, who also both complain about the treatment they received on earth. A plea is made to God for restoration: ‘Desploie ta pitié en ta justice et faicts | Trouver mal au meschant, au paisible la paix’ (‘Deploy your pity via your justice and make it so that | The evil-doer is punished and that the peaceful man finds peace’).58 The behaviour of France’s petty tyrants who seek to exercise their (in)justice in complete disrespect of God’s law are called ‘geants, foibles dieux de la terre’ (‘giants, weak earthly gods’), in an allusion to the classical Titanomachy, as described in Hesiod’s Theogony.59 God is not pleased by the reports and consequently accepts to visit Paris in order to address the situation: France. See also Françoise Boudon and Hélène Couzy, ‘Les Plus Excellents Bâtiments de France: Une anthologie de châteaux à la fin du XVIe siècle’, L’Information d’histoire de l’art (1974), 8–12, 103–14. 51 The only full study to date of Calvinist architects in Renaissance France is Randall, Building Codes. A wider perspective is provided by Paul Corby Finney (ed.), Seeing beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). 52 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:513–60. 53 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:676–80. 54 Judges 58:1. The French translation is from Clément Marot, Les Pseaumes mis en rime francoise (Geneva: Jean Bonnefoy, 1563), 109. 55 Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. and trans. Most, 197; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1:149–51; Ronsard, ‘Hymne de la Justice’ in Œuvres complètes, ed. Céard, Ménager, and Simonin, ii. 473–85. 56 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:34–45. 57 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:36, 3:37, 3:42, 3:46. 58 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:87–8. 59 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:89.

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Dieu se leve en courroux, et au travers des cieux, Perça, passa son chef à l’esclair de ses yeux, Les cieux se sont fendus (God stands up in anger and pushes his head To pierce through the heavens; at his eyes like lightening, The heavens split open)

—like Jupiter, his descent is accompanied by ‘tonnerre grondant’ (‘grumbling thunder’).60 This descent is not a fall: God descends, only the devil (or Icarus) falls.61 Here, God descends in order to enter the human realm—and Paris. More specifically, as the third book’s title tells us, he will visit the ‘chambre dorée’ (‘golden room’) of the Palais de Justice on Paris’s île de la Cité. To reveal divine order, D’Aubigné thus has God descend from heaven to observe human affairs in France’s capital. We must first look at how and to what end D’Aubigné textualizes the outside of the building; secondly, it will be necessary to turn to the complex description and reconfiguration of the building’s inside spaces. So, once God has descended from heaven, what he first sees as he arrives in Paris is described as follows: . . . un gros amas de tours qui eslevé se monstre Dedans l’air plus hautain, cet orgueil tout nouveau De pavillons dorez faisait un beau chasteau Plein de lustre et d’esclat, dont les cimes poinctues, Braves, contre le ciel mi-partissoient les nües: Sur ce premier object Dieu tient longuement l’œil, Pour de l’homme orgueilleux voir l’ouvrage et l’orgueil: Il void les vents esmeus, postes du grand Æole, Faire en virant gronder la giroüette folle. ( . . . a great pile of towers which, raised-up, stand High and arrogant in the air. This new hubris Of the goldened pavilions made for a fine castle Full of lustre, gleaming, and whose pointed heights, Courageous, half-split open the sky’s clouds. On this first object, God’s eye lingers, To see the work and pride of vainglorious man. God sees the moving winds, sent by great Aeolus, Make the crazy weathervane spin and groan.)62

These ekphrastic verses describe the Palais de Justice, which housed (and still houses) the capital’s law courts. By having God arrive here, D’Aubigné makes a connection between, on the one hand, the divine and vertical perspective of God in heaven and, on the other, the panoptic point of view associated with this central point of Paris. As D’Aubigné was writing, the Palais de Justice was not a royal residence. Rather, it constituted the legal and juridical centre of Parisian life, 60 61 62

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:139–41, 3:145. Dubois, ‘Dieu descend’, 90. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:166–74.

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situated in the midst of a highly frequented commercial district.63 For Jean Céard, the fact that D’Aubigné focuses not on individual judges, but on terrestrial Justice in general and on the place it inhabits, situates book 4 in the tradition of satire— one must, as Martial phrased it, lash out at the vice, not at the person: ‘Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis’, counsel that D’Aubigné echoes in his own preface: ‘Il faut hair distincement, | Non la personne mais le vice’ (‘One must clearly hate | Not the person, but the vice’).64 D’Aubigné’s emphasis on the small details of the Palais de Justice’s exterior decoration, and especially on the building’s loftiness and on the shiny and glittering nature of its surfaces, establishes a link between such details and human hubris, making the law courts into a kind of Tower of Babel.65 As well as an echo of Calvinist iconoclasm, according to which human works should not seek to compete with divine greatness, D’Aubigné’s description meshes with the negative associations that the Palais de Justice, as an institution, would have carried for Calvinists: it was here that, in 1523, the order was given to seize Calvin’s books; it was here, too, that two years later it was announced that all new French translations of the Bible were to be vetted before publication;66 and it was also here that, in 1559, Anne du Bourg would defend his Protestant beliefs before Henri II, resulting in his arrest and death by torture.67 A certain number of details in D’Aubigné’s description force the reader to focus on the buildings described. The ‘gros amas de tours’ (‘great pile of towers’), the ‘cimes poinctues’ (‘pointed heights’) and the ‘giroüette folle’ (‘crazy weathervane’) suggest that the verses relate not merely to the Palais de Justice itself (the seat of temporal power), but also to the adjoining Gothic structure that is the Sainte-Chapelle (the seat of divine power), built under St Louis between 1242 and 1248, probably by Pierre de Montreuil. The two structures are indeed of a piece, and their material connection is central to D’Aubigné’s depiction, as is made clear slightly further on: . . . Dieu trouva l’estoffe et les durs fondements Et la pierre commune à ces fiers bastiments D’os, de testes de morts; au mortier execrable Les cendres des bruslez avoient servi de sable,

63

John H. Shennan, The Parlement of Paris (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), 101. Jean Céard, ‘Le Style satirique dans les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné’, in Marie-Thérèse JonesDavies (ed.), La Satire au temps de la Renaissance (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1986), 187–201; for the quotation from Martial (Epigrams X, 33:10), see p. 199. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, préface, vv. 382–3. 65 See Frank Lestringant’s note to verse 3:166. The Tower of Babel, of course, arose when the inhabitants of the famed city decided to ‘build . . . a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven’ (Genesis 11:4). God then descended from heaven to see ‘the city and the tower, which the children of men builded’ (Genesis 11:5). To correct human presumption and thwart such constructions, God confounded human languages to hinder communication. 66 Shennan, The Parlement of Paris, 94–5. 67 For a recent account of Anne du Bourg’s trial, see Nikki Shepardson, Burning Zeal: The Rhetoric of Martyrdom and the Protestant Community in Reformation France, 1520–1570 (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2007), chs 2 and 3. See also my review in Sixteenth Century Journal, 39/4 (Winter 2008), 1183–4. The role of the Paris Parlement during the Wars of Religion is, of course, much more complicated. See, e.g., Phillip John Usher, ‘Courtroom Drama during the Wars of Religion: Robert Garnier and the Paris Parlement’, in Michael Meere (ed.), New Approaches to French Renaissance Drama (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, forthcoming). 64

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Epic Arts in Renaissance France L’eau qui les destrempoit estoit du sang versé, La chaux vive dont fut l’edifice enlacé Qui blanchit ces tombeaux et les salles si belles, C’est le meslange de noz tristes moëlles. ( . . . God found the canvas and the hard foundations And the stone shared by these proud buildings Made of bones and skulls; in the abject mortar The ashes of burned bodies had been used instead of sand, The mixed-in water was spilt blood. The bright limestone which enlaced the building, Which whitewashes the tombs and the most fine rooms, Is a mixture made from the marrow of our sad bones.)68

This passage is, in one sense, a nightmarish vision where non-referential grotesque details serve to elicit an emotional reaction from the reader.69 It has been suggested that it reveals a ‘poet’s sensibility which finds pleasure in the revolting and the painful, something in his nature that is almost sadistic’.70 The description here is indeed ‘remarkable for its use of horror and the macabre’. 71 And it is true, too, that the idea of tyrants who ‘batissent du sang des sujets’ (‘build with the blood of their subjects’) was in circulation within the writings of contemporary authors like Jean Bodin.72 Moreover, we might see an allusion here to the rather macabre tastes of Catholic royalty: Henri III possessed a rosary made of skull-shaped beads; his wife, Louise de Lorraine, had the walls of her chamber at the Castle of Chenonceau decorated with bones,73 an aesthetic taken up by certain contemporary painters and for an idea of which one might turn to a portrait of Erasmus on his deathbed, attributed to Hans Baldung Grien.74 For sure, the meaning of these verses surely does relate to the hypocrisy of the Parliament’s judges, whose seat of power is metamorphosed into a grotesque torture chamber, and also to the macabre aesthetics preferred by Henri III and the French court, but the allusion to the ‘durs fondements’ (‘hard foundations’) and the ‘pierre commune’ (‘shared stone’) which are made of ‘os’ (‘bones’) and ‘testes de morts’ (‘skulls’) held together with ‘sang versé’ (‘spilt blood’) is simultaneously and significantly, I would argue, a Calvinist re-presentation of the Sainte-Chapelle. D’Aubigné’s grotesque mortar and blood replace those listed in the Bible for the Tower of Babel, where we read that the 68 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:179–86. I have added a comma in line 3:381, following Frank Lestringant’s edition. 69 See Frank Lestringant’s note to vv. 3:184–5. See also Pot, ‘Les Tableaux des Tragiques’, 117. 70 Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 270. 71 Keith Cameron, Agrippa D’Aubigné (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977), 53. 72 Jean Bodin, La République, ed. Christiane Frémont, Marie-Dominique Couzinet, and Henri Rochais (Paris: Fayard, 1986), vi. 100. Quoted by Fanlo in D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 442. 73 Dubois, ‘Dieu descend’, 107. 74 Christian Müller, ‘A Drawing of Erasmus on his Deathbed Attributed to Hans Baldung Grien’, Burlington Magazine, 132/1044 (March 1990), 187–94. Another useful article about this artist and his aesthetics is Margaret A. Sullivan, ‘The Witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien’, Renaissance Quarterly, 53/2 (Summer 2000), 333–401. Sullivan’s article is useful in that the aesthetics of Baldung’s witches owes less to actual witch trials than to poetry and the aesthetic expectations of a Humanist audience.

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inhabitants of the city ‘had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar’.75 The Sainte-Chapelle, of course, was founded by St Louis with the express purpose of housing relics recently acquired from the Boukoleon palace in Constantinople, specifically Christ’s Crown of Thorns (of which there was already one at SaintDenis!) and a piece of the Holy Cross.76 The bones and blood, then, relate not only to the Protestants judged and condemned in the Palais de Justice proper, but also to the earlier relics, metonymies of Christ’s body, for and literally upon which the Sainte-Chapelle itself was built. The Sainte-Chapelle and the Palais de Justice are textualized by D’Aubigné as one structure, to evoke for the reader how God’s divine plan will interpret such structures at the end of time, how true justice will one day replace such vainglory and hypocrisy. To continue exploring D’Aubigné’s account of God’s visit to the Palais de Justice, we must now enter inside. For a first glimpse of the inside spaces as they would have been visible to those sixteenth-century Parisians who, for one reason or another, found themselves inside the building, it is useful to turn first to François de Belleforest’s Catholic Cosmographie universelle (1575).77 What D’Aubigné refers to as the ‘chambre doreee | De justice jadis, d’or maintenant paree’ (‘the room formerly gilded | With Justice, now decorated in gold’),78 Belleforest calls simply one of the finest rooms in all of Europe, ‘veu la grandeur [de cette salle], & la magnificence de ses ouuertures’ (‘because of the great size [of this room] and because of the magnificence of its entrances’). According to Belleforest, the ‘grande Chambre’ was ‘toute faite de lambris taillé en menuiserie a l’antique, releué de fin or sur azur’ (‘fully made of panelling carved in the Ancient style, finished with fine gold over an azure background’). The French king, as he metes out justice in this room, becomes ‘vne image de nostre seigneur Iesu Christ crucifié’ (‘an image of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified’).79 Belleforest also reminds us of the inscriptions to be seen in the room, such as one based on Jeremiah 22:3–4 and which read: ‘Facite iudicium, & iustitiam’ (‘Execute ye judgment and righteousness’). The quote from Jeremiah continues ‘quod si non audieritis verba haec in memet ipso iuravi dicit Dominus quia in solitudinem erit domus haec’ (‘But if ye will not hear these words, I swear by myself, saith the lord, that this house shall become a desolation’).80 According to Belleforest, then, the chambre dorée, confirmed to be richly decorated and indeed ‘golden’, also contained urgent imperatives, encouraging the judges to exercise justice as the Bible instructs. For D’Aubigné, this place would be something quite different—certainly not a house of justice. It is as if D’Aubigné takes up

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Genesis 11:3. See François de Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle de tout le monde (Paris: Michel Sonnius, 1575), i. 231, and Sophie de Sède, La Sainte-Chapelle et la politique de la fin des temps (Paris: Julliard, 1972), 18. 77 Indeed, as Tom Conley has noted, Belleforest’s text in general underscores the connection between French rule and the Catholic Church. See Tom Conley, The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 203. 78 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:233–5. 79 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 232. 80 Jeremiah 22:5. 76

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the quotation from the book of Jeremiah, or at least the word solitudinem (‘desolation, ruin’), for it is indeed the building’s destruction that he will envision.81 Before looking at what kind of solitudo D’Aubigné’s text will venture, it is necessary to elucidate the fact that, in Belleforest’s Cosmographie universelle, the Palais de Justice was, in a sense, already an epic space. Inside the palace were to be found a collection of blue and gold statues of French kings, from King Pharamond up to France’s current monarch.82 Belleforest mentions these statues, which he refers to as ‘les effigies tirees au vif ’ (‘life-life effigies’) of all of the ‘Roys qui ont regné en France, depuis que les Françoys se feirent seigneurs des Gaules’ (‘kings who have reigned in France since the French became lords of the Gauls’).83 However, instead of including textual descriptions or woodcuts of the statues, Belleforest opts for another solution: he includes quotations about each of the represented kings borrowed from book 4 of Ronsard’s Franciade. Thus, for King Pharamond, Belleforest includes the following verses from Ronsard’s epic: c’est le Roy Pharamont Qui, des Gaulois abaissant un peu l’ire Et le desir conceu sous Marcomire D’assujetir les terres et les rois, Adoucira son peuple par les loix . . . (It is King Pharamond. Gently taming the wrath of the Gauls And the desire conceived under Marcomer To dominate over lands and kings, He will assuage his people with laws . . . ).84

The reader of Belleforest’s Cosmographie universelle is thus ushered into the Palais de Justice in order to see not a statue of Pharamond, but an epic description of Pharamond, drawn from the Franciade. Belleforest will also include Ronsard’s portraits of many other kings, including Chlodio,85 Merovech,86 Childeric,87 Clovis,88 Amalaric,89 Chilperic,90 etc. Thus, Belleforest’s appropriation of Ronsard’s text had already made the Palais de Justice an epic space. Whether or not such was the author’s intention, D’Aubigné’s text can and should be read against Belleforest’s celebratory use of Ronsard. D’Aubigné’s textualization of the inside of the Palais de Justice evokes not beautiful decoration, nor the statues of French kings—and certainly not justice. Instead, D’Aubigné’s God finds Injustice and a 81 The word solitudo, one meaning of which is obviously solitude, here refers to a state of desertion or deprivation—hence, in this context: ruin or desolation. 82 Shennan, The Parlement of Paris, 103–4. 83 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 232. 84 Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:989–1000. 85 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 233; Ronsard, La Franciade 4:1001–31. 86 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 233–34; Ronsard, La Franciade 4:1059–82. 87 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 234; Ronsard, La Franciade 4:1120–42. 88 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 235; Ronsard, La Franciade 4:1143–56, 4:1219–28. 89 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 236; Ronsard, La Franciade 4:301–8. 90 Belleforest, La Cosmographie universelle, i. 237; Ronsard, La Franciade, 4:1321–36, 4:1385–1402.

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whole orchestra of vices, provoking the poet into imagining what the return of Justice might resemble. D’Aubigné compares God’s descent—and what he finds on arrival—to Jupiter’s descent, as recounted in Ovid,91 after which he finds Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, who serves him a meal of human flesh as a test of his omniscience—as comeuppance, he is turned into a wolf.92 Similarly, D’Aubigné’s Christian God finds in the Palais de Justice a ‘gent cannibale’ (‘race of cannibals’), which ‘par un trou en la peau | Succe, sans escorcher, le sang de son troupeau’ (‘through a hole in the skin | Sucks, without even flaying, the blood of its flock’)— these are France’s justice-makers (justiciers) who have turned justice on its head— ‘aux meutriers si benins, des benins les meutriers’ (‘to the murderers so gentle, of the gentle the murderers’).93 Gone is the glory. Gone the royal statues. Gone, too, if we take into account Belleforest’s text, the connection between those statues and Ronsard’s Catholic epic. The world is, as throughout the Tragiques, turned on its head.94 Many subsequent verses are given to describing the various vices that inhabit the palace. The enumeration is woven through with connections to textual and pictorial depictions of the vices shared with other authors. Thus, D’Aubigné’s depiction of Vanity—shown with ‘Ses cheveux affricquains’ (‘African hair’) and ‘chausses en valize’ (‘baggy pants’), rigged out with so many jewels and so much make-up that ‘tout y sent la putain’ (‘all smacks of the whore’)95—echoes allegorical representations of both Vanity, as one might see in contemporary engravings,96 and of contemporary court dress, also echoed in Artus Thomas’s l’Isle des 91 In matter of fact, critics disagree on how much D’Aubigné draws on Ovid as opposed to other accounts of the myth—after all, D’Aubigné, in alluding to the Lycaon story, talks of how ‘les poëtes ont feint que . . . ’ (‘poets have fabricated how . . . ’) (D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:187)—i.e. poëtes, in the plural, invite the reader to turn not just to Ovid’s account of Lycaon, but also to Hesiod’s (Astronomia 4) and Hyginus’ (Fabula 176). Where Jean-Raymond Fanlo notes that ‘le modèle ovidien est . . . explicitement convoqué par une claire allusion’ (‘the Ovidian model is . . . explicitly summoned by an obvious allusion’) (Jean-Raymond Fanlo, Tracés, ruptures, la composition instable des Tragiques (Paris: Champion, 1990), 142), Jean-Claude Ternaux is more conservative, suggesting that ‘le poète se borne à mentionner une fable racontée par les auteurs païens, parmi lesquels Ovide’ (‘the poet limits himself to mentioning a story told by Pagan authors, of which Ovid is just one’) and even suggests that D’Aubigné’s account is closer to Hyginus’ version (Jean-Claude Ternaux, ‘Agrippa D’Aubigné et Ovide: La Fable de Lycaon’, in Emmanuel Bury (ed.), Lectures d’Ovide (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), 289). As Ternaux reminds us, D’Aubigné may also have been looking at an anthology of mythology, such as Natale Conti’s. Ternaux’s more general comment on D’Aubigné’s relationship to Ovid delineates their relationship: ‘A Ovide il revient . . . de fournir des images qui, détournées de leur sens premier, servent d’illustration à la geste huguenote’ (‘Ovid’s role is . . . that of supplying images which, distorted from their original meaning, serve to illustrate Huguenot actions’) (p. 292). To the Renaissance reader, the comparison with Lycaon might well have brought with it not just the narratives of Ovid, Hesiod, or Hyginus, but also the memory of contemporary illustrated editions of this fabula. Lycaon is just one of various myths of devouring that D’Aubigné reworks. See Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, La Pensée religieuse d’Agrippa D’Aubigné et son expression (Paris: Champion, 2004), 399. 92 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1:163 ff. See also André Baïche, ‘Ovide chez A. D’Aubigné’, Cahiers de l’Europe classique et néolatine, 1 (1981), 79–122. 93 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:197, 3:199–200, 3:228. 94 See Jean Céard, ‘Le Thème du “monde à l’envers” dans l’œuvre d’Agrippa D’Aubigné’ in Jean Lafond and Augustin Redondo (eds), L’Image du monde renversé et ses représentations littéraires et paralittéraires de la fin du XVIe siècle au milieu du XVIIe (Paris: Vrin, 1979), 117–27. 95 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:398–403. 96 See, e.g., Sara F. Matthews Grieco, Ange ou diablesse, la représentation de la femme au XVIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1991), 268.

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Hermaphrodites and in the chapters that discuss fashion in D’Aubigné’s Avantures du Baron de Faeneste.97 The collection of personified vices that D’Aubigné depicts inside the palais echoes the Gothic details on the outside of the Sainte-Chapelle. To counteract Injustice’s inhabiting of the Palais de Justice, D’Aubigné inserts into the chambre dorée a painting of Themis, the goddess who embodies divine, as opposed to human, law. D’Aubigné says that the painting, ‘une marque certaine’ (‘a certain mark’), is important because it reminds how ‘l’innocent n’i perdra point sa peine’ (‘the innocent will not suffer in vain’). The painting hangs like the sword of Damocles ‘sur voz chefs’ (‘over your heads’) within the chamber’s ‘voute effacee’ (‘erased vault’)—the painting is invisible, or rather, because its ‘traicts par dessus d’autres traicts [sont] desguisez’ (‘brushstrokes [are] disguised beneath other brushstrokes’), it is visible only ‘aux esprits advisez’ (‘to open minds’).98 In other words, only members of the Reformed faith can see Themis. Whereas Catholics will continue to see the architectural structure as it is in the concrete reality of early modern France, Protestants will be able to see an invisible painting attached to the structure’s surface by the poet. The painting is as follows. First of all, there is ‘la sage Themis’ (‘wise Themis’), the ‘vierge au teinct net’ (‘clear-complexioned virgin’); she advances with ‘un triste et froid, non un rude maintien’) (‘a composure that is sad and cold, not severe’).99 Around and behind her are ancient judges, beginning with figures from the Old Testament, especially Moses, who brought God’s Ten Commandments written on stone tablets to his followers. Next, there are judges of Ancient Greece (Artistides, Agelisas of Sparta, and so on) and of Ancient Rome, including ‘La race des Catons, de justice l’escolle’ (‘The race of Catos, the school of justice’).100 After this in the picture come French rulers, most significantly Charlemagne, who supposedly invented the Salic law, and then various modern rulers. After describing those who accompany Themis, called a ‘bande’ (a company) and an ‘escorte’ (convoy),101 D’Aubigné returns to add extra details to the portrait of Themis in her chariot: Rien n’arreste les pas de la blanche Themis: Son chariot vaincœur effroyable et superbe Ne foulle en cheminant ni le pavé ni l’herbe. (Nothing slows the steps of white Themis. Her vanquishing chariot, frightening and magnificent Treads neither, as it rolls along, on the road, nor on the grass.)

Instead, Themis in her chariot ‘roulle sur les corps’ (‘rolls over the bodies’) and crushes unfaithful Ubris’ aborted monsters.102 D’Aubigné adds one final touch, by

97 Jean-Raymond Fanlo points to the connection with Du Cerceau’s image (D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 455, n. 396). Keith Cameron points to the connection with court dress (Cameron, Agrippa D’Aubigné, 54). 98 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:681–8. 99 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:695–9. 100 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:753. 101 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:845, 4:885. 102 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:888–92.

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dressing Themis with the traditional attributes of Justice: she carries a ‘balance’ (‘scales’), a ‘bandeau’ (‘blindfold’), and a ‘glaive’ (‘broadsword’).103 Themis (¨Ø), according to Hesiod, is one of the daughters of Gaia and Uranus, to whom he refers to as ‘¨Ø ÆNÅ’ (venerated Themis), placed between Poseidon, the earth-holder, the earth-shaker, and quick-glancing Aphrodite.104 She is the second wife of Zeus and, with him, parent of the Horae (Seasons), Eumonia (Lawfulness), as well as Dike (Justice), and Eirene (Peace).105 Her name derives from a Greek noun (ŁØ), which could be used to speak of someone’s right or prerogative—thus the goddess Themis is, so to speak, the ‘goddess of that which is right’.106 Themis stands for order in opposition to original disorder.107 The announcement of Themis’s future arrival is part of the Tragiques’ larger articulation of a future moment of vengeance, when Catholics will be prosecuted and Protestants saved: ‘apparent defeat in this world is the sign of victory in the next’, such that the Calvinist is, in a sense, ‘in a no-lose situation’.108 As has been noted: ‘[each] of the first six books of Les Tragiques concludes by calling for the Deed that will justify history, the Deed that is accomplished at the end of the seventh book. The episode of God’s descent is simply a rehearsal of it.’109 As André Tournon has shown, the vision of Themis is at once inside and outside of Time, at once political and eschatological.110 The sometimes confused time stamps throughout the chambre dorée point to ‘cette fin des temps toujours-déjà-là’ (‘this end of time always already here’).111 D’Aubigné’s vision of Themis, binding justice and time tightly together, is, moreover, intimately connected with the actual Palais de Justice, because upon the grande chambre’s clock face is the following inscription: ‘sacra themis mores ut pendula dirigit horas’ (‘Divine Justice guides how we act, just as this dial keeps track of the hours’).112 Thus, D’Aubigné’s Themis is essentially superimposed over this clock face. We should also note that D’Aubigné is keen to remind the reader that he is viewing a painting of Themis and her convoy. In other words, he never lets the reader forget that the verses that evoke Themis do so as if the reader were looking at a real painting. The poet indeed never loses sight of the painterly nature

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104 Hesiod, Theogony, 15–17. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:908–12. Hesiod, Theogony, 132. 106 See Harm Vos, ¨Ø (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1956), part one. 107 See Aldo Lo Schiavo, Themis e la Sapienza dell’ordine cosmico (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1997). On the goddess Themis, see Jean Rudhardt, Thémis et les Hôrai (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 43–57, as well as the older but useful study: Rudolf Hirzel, Themis, Dike und Verwandtes; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rechtsidee bei den Griechen (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1907). A Jungian reading of Themis is provided by Pamela Donleavy and Ann Shearer, From Ancient Myth to Modern Healing: Themis: Goddess of HeartSoul, Justice, and Redemption (New York: Routledge, 2008). 108 Quint, Epic and Empire, 188. 109 Greene, The Descent from Heaven, 292. 110 André Tournon, ‘La Prophétie palimpseste’ in Fragonard and Lazard (eds), Les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné, 122. 111 Tournon, ‘La Prophétie palimpseste,’ 123. 112 Germain Brice, Description de la ville de Paris (1752), ed. Pierre Codet (Geneva: Droz, 1971), 296. This inscription is also recorded in John William Mollett, An Illustrated Dictionary of Words Used in Art and Archaeology (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1883), 309. 105

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of the presentation, using on various occasions the verb peindre—‘là sont peintes les mains’ (‘hands are painted here’), ‘Cyrus est peinct au vif ’ (‘Cyrus [the Great]’s likeness is painted’), and so on—all this carried out by ‘le vieil peintre et prophete’ (‘the ancient painter and prophet’).113 This ekphrastic depiction of an imagined and wholly non-existent painting is strikingly similar to actual practices of dispute in Renaissance Paris. In early modern France, Calvinists, as already mentioned, lacked space for worship and surfaces for self-expression. D’Aubigné’s taking-over of a public building by means of text finds an equivalent in a set of real events recounted by several authors. One story relates to opposition to Henri III. Henri III, then, had become King of Poland on 16 May 1573, then King of France on 30 May 1574. As his official emblem reminds us, he also longed for a third crown: ‘Manet ultima caelo’ (‘The last [crown] waits for me in heaven’). The Catholic Ligue, however, thought he should receive that third crown rather more quickly than the king planned.114 This story was played out—somewhat like D’Aubigné’s writing over of the inside of the palais—between the clock on the Tour de l’Horloge, built in the fourteenth century but given its final form only in the late sixteenth century, and the Catholic Ligue.115 The new clock face (Figure 4.1), realized by the sculptor Germain Pilon, was completed on 18 November 1585.116 Above the clock was the following inscription: ‘Qui dedit ante duas, triplicem dabit ille Coronom’ (‘Who gave two crowns already will give a third’). According to the chronicler Pierre de l’Estoile (1546–1611), members of the Catholic Ligue, on 20 November, responded with the following quip: ‘Qui dedit ante duas, unam abstulit, altera nutat, | Tertia tonsoris est facienda manu’ (‘Who gave you the first two crowns has taken one away; the second one is tottering; | The third will be given to you by the hand of the barber’).117 The reason for the Ligue’s anger at Henri III had to do with his (comparative) leniency towards members of the Reformed faith: if they did not respect the royal edicts regarding the limits and restrictions on the exercise of their faith, their property could be seized, but—and this is the leniency that annoyed the Ligue—they could not be killed. As Pierre de l’Estoile noted: ‘Ce fut une justice qui n’agréa guère à

113

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 3:723, 3:745, 3:821. Various accounts of this story exist. See, e.g., Aubry du Mouriez, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la République (London: La Compagnie, 1754), i, pp. xiii–iv. On Henri III and the Catholic Ligue, see Berthold Zellar, Henri III, les débuts de la ligue, 1574–1578 (Paris: Hachette, 1887), and Paul Robiquet, Paris et la Ligue sous le règne de Henri III (Paris: Hachette, 1886). 115 On the history of the Tour de l’Horloge, see Raymond Colas, Du palais du roi au palais de justice: l’histoire du Palais de la Cité (360–1439) (n.p.: V. Pitts, 1999 (New Haven, CT: SPBS)), 191–2. 116 On Germain Pilon, see Geneviève Bresc-Bautier (ed.), Germain Pilon et les sculpteurs franç ais de la Renaissance (Paris: Documentation franç aise, 1993); Charles Terrasse, Germain Pilon (Biographie critique illustrée de vingt-quatre reproductions hors texte) (Paris: H. Laurens, 1930); Jean Babelon, Germain Pilon (Paris: Les Beaux-Arts, 1927). The clock face was extensively restored in 2012. 117 Pierre De l’Estoile, Journal de l’Estoile pour le règne de Henri III, ed. Louis-Raymond Lefèvre (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), 392–93. See also Gilbert Schrenck, ‘L’Image du prince dans le Journal du règne de Henri III de P. de L’Estoile, ou l’enjeu d’une écriture’, in Noémi Hepp and Madeleine Bertaud (eds), L’Image du souverain dans les Lettres françaises (Paris: Klincksieck, 1985), 15–25. 114

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Figure 4.1. Germain Pilon, clock realized for the Palais de Justice Tour de l’horloge. From author’s copy of Camille Portal, Les Merveilles de l’horlogerie (Paris: Hachette, 1888), 75. (# Phillip John Usher.)

ceux de la Ligue’ (‘This justice did not much please the members of the Ligue’).118 The battle between ultra-Catholic members of the Ligue and Henri III was thus partly mediated by textual inscriptions upon the Palais de Justice’s clock face, just as D’Aubigné would battle for a Calvinist vision of the future by describing in verse a vision of Themis. From this perspective, not only does D’Aubigné appropriate a Catholic and royal architecture structure for expressing Calvinist Truth, but his means also resemble those of his enemy.

T HE D EVIL’ S D E S I GN S O N THE LO UV RE Two books further into the epic, God returns to heaven, compared to a king having ‘fai[t] le tour de son royaume entier’ (‘toured his entire kingdom’), as did Charles IX in 1564–6, and now returning to ‘son Paris ordinaire’ (‘his regular Paris’).119 A dialogue ensues between God and Satan, during which Satan 118

De l’Estoile, Journal, 393. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:7, 5:13. On Charles IX’s tour of France, see also 1:3–80. Charles IX’s tour has attracted much critical interest, most importantly: Victor Ernest Graham and 119

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challenges God, suggesting that Protestant resolve would be weakened if they were less persecuted: ‘Je sais bien | Qu’à un vivre facheux la mort est moins que rien’ (‘I know well | That death is worth less than nothing when life is so ghastly’), essentially stating that God, responsible for giving Protestants no present to speak of and only hope for the future, has made death a simple, even pleasing option.120 God accepts the challenge and this time it is Satan’s turn to descend to Paris. He arrives in Paris in a flash above the river Seine and he finds himself before a specific architectural structure, which D’Aubigné describes as follows: Ce que premier il trouve à son advenement Fut le preparatif du brave bastiment Que desseignoit pour lors la peste florentine. De dix mille maisons il voüa la ruine Pour estoffe au dessein: le serpent captieux Entra dans cette royne et, pour y entrer mieux, Fit un corps aeré de colomnes parfaictes, De pavillons hautains, de folles giroüettes, De domes accomplis, d’escaliers sans noyaux, Fenestrages dorez, pilasters, et portaux, Des salles, cabinets, des chambres, galeries, En fin d’un tel project que sont les Thuileries. (What he first saw on his arrival Were the foundations [ preparatif ] of that lofty building, Which at that time the Pest of Florence was designing. Ten thousand houses were reduced to rubble To provide the blank canvas. The crafty snake Entered into this queen and, to better enter, He made a body airy with perfect columns, Haughty pavilions, mad weathervanes, Full domes, spindle-less staircases, Goldened windows, pilasters, galleries, In a word—that project known as the Tuileries.)121

The Pest of Florence, of course, is Catherine de Médicis and the lofty building that she is busy designing is the Tuileries palace, which stood close to the Louvre from the late sixteenth century until it was burned down during, and was completely razed following, the Paris Commune in 1871.122 Catherine de Médicis commissioned the Tuileries from architect Philibert De l’Orme following the death

W. McAllister Johnson, The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and Catherine de Medici (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), and Jean Boutier, Alain Dewerpe, and Daniel Nordman, Un Tour de France royal: Le Voyage de Charles IX, 1564–1566 (Paris: Aubier, 1984). 120 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:111–12. 121 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:193–204. 122 The standard history of the construction of the Tuileries is recounted in: Adolphe Berty, Topographie historique du vieux Paris: Région du Louvre et des Tuileries (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1868), 2:15–37. An updated summary is provided by Pérouse de Montclos, Philibert De l’Orme, architecte du roi, 233–7.

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of her husband Henri II.123 Construction began in 1566, with a very young Charles IX on the throne. The Queen Mother would never actually live in the new palace: forewarned of future trouble (her own death) by her astrologer, she commissioned Jean Bullant to construct her a different residence, later known as the Hôtel de Soissons and situated near the Eglise Saint-Eustache but now destroyed.124 Although the Tuileries stood for Catherine de Médicis as a monument to an aborted future, she would continue to be a regular presence there, organizing many festivals which were ‘an integral part of her political policy’.125 D’Aubigné’s architectural description is once again concerned with a profusion of concrete details, serving both to help the reader identify the building (the mass of pilasters, the celebrated staircase, and so on) and to read it morally (the ‘haughty’ pavilions, the ‘crazy’ weathervane).126 Just as the Palais de Justice’s structure is weakened in D’Aubigné’s text by the foundations built from blood and bone marrow, so here the Tuileries are fragile as a result of having been hollowed out (‘aeré’). Keith Cameron notes that Satan ‘enter[s] the body of Catherine de Médicis’.127 More than this, however, the devil enters into her building, figured as her second body.128 If we turn to the Premier tome de l’Architecture (1567), an architectural treatise written by Philibert De l’Orme and which provides contemporary commentary on the Tuileries’ construction, it is easy to appreciate the concreteness of the association between Catherine de Médicis and her building. The ‘perfect columns’ to which D’Aubigné alludes are in fact of a very precise kind, as Philibert De l’Orme explains—they are of the Ionic order, a choice predicated on the gender of his patron (Figures 4.2 and 4.3):

123 Randall, Building Codes, argues that Philibert De l’Orme was, if not a Calvinist, someone with a ‘strongly evangelical stance and perhaps Calvinist sympathies’ (p. 80). Such Calvinist sympathies, according to Randall, are detectable in his ‘stylistic idiosyncrasies’, which compose ‘the architectural vocabulary of later Calvinist architects’ (p. 83), his use (like Calvin) of the biblical text as a ‘textual template for his building activity in general’ (p. 84), in his creation of a Protestant architectural genealogy (p. 84), etc. No direct evidence exists, however, to support claims that De l’Orme was anything but a Catholic—he was, after all, a priest (diocese of Lyons) and later canon (Potié, Philibert De l’Orme, 23). As Andrew Spicer notes, in his review of Randall’s book, ‘much of [her] evidence would seem to be circumstantial, and there are problems in equating the terms “evangelical” with “crypto-” or “proto-” Calvinist’ (Catholic Historical Review, 89/1 (2003), 106). I do not propose to resolve this debate here, for my emphasis here is not on how De l’Orme (probably did not) infuse his architecture with theology, but on how D’Aubigné appropriated those same structures. 124 The Tuileries were situated in the parish of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. 125 Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 99. 126 Details of the celebrated coreless staircase have been collected and analysed in Anthony Blunt, Philibert De l’Orme (London: A. Zwemmer, 1958), and Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, ‘La Vis de Saint-Gilles et l’escalier suspendu dans l’architecture française’, in L’Escalier dans l’architecture de la Renaissance: Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 22 au 26 mai 1979 (Paris: Picard, 1985), especially 90–1. See also Potié, Philibert De l’Orme, 141–6. 127 Cameron, Agrippa D’Aubigné, 59. 128 Following Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), we might choose to see the Tuileries as Catherine de Médicis’s symbolic body. See also P. Paul Archambault, ‘The Analogy of the Body in Renaissance Political Literature’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et de Renaissance, 29 (1967), 21–58.

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Epic Arts in Renaissance France Figure 4.2. Capital of Ionic column. Philibert De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture (1576), fo. 170v. (With kind permission of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.)

I’ay voulu accomoder le present ordre à sondit Palays pour autant qu’il n’est gueres vsité, & que encores peu de personnes l’ont mis en oeuure aux bestiments auec colonnes . . . L’autre raison pourquoy i’ay voulu figurer & naturellement representer ledict ordre Ionique au Palais de la maiesté de la Royne, c’est pour autant qu’il est femenin, & a esté inuenté apres les proportions & ornements des dames & déesses . . . (I wanted to apply the present order to her aforementioned Palace because this order is only rarely used and because until now only a few people have incorporated it into buildings with columns . . . The other reason why I wanted to fashion and depict the said Ionic order on the Palace of her Majesty the Queen is because it is feminine and was invented according to the proportions and ornaments of ladies and goddesses . . . )129

The Ionic order was thus chosen for two reasons: because of its apparent rarity and because it is the female order and thus appropriate for the palace of this female sponsor. The assertion that the Ionic is the female order is, of course, traditional. De l’Orme himself explains how the name arose from the order’s proportions, based on the female body.130 Doing so, De l’Orme paraphrases Vitruvius: just as Jupiter’s temple on Mount Olympus was constructed with (male) Corinthian columns, so Ctesiphon built Diana’s temple at Ephesus using (female) Ionic columns.131 ‘Qui en demandera les raisons, il les trouuera dedans ledict Vitruue’ (‘Whoever wishes to know the reasons for this will find them in Vitruvius’), he concludes.132 By choosing the Ionic order, De l’Orme renews the traditional association between this order and the proportions of the female body by

129 130 131 132

Philibert De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture (Paris: F. Morel, 1567), fo. 155v. De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fo. 155r. De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fos 155v–156r. De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fo. 156r.

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Figure 4.3. Ionic column. Philibert De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture (1576), fo. 158r. (With kind permission of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.)

specifically linking the choice to his sponsor. When D’Aubigné writes that Satan ‘entered into this Queen’ (referring in fact to the Tuileries), there is a near perfect tessellation between the royal body and the architecture that she has sponsored. Not only do these ‘perfect columns’ reflect directly the patron’s identity, they were also signifying units in another manner. Further on in De l’Orme’s treatise, chapter 13 of book 7 is titled ‘Qu’il est permis à l’exemple des anciens, d’inuenter & faire nouuelles colomnes: ainsi que nous en auons faict quelques unes, appellées colomnes Françoises’ (On the fact that it is allowed, based on the example of the ancients, to invent and produce new [types of] columns. Thus have we created new ones, called French columns).133 This invention of a new column was indeed first realized at the Tuileries and constituted a specifically French design. Whereas Italian architects had plenty of raw materials available locally for making columns 133

De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fo. 218v.

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from one piece of stone or marble, the rarity of such materials in France led Philibert De l’Orme to conceive of a column made of separate drums that could be piled on top of each other, the joints of which would be disguised by decorative hoops, either plain, vegetal, or floral (Figure 4.4). The very geology of France, having set material conditions for construction, became in De l’Orme’s hands an impetus for the definition of a national aesthetics. To any of D’Aubigné’s readers who had also read De l’Orme’s treatise, the Tuileries in all their materiality would thus have stood as a monument to both the resourcefulness of French architects when faced with material constraints and to Catherine de Médicis and royal sponsorship of architecture. D’Aubigné’s architectural attack, then, sets its sights both on on Catherine de Médicis herself and on her control of French identity. As with the Sainte-Chapelle and the Palais de Justice, D’Aubigné is not content merely to diagnose. He again places the emphasis on future transformation. It is significant that, on Satan’s arrival, the Tuileries are said to be nothing but a ‘preparatif ’ for a ‘brave bastiment’—they are a foundation or an architectural plan waiting to happen. Like the interior ceiling of the Palais de Justice, the Tuileries are in need of further (Calvinist-authored) decoration. They immediately possess the capacity for poetic prophecy, relating the building currently under construction to a literary depiction of its future completion, creating a productive tension: according to the poem, Satan himself becomes the building’s architect by adding a welter of additional details (pilasters, portals, and so on); in reality, however, it was Philibert De l’Orme (and, following the latter’s death, Jean Bullant and others) who would add such details. What D’Aubigné’s Satanic architect brings to the Tuileries, in addition to, but supposedly represented by, the pilasters, portals, and staircases, is temptation and corruption. Infiltrating the ‘imagination, | Du chef de Jesabel’ (‘imagination | inside Jezebel’s head’)134—yet another poke at Catherine de Médicis—the devil proceeds on his mission, taking on a variety of disguises, to corrupt various members of court society, crossing from the Tuileries to the Louvre, at least implicitly via the grande galerie that connected them and that would have been in existence by the time of the book’s publication.135 . . . cet œil ardent descouvre Tant de gibier pour soi dans le palais du Louvre: Il s’acharne au pillage, et l’enchanteur rusé Tantost en conseiller finement desguisé, En prescheur penitent et en homme d’eglise Il mutine aysement, il conjure, il attise Le sang, l’esprit, le cœur et l’oreille des grands, Rien ne luy est fermé, mesme il entre dedans Le conseil plus estroit, pour mieux filer sa trame Quelquefois il se vest d’un visage de femme Et pour pipper un cœur s’arme d’une beauté. 134

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:205–6. Exterior construction of the grande galerie took place between 1595 and 1610. 450 metres long, it was constructed by two architects: Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau for the western end and Louis Métezeau (1560–1615) for the eastern. 135

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Figure 4.4. The ‘French’ Column, made of stackable drums. Philibert De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture (1576), fo. 221r. (With kind permission of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.)

188

Epic Arts in Renaissance France ( . . . this burning eye discovers So much pray for itself in the Louvre palace. It pillages fiercely and this crafty enchanter Now finely disguised as a royal advisor, As a penitent preacher or as a Man of the Cloth, Engages in easy mutiny; he conspires, he fires up The blood, minds, hearts and ears of important individuals. No path is closed to him, he even enters into The most private counsel assembly. To better spin his plot He sometimes dresses with a woman’s face And to capture a heart arms himself with beauty.)136

The Tuileries and the Louvre to which they are attached, originally a ‘preparatif,’ are taken further towards completion by Satan’s corruption. Moreover, Satan’s spreading of evil is even called a ‘project’,137 as if it were an architectural plan, thus emphasizing how the building will change over time. Yet, the lesson of the Palais de Justice is that a building whose details betoken present corruption can also stand for a future reversal of that situation. It is worth asking why Satan, who is shown to add the corrupt architectural details to the Tuileries, was figured by D’Aubigné as a ‘serpent’, a description significantly expanded earlier during Satan’s conversation with God.138 There, Satan’s angelic disguise is replaced by his real appearance: ‘Le crespe blanchissant qui les cheveux luy cœuvre | Se change en mesme peau que porte la couleuvre’ (‘The whitened hood which covers his hair | Morphs into the skin of a snake’); ‘La teste se descoëffe et se change en serpent’ (‘His head sheds its hair and turns into a snake’s’); similarly, the markings on the devil’s skin are said to make his body look ‘Comme un ventre d’aspic’ (‘Like the belly of an asp’).139 The universal force of the snake image appears somewhat self-evident, immediately bringing to mind the snake of the Garden of Eden ‘callidior cunctis animantibus terrae’ (‘more subtle [or: cunning] than any beast of the field’)140—clearly identified with Satan in the later writings of the Hebrew Prophets and in the New Testament. Literary echoes, too, abound: Frank Lestringant identifies this snake with epic precedents, such as the snake that Allecto throws at Amata in the Aeneid, a moment Ronsard imitates in the Franciade.141 There is also another possible explanation. If we again turn to Philibert De l’Orme’s Premier tome de l’architecture, we find a similar association between architecture and snake in the decorative bandeau that crowns Philibert De l’Orme’s dedicatory letter to Catherine de Médicis.

136

137 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:253. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:211–221. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:197. 139 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:57–58, 5:64, 5:70. An asp is a ‘small, venomous, hooded serpent found in Egypt and Libya’ (OED) and which, poetically, is used to denote ‘any venomous snake.’ 140 Genesis 3:1. 141 ‘huic dea caeruleis unum de crinibus anguem | conicit, inque sinum praecordia ad intima subdit, | quo furibunda domum monstro permisceat omnem’ (‘On her [Amata] the goddess [Allecto] flings a snake from her dusky tresses, and thrusts it into her bosom, into her inmost heart, that maddened by the pest she may embroil all the house’) (Virgil, Aeneid 7:346–48). Ronsard, La Franciade, 3:1349–55. 138

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Figure 4.5. Decorative bandeau above dedicatory letter. Philibert De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture (1576), fo. aiir. (With kind permission of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.)

Here, a snake wraps itself around the compass at both extremes of the cornice, above a highly charged set of metopes depicting a shaggy-haired Mercury (on the left) and an equally bedraggled Venus (on the right). In the very centre is De l’Orme’s emblem, notably featuring an elm tree (orme in French) that visually betokens the authorial presence.142 Below the decoration is De l’Orme’s formal address to his patron. An explanation of the snake symbol is provided by De l’Orme at the beginning of his third book, in a section that anticipates the final Allegory of the Good Architect in his concluding pages. The explanation is emblematized in Figure 4.6. The Architect, explains De l’Orme, is dressed as a learned man who exits a dark cave, where he had been fully dedicated to the solitary study necessary to ‘paruenir à la uraye cognaissance & perfection de son art’ (‘arrive at true knowledge and perfection in his art’);143 with one hand, he pulls up his robe, to show his diligence and care in all affairs while, with the other hand, he manipulates a compass around which a hissing serpent winds itself. The presence of the serpent, he continues, is to ‘signifier qu’il doit mesurer & compasser tous ses affaires & toutes ses œuures & ouurages, avecques une prudence & meure deliberation’ (‘signify that he must assess and measure with a compass all his undertakings and all his labours and works, with prudence and mature deliberation’).144 The central importance of the snake is highlighted by textual gloss: Prudence, dy-ie, telle que le serpent la figure, & est commandée & recommandée par Iesus Christ en son Euangile disant, Estote prudentes sicut serpentes, & simplices sicut columbæ.

142 De l’Orme’s emblem features an elm tree (in French, un orme). To its left stands a crescent moon, to its right a small architectural structure. Around the emblem are the words ‘Ne quid nimis’ (‘Nothing in excess’). For further details see Potié, Philibert De l’Orme, 45. 143 De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fo. 50r. 144 De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fo. 50r.

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Figure 4.6. Allegory of the Good Architect. Philibert De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture (1576), fo. 51v. (With kind permission of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.)

(Prudence, say I, such as represented by the snake and such as it is ordered and recommended by Jesus Christ in his Testament which says ‘Be as prudent as a snake and a simple as a dove’.)145

Viewed through this intertext to De l’Orme, D’Aubigné’s architect-snake is at once Satanic and ingenious. Although we cannot know if D’Aubigné chose the snake because of De l’Orme’s usage of that same animal, it is very tempting, to this modern reader at least, to suggest that D’Aubigné’s snake, as a sign of the agency of human architecture and of Calvinist prophecy, echoes not only the Bible, but also the French Renaissance’s image of the architect. It is also tempting to see the architect, educated in prudence, as a builder not just of material culture but of the spaces where in Paris inhabitants would have sought out interpretations of the future. D’Aubigné is, by including the snake reference, perhaps trying to suggest to his readers that his prophetic writing is co-sponsored by the architects themselves.

THE VA T IC AN V ERS U S T HE CA NVA S O F HEA VEN It was just seen how D’Aubigné has Satan enter into the Louvre Complex via the Tuileries. After adding architectural details to the Tuileries and corrupting court society in the Louvre, D’Aubigné’s Satan sends his soldiers off around the world. The first destination is the Vatican, where the spirits of evil 145

De l’Orme, Le Premier Tome de l’Architecture, fo. 50v.

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de subtils pinceaux Ont mis . . . les excellens tableaux, Où l’Antechrist, saoulé de vengeance et de playe, Sur l’effect de ses mains en triomphant s’esgaie (with subtle paintbrushes Have placed . . . the excellent paintings, Where the Antichrist, drunk on vengeance and wounds, Rejoices in triumph from what those hands accomplish),146

an allusion to paintings realized by Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) for the Vatican’s Sala Regia. D’Aubigné creates the fiction, then, that paintings by a real Catholic painter were, in fact, the work of the devil—just as the devil had redesigned the Louvre. D’Aubigné brings these paintings into his epic, however, not merely to display them, but rather to place them in opposition to other ‘contraires desseins’ (‘contrary designs’).147 D’Aubigné alludes to Vasari’s paintings, in order to contest them. His verses challenge the paintings’ authority to represent and interpret earthly events. These oppositional figurations are referred to as ‘sacrez tableaux’ (‘divine paintings’),148 and it is angels who are to paint them ‘au vif d’un compas mesuré | Dans le large parvis du haut ciel azure’ (‘sharply with a proportioned compass | In azure heaven’s wide forecourt’).149 In order to appreciate the dialogue between Vasari’s paintings and D’Aubigné’s ‘contrary designs’, an oppositional structure for which the reader has been prepared since the preface, it is first necessary to understand what Vasari’s paintings depicted. The paintings show the attempted assassination of the Protestant leader, the Admiral of Coligny (1519–72) (Figure 4.7), his subsequent defenestration following another (now successful) assassination attempt (Figure 4.8), and King Charles IX raising his sword as a sign of victory (Figure 4.9), three moments that serve to summarize the events and consequences of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (24 August 1572). The Antichrist to whom D’Aubigné refers in the verses quoted above is thus, clearly, the king himself. Why, for whom, and for what space were the paintings realized? Let us recall, to begin, that the Sala Regia (or ‘Regal Hall’) is situated in the Vatican as a kind of antechamber to the Sistine Chapel and next to the Capella Paolina. It is the room where the pope welcomed kings and ambassadors from foreign lands.150 It was designed and constructed in the 1530s 146

147 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:265. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:257–60. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:274. 149 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:269–70. These celestial tableaux have received much critical attention. See especially Mitchell Greenberg, ‘The Poetics of Trompe-l’œil: D’Aubigné’s Tableaux célestes’, Neophilologus, 63 (January 1979), 1–22; Michel Jeanneret, ‘Les Tableaux spirituels d’Agrippa D’Aubigné’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 35 (1973), 233–245; Jean-Claude Ternaux, ‘La Parlante Peinture dans Les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné (Livre V, Les Fers)’ in Luisa Secchi Tarugi (ed.), Lettere et arti nel Rinascimento, Actes du Xe congrès international, Chianciano—Pienza, 20–23 juillet 1998 (Florence: Franco Cesati Editore, 2001), 709–23; André Tournon, ‘Le Cinquième Sceau: Les Tableaux des Fers et la perspective apocalyptique dans Les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné’ in Mélanges V.-L. Saulnier (Geneva: Droz, 1984), 273–83. 150 Bernice Davidson, ‘The Decoration of the Sala Regia under Pope Paul III’, Art Bulletin, 58/3 (September 1976), 395. 148

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Figure 4.7. Giorgio Vasari, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Attempted Assassination of Admiral Coligny. Sala Regia, Vatican Palace. (Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

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Figure 4.8. Giorgio Vasari, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: The Defenestration of Admiral Coligny. Sala Regia, Vatican Palace. (Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

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Figure 4.9. Giorgio Vasari, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: King Charles IX Raising his Sword as a Sign of Victory. Sala Regia, Vatican Palace. (Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

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by Antonio Cordiani (1484–1546), known as Sangallo the Younger, the official architect of Pope Paul III (1468–1549). Stuccos and windows were carried out by Piero Buonaccorsi (1501–47), known as Perino del Vaga, and Daniele da Volterra completed the final decorations. Interrupted following the death of Pope Paul III in 1549, the room was only finished—and the Vasari paintings only added—in the 1570s, following the election of Pope Gregory XIII and after the massacre. When Gregory XIII learned of Catholic France’s murder of Coligny, he ordered paintings from Vasari to celebrate the event. A contemporary account authored by a French ambassador visiting the Vatican allows us to glimpse the pope’s joy at the massacres in France as represented in Vasari’s paintings: ‘cest evenement luy a esté cent fois plus agreable que cinquante victoires semblables a celles que ceulx de la ligue obtindrent l’année passée contre le Turcq’ (‘this event brought him a hundred times more pleasure than would have fifty victories similar to those the Holy League won last year against the Turks’).151 Vasari’s paintings, which D’Aubigné will contest as if spraying them with graffiti, thus stand for papal pride at France’s lack of clemency for the Reformed faith. The three paintings by Vasari are not stand-alone works in the Vatican. Rather, they are an integral part of a larger whole. The decoration of the Sala Regia where they were hung evokes by all possible means the papacy’s wealth: gold, stucco, and papal emblems coexist with the elegance of ignudi and angels.152 It is thus hardly surprising that the model for the Sala Regia were the paintings realized for the Doge’s Palace, built to celebrate the glory of Venice, and those of the Sala dei Cinquecento at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, dedicated to the glory of Cosimo I de Medici. It is clear, then, that the iconographic programme of the Sala Regia is above all military and political, not sacred.153 To be more exact, the programme relates to papal absolutism and the idea according to which the pope—and, by extension, other defenders of the Catholic faith, such as Charles IX—should take up arms when battling against heresy.154 It is also essential to know that the decoration of the Sala Regia exists in a dialogue with the Pauline Chapel (Cappella Paolina) where Pope Paul III requested that Michelangelo paint the Conversion of Saint Paul.155 The opposition between the two spaces is in reality a double 151 Quoted in Philipp P. Fehl, ‘Vasari’s “Extirpation of the Huguenots”: The Challenge of Pity and Fear’ Gazette des Beuax-Arts 84 (1974): 263–4. See also Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1930), 19: 505–7. The reference, of course, is to the Battle of Lepanto. For the representation of this event in French Renaissance epic, see Phillip John Usher, L’Aède et le géographe (Paris: Classiques Garnier, forthcoming). 152 Fehl, ‘Vasari’s “Extirpation of the Huguenots” ’, 262. 153 For more details on the unity of the iconographic program in the Sala Regia, see Alexandra Herz, ‘Vasari’s “Massacre” Series in the Sala Regia—the Political, Juristic, and Religious Background’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 49 Bd., H. 1 (1986), 41–54. 154 According to the medieval doctrine of papal absolutism, ‘the pope holds both the spiritual and the temporal sword, permitting rulers use of the latter’ (Herz, ‘Vasari’s “Massacre” Series’, 41), the doctrine at the origin of the series and which justifies ‘ecclesiastical policy on the basis of ancient beliefs thought to be closest to Christ’ (p. 44), especially the notion according to which the pope has as a key mission to ‘eradicate infidelity and heresy’ (p. 46). 155 Michelangelo, Fresques de la Chapelle Pauline au Vatican, texte de Deoclecio Redig de Campos (Milan: Editions d’art Amilcare Pizzi, 1952).

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articulation, not a contradiction: the two spaces complement and complete each other, insofar as one space (the Pauline Chapel) evokes divine power while the other (the Sala Regia) evokes temporal power. Of Vasari’s paintings, D’Aubigné says strikingly little. He reports—as already quoted—that the Antichrist is ‘drunk on vengeance’ and that he ‘[r]ejoices in triumph’. In the Tragiques, emphasis is placed on Charles IX’s pleasure at the victory—and implicitly also the pope’s. The pictorial citation is only partial in that D’Aubigné seemingly alludes only to the third of Vasari’s paintings—although, if D’Aubigné’s allusion is primarily to the pleasure taken by Charles IX and the pope at Coligny’s death, it surely also refers to the pleasure taken by both on viewing the first two of Vasari’s paintings, which actually represent the assassination. What, then, of D’Aubigné’s tableaux spirituels that contest Vasari’s paintings? The moment of contestation and reversal is expressed in a perfectly balanced verse relating to the pleasure taken by opposing camps in composing their respective images: ‘Si l’enfer fut esmeu, le ciel le fut aussy’ (‘If Hell was moved, so too was Heaven’).156 The paintings realized by the angels, to contest Vasari, will show— also like D’Aubigné’s poem, of course—the ‘hontes de Satan, les combats de l’Eglise’ (‘Satan’s shame, the Church’s battles’).157 The angels, called ‘serviteurs de Dieu’ (God’s servants) and ‘peintres ingenieux’ (ingenious painters) strive to create an ‘ouvrage divin’ (‘divine work’), access to which, as with the vision of Themis in the Palais de Justice, is strictly restricted to members of the Reformed faith, here called ‘esprits triomphants’ (‘triumphal spirits’) and ‘bienheureux’ (‘blessed’), hence the fact that heaven is named also a ‘desguisé historien des terres’ (‘a disguised historian of the terrestrial’).158 The angels paint numerous tableaux, many of which are introduced either with words like voici (‘here is . . . ’) or ici (here . . . ’) or by a verb such as voir (‘to see’). The origin of these tableaux, we learn further on, is the seven hours in which D’Aubigné was in a half-conscious state after he was attacked at Talcy in 1572: ‘Sept heures luy parut le celeste pourpris | Pour voir les beaux secrets et tableaux que j’escris’ (‘For seven hours heaven’s expanse appeared to him | So that I could see the fine secrets and paintings that I write down here’).159 I will not study all of the tableaux here. The very first is as follows: Le premier vous presente une aveugle Bellone Qui s’irrite de soy, contre soy s’enfellonne, Ne souffre rien d’entier, veut tout voir à morceaux: On la void deschirer de ses ongles ses peaux, Ses cheveux gris sans loy sont sanglantes viperes, Qui luy crevent le sein, dos et ventre d’ulceres, Tant de coups qu’ils ne font qu’une playe en son corps! La louve boit le sang et faict son pain de morts.

156 157 158 159

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:261. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:272. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:277, 5:278, 5:281, 5:319, 5:323. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:1199–1200.

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(The first [painting] shows you blind Bellona Who gets angry at herself, spits venom at herself, Allowing nothing to remain whole, wanting everything in pieces. You can see her ripping with her nails at her skin. Her lawless grey hair is made of bloody vipers Which puncture her breast, back, and stomach with ulcers. So many bites are there that her whole body is a wound! The she-wolf drinks blood and makes bread from corpses.)160

The opening tableau is thus of a goddess of war who stands emblematically for France’s civil strife: Bellona, of whom Virgil wrote that she advanced ‘cum sanguineo . . . flagello’ (with a bloody . . . whip).161 From this initial figure, the tableaux progress to represent more specifically the times and places of the Wars of Religion, ranging from a kind of ‘tour de France’ through Languedoc, Provence, Lyons, Picardy, and Normandy, to specific battles, skirmishes, and so forth, at Jarnac, Moncontour, Tours, Dreux, and so on. Various characters appear. Of particular interest, given how these tableaux are presented as oppositional vis-à-vis those of Vasari at the Vatican, is the presence of both Coligny and Charles IX—as if D’Aubigné is responding to Vasari. The latter’s Coligny is wholly passive: first a wounded man being carried (see Figure 4.7), then a dead man thrown from a window (see Figure 4.8); his Charles IX is calmly seated, raising his sword in victory (see Figure 4.9). D’Aubigné responds to these specific representations. The poet’s Coligny—quite different—is presented as follows: D’un visage riant notre Caton tendoit Noz yeux avec les siens, et le bout de son doigt, A se voir transpercé, puis il nous montra comme On le coupe à morceaux: sa teste court à Rome, Son corps sert de joüet aux badaux ameutez, Donnant le bransle au cours des autres nouveautez.162 (With a laughing face, our Cato brings His eyes in focus of ours, with his fingertip, Seeing himself struck through, shows How he has been cut to pieces: his head goes to Rome, His body is the plaything for riotous passers-by, Thus shaking up still more new events.)

Whereas the viewer of Vasari’s painting sees a passive and decidedly un-smiling Coligny (see Figures 4.7 and 4.8), D’Aubigné’s reader is presented with a man, called ‘Our Cato’—for Cato was one of the young D’Aubigné’s heroes—laughing at his own sorry fate. His finger had indeed been injured on the first assassination attempt the day before the massacre—but here he laughs. What is the meaning of this laughter? How could Coligny have laughed in such a situation? In fact, Coligny had already been pictured in a similar light in book 2, Princes. There we are shown a

160 162

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:327–34. D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:831–6.

161

Virgil, Aeneid 8:703.

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Coligny who ‘se rioit de la foulle’ (‘laughed mockingly at the crowd’).163 Coligny’s laughter, as Géralde Nakam put it, ‘traverse l’épaisseur tragique du poème apocalyptique’ (‘cuts through the tragic depths of the apocalyptic poem’).164 In his study of Coligny’s laughter, Nakam is careful to remind us that this laughter is not the laughter of a madman faced with the unthinkable; it is not sarcastic, not bitter; it is an affirmative laughter denoting a kind of absolute serenity. Nakam also points out that Coligny’s frank laughter, via textual echoes within the epic, stands in opposition to the mean, petty, and bloodthirsty cackles that, in the Tragiques, resound throughout the corridors of the French court. Coligny’s laughter, as Nakam summarizes, is le rire de l’intelligence . . . Non pas de cette intelligence satanique qui fait ricaner bourreaux, cyniques, lâches et indifférents. Il a ce sens de la relativité et de l’absolu qui s’attache à la rigoureuse compréhension du Tout, dans la joie de la conviction et de la foi (the laughter of intelligence . . . Not that satanic intelligence that causes executioners, cynics, cowards, and apathetic individuals to cackle. This laughter has the sense of relativity and of the absolute that goes with a rigorous understanding of Everything, in the joy and conviction of solid faith).165

Such, then, is D’Aubigné’s Coligny, laughing intelligently and victoriously. It is a laughter, and a form of knowledge, only available to the select few: . . . voilà les restes Des hauts secrets du ciel: là les bourgeois celestes Ne lisent qu’aux rayons de la face de Dieu, C’est de tout l’advenir le registre, le lieu Où la harpe royale estoit lors eslevee Qu’elle en sonna ces mots: Pour jamais engravee Est dedans le haut ciel que tu creas jadis La vraie eternité de tout ce que tu dis. C’est le registre sainct des actions secrettes, Fermé d’autant de sceaux qu’il y a de planettes. Le prophete domteur des lyons indomptez Le nomme en ses escrits l’escrit des veritez. Tout y est bien marqué, nul humain ne l’explicque: Ce livre n’est ouvert qu’à la troupe angelicque, Puis aux esleus de Dieu, quand en perfection L’ame et son corps gousteront la resurrection.

163 D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 2:1431. For a pertinent study about point of view in the Tragiques, which relates Coligny’s laughter (in book 2) to the figure of Scipio, see Frank Lestringant, ‘L’Œil de Scipion: Point de vue et style dans Les Tragiques’, in Fragonard and Lazard (eds), Les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné, 63–86. 164 Géralde Nakam, ‘Le Rire de l’amiral Coligny dans l’architecture des Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné’, in François Lecercle and Simone Perrier (eds), La Poétique des passions à la Renaissance (Paris: Champion, 2001), 203. 165 Nakam, ‘Le Rire de l’amiral Coligny’, 220.

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( . . . Here are the remains Of heaven’s high secrets: there, the heaven-dwelling bourgeois Read only in the light that shines out from God’s face; It is of all the future the register, the place Where the royal harp was raised when It sounded out these words: For ever is engraved Inside the high heavens that you once created The true eternity of all that you say. It is the sacred register of secret actions, Closed by as many seals as there are planets. The prophet who tames the untamable lions Names it in his writings the written truths. Everything is recorded there, no human can explain it; This book is only open to the angelic troop, Then to God’s chosen ones, when in perfection The soul and body come to taste resurrection.)166

Knowledge of the future is available only to God, his angels, and to the Calvinists, elected by their faith. While the future cannot be seen, D’Aubigné’s text carefully aligns the concrete details of Paris’s architecture-scape, whose excesses collude with Catholicism and royal patronage, with the invisible future of Calvinist revenge. Just as the ceiling of the grotesque Palais de Justice contained, hidden away from sight, a message about the future return of divine justice, so the celestial (and bloody) depictions of the Wars of Religion, as well as the palace of one of the war’s key protagonists, contain the register of future persecutions that will nevertheless lead to truth and, eventually, vengeance.

EPIC PERSPECTIVES AND T HE ART OF D ELEGATION C’est faict, Dieu vient reigner, de toute prophetie Se void la periode à ce poinct accomplie. (It is done, God comes to reign. Of all prophecy The period now sees itself accomplished.) (D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 7:663–4)

The Tragiques grew out of the French Wars of Religion and can be thought of as a kind of Calvinist apocalypse constructed through a series of vignettes, each a prophecy of future victory over present difficulties. It is precisely because of this status of defeat that the epic genre’s triumphal tone is deferred, superimposed as à-venir upon vast tableaux of blood and suffering in the present and recent past. The Tragiques, which in some ways responds to Ronsard’s Catholic Discours des miseres de ce temps (Discourses on Present Adversities) (1562), presents the Wars of Religion from a Calvinist perspective—all the horror, all the carnage, are inscribed within an overarching telos that relates the fatal year of 1562 (the massacre of Vassy) 166

D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 5:1245–60.

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to the timeline of divine judgement.167 In other words, future victory against Catholicism is written into an eschatological perspective of vengeance.168 It is indeed most suggestive that D’Aubigné at one point presents the Reformed Church as a pregnant woman, serving to emphasize humanity’s future.169 Such an image of the future as judgement and revenge is not merely a literary fiction, but is theologically grounded in Calvinist readings of the Book of Revelation, such as we find in Henri Bullinger’s Cent sermons sur l’Apocalypse (1558).170 In 1828, Sainte-Beuve said of D’Aubigné’s Tragiques that ‘On croirait qu’il prophétise’ (‘One could believe that he is uttering a prophecy’).171 A more recent critic usefully summarized that the Tragiques can be read as an ‘extended prophetic sermon’.172 The various interventions that occur throughout the Tragiques—God at the Palais de Justice, the devil at the Louvre, the angels painting tableaux spirituels in opposition to paintings by Vasari—cause the epic’s point of view to be that not of an epic poet writing from early modern France, but of an outside and elevated point of view, that of the devil or of God. As Michel Jeanneret phrased it, the use of tableaux affords a ‘délégation de la perception d’une instance à une autre’ (‘the delegation of perception from one instance to another’), allowing a ‘mode de connaissance transcendant’ (‘a transcendental mode of knowing’).173 In other 167 On D’Aubigné’s relationship to Ronsard in this context, see Edwin Duval, ‘The Place of the Present: Ronsard, Aubigné, and the Misères de ce Temps’, Yale French Studies, 80 (1991), 13–29. 168 On the widespread importance of eschatological thought and religious violence, in both Catholic and Protestant spheres, see Denis Crouzet’s now classic Les Guerriers de Dieu: La Violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525–vers 1610 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990). See also Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, XIVe–XVIIIe siècles: Une cité assiégée (Paris: Fayard, 1978), especially ch. 6 on ‘l’attente de Dieu’ (‘waiting for God’). 169 See D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 6:141–54, esp. 6:150–1: ‘elle [l’Eglise] fuioit enceinte | Aux lieux inhabitez’ (‘she [the Church] fled, pregnant, towards uninhabited places’), an image drawn from the Book of Revelation, 12:13–18). In this context, one should also recall that, in the original edition of the Tragiques in 1616, D’Aubigné’s name was not indicated. 170 On this, see Richard L. Regosin, ‘D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques: A Protestant Apocalypse’, PMLA 81/5 (1966), 365–6. 171 ‘It can even seem that he is prophesizing,’ wrote Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve in his Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française et du théâtre français du XVIe siècle (Paris: A. Sautelet, 1828), 180. 172 Virginia Crosby, ‘Prophetic History and Agrippa D’Aubigné’s Tragiques’, Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 26/3 (1972), 77. Further perspective on the prophetic nature of D’Aubigné’s poetry is provided by another article by Virginia Crosby, ‘Prophetic Discourse in Ronsard and D’Aubigné’, French Review (1971 Special Issue 3), 91–100, and by the following: Marguerite Soulié, ‘Prophétisme et visions d’Apocalypse dans Les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné’, Bulletin de l’Association d’étude sur l'Humanisme, la Réforme et la Renaissance, 22 (1986), 5–10, and Richard L. Regosin, The Poetry of Inspiration: Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970). The nature of prophecy and apocalypse in D’Aubigné has also been explored in a series of so far unpublished dissertations: Luther W. Gette, ‘Agrippa D’Aubigné: Prophetic and Apocalyptic in the Structure and Imagery of Les Tragiques’, PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970; John H. Williams, ‘Agrippa D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques: Cosmic Travail and Redemption’, PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972, and, more recently, Samuel A. Junod, ‘The Prophetic Ethos: The Creation of a Figure of Enunciation in Agrippa D’Aubigne’s Les Tragiques, PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2000, reworked into a book: Samuel Junod, Agrippa D’Aubigné, ou, Les Misères du Prophète (Geneva: Droz, 2008). See my review of the latter in Sixteenth Century Journal, 41/1 (Spring 2010), 226–7. 173 Jeanneret, ‘Les Tableaux spirituels,’ 237.

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words, D’Aubigné’s text sets out to show the operative power of the divine will— what will happen, how Protestants will be avenged. The final apocalypse that it describes in the last book involves assorted forms of destruction, including destruction of the haughty architecture of Paris. The palaces, says D’Aubigné, will be reduced to rubble. Paris, a new Tower of Babel, will be destroyed.174 The divine plan for the Protestant future is thus externalized and materialized by the destruction of architecture previously presented as corrupt and grotesquely built. This is D’Aubigné’s modus operandi throughout the text: he alludes, most often via ekphrasis, to an image or architectural structure and then offers a counter-image or plan for redesign. Before the image or the monument falls, it stands as a monument to its forthcoming destruction—at least for D’Aubigné. In an ironic turn of events, the Palais de Justice, described by D’Aubigné as a site of everything he detested, would indeed partly burn down in 1618, just two years after the Tragiques was first published. It would then be rebuilt by Salomon de Brosse, a Calvinist architect who returned from exile to Paris following the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes. In a sense, then, D’Aubigné’s imagined future came about: the Palais de l’Injustice really would be destroyed—and rebuilt by a Calvinist. The Tuileries, too, would be destroyed, but only much later. The point, of course, is not that D’Aubigné predicted this, but rather that his textualizing of the Parisian architecture-scape set up the buildings of Paris and the paintings in the Vatican as surfaces upon which a certain idea of the future was inscribed via a textual supplement—to be understood only by those who knew how to read. Prophecy, for Calvin, was indeed just that—not the gift of predicting the future as such, but rather, in his own words, a ‘peculiar gift of revelation, by which anyone skilfully and wisely performed the office of an interpreter in explaining the will of God’.175 Prophecy, continues Calvin, is thus ‘hardly anything else than the right understanding of the Scripture, and the peculiar faculty of explaining it’. The future, based on God’s plan for redemption and punishment, was visible in architecture—but to be able to see it, one must already subscribe to that future, for it was only in the architectural details insofar as one’s theological choices situated it there. D’Aubigné’s epic, ultimately, functions in an opposite way to the galleries of Chapter 1. Rather than a text becoming the source for a gallery’s decoration, works of art (painting, architecture, and so on) are appropriated by literature and destroyed, as if the words were functioning as graffiti.

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D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, 7:249–59. Jean Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, ed. and trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1947), 460. 175

Closing Remarks: From Epic Cassoni to Epic Coffrets Between the late fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries, French epic literature and French art evolved rapidly—and in almost permanent dialogue. In the late fifteenth century, French epic consisted mainly of prose versions of medieval chansons de geste;1 by the mid-seventeenth century, French epics of somewhat baroque facture were proliferating at the hands of writers such as Scudéry and Chapelain.2 Over the same period, French architecture—to cite but one nonliterary art form—went from being a set of inherited principles owned by masons and handed down from father to son, to an intellectualized project taken up by architects whose names would remain attached to both buildings and books. The sixteenth century, between these two moments, was a site of experimentation in epic arts. In the domain of literature, genres and subgenres proliferated amid a rediscovery of classical texts and a generalized theoretical withdrawal despite a certain amount of progress beyond the prescriptive late medieval arts de seconde rhétorique.3 It was a moment of reinvention seemingly beholden to a hierarchy that placed epic above all else, as that renewal’s ultimate ‘proof ’. In the area of art— meaning not just painting, but sculpture (in alabaster, brass, marble, and porphyry), architecture, the decorative arts (from arms and armour to carpets, clocks, and furniture), as well as engravings, pottery, tapestry, and so on—styles and practices changed, increasingly influenced both by forms imported from antiquity via Italy and by the very intellectualization of the process of creation. More and more, the tools and methods of the poet were those, too, of the artist and the architect. Whereas the medieval mason, for example, would most likely have learned his craft orally and on site and while Vitruvius was, at first, discussed 1 See Doutrepont, Les Mises en prose. See, more recently, the articles gathered in Sergio Cigada and Anna Slerca (eds), Rhétorique et mise en prose au XVesiècle (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1991), as well as Catherine M. Jones’s excellent Philippe de Vigneulles and the Art of Prose Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), and Timelli, Ferrari, and Schoysman (eds), Mettre en prose aux XIVe–XVIe, and my review thereof, forthcoming in Sixteenth Century Journal. 2 One can think of George de Scudéry’s Alaric, ou Rome vaincue (1654), Jean Chapelain’s La Pucelle ou la France délivrée (1656), or Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin’s Clovis ou la France chrétienne (1657). On seventeenth-century epic, see Archimede Marmi, Allegory in the French Heroic Poem of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936), Sayce, The French Biblical Epic, and Maskell, The Historical Epic in France. 3 See Gisèle Mathieu-Castelanni, ‘La Notion de genre’, in Guy Demerson (ed.), La Notion de genre à la Renaissance (Geneva: Slatkine, 1984), 17–34.

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more at the Sorbonne than in artists’ workshops, as the sixteenth century unfolded artists and architects were increasingly hommes de lettres.4 Du Bellay’s account of his time in Rome—the Regrets and the Antiquitez de Rome—are the work of a poet, but they probably render testimony to the experiences and sensibilities of generations of French artists and architects who, immersed in similar books and similar concerns as poets, also travelled to Italy and reinvented the goals and shapes of art. The gap between hands-on and literary learning began to close: Philibert De l’Orme (mentioned at several points in this study) learned his craft in both Lyons and Italy; he perhaps worked for Sangallo the Younger and, on his return to France, infused his first building (the Château de Saint-Maur) with elements all’antica seen on his travels.5 And it is not a coincidence that the classical aedicula atop the Cathédrale de Rodez was probably designed by an architect (normally thought to be Guillaume Philandrier) who both sojourned in Rome (1539–44)—just before Du Bellay—and produced an erudite commentary on Vitruvius.6 More than ever before, artists and poets shared a way of relating to the past and imagining the present.7 It is within this moment, thus delineated, that the present book situates itself. My goal in the previous chapters has been to examine a number of epic building sites as exhibits in the larger history of French Renaissance culture. Beginning in late fifteenth-century Italy, at which point the decorative style of marriage chests took a new turn—floral and abstract patterns were replaced by epic heroes such as Odysseus and Aeneas—the first chapter emphasized how the rediscovery, translation, and publication of classical epics, amid various hermeneutic evolutions (allegorical readings being challenged by later philologically grounded editions) occurred in approximate contemporary parallel to a ‘turn to epic’ in the sister arts. After epic marriage chests came epic galleries, first in Italy, then in France. In particular, I studied three galleries in France, showing how the influence between literature and the sister arts flowed in both directions: politics and patronage informed the decision to create epic galleries, but this in turn was predicated on contemporary understandings (translations, interpretations, illustrations) of the epics in question. As translators and editors made epics of Homer, Virgil, and Lucan available in France, rarely presenting them through any historical remove, necessarily appropriating and interpreting rather than merely making them accessible, so patrons and artists equally sought out new forms of relevance for old texts, marshalling allegories both old and new, sometimes part of a tradition (as with the Galerie d’Ulysse and the writers of the Pléiade), sometimes strikingly personal (as with the Galerie de Pharsale and the patron’s particular familial and political

4

5 Potié, Philibert De l’Orme, 25. See Potié, Philibert De l’Orme, 21. See Zerner, L’Art de la Renaissance, 15–16, as well as Jean Guillaume (ed.), Les Traités d’architecture à la Renaissance (Paris: Picard, 1988), 67–74, and Frédérique Lemerle, ‘Genèse de la théorie des ordres: Philandrier et Serlio’, Revue de l’art, 103 (1994), 33–41. 7 For another proof of this, one might think, too, of how engravers, ceramicists, poets, and translators all worked in dialogue in Renaissance Lyons. See this excellent study: Jean Rosen (ed.), Majoliques européennes: Reflets de l’estampe lyonnaise (Dijon: Editions Faton, 2003). 6

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context). In Chapter 2, I turned to a pair of epics written by Etienne Dolet for François Ier and demonstrated how those epics both imitated royal aesthetics and attempted to respond to and correct foreign paintings of French military defeat— again, politics, aesthetics, and history interweave. Dolet was clearly in open contest both with the king’s official painters, the likes of Rosso and Primaticcio, whom he saw as privileged compared to himself, and with the artists of his king’s enemy, Charles V, a set of tensions present both in the work’s self-presentation and in its very fabric. Chapter 3 studied Ronsard’s Franciade. Begun when Ronsard was still young and while an earlier generation of poets played all the key roles in the celebrations organized for Henri II, Ronsard’s epic was subsequently publicized in the sister arts (on the Louvre’s façade, thanks to Jean Goujon and Pierre Lescot, and in the streets of Paris); and it was ultimately monumentalized by a series of paintings commissioned from Toussaint Dubreuil by Henri IV. The equilibrium between literary epic and the sister arts underwent a significant evolution in this context: as a poet, Ronsard first saw epic as something of a consolation, as a way to engage in the kind of praise that the sister arts were already achieving (somewhat like Dolet)—but by the end of the century, his epic—its poetics and not just its story—became a source of inspiration for French art. Chapter 4 dealt with Agrippa D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques, a work that in some ways responds to Ronsard, but that is also wholly different. I detailed how D’Aubigné’s text frequently cites actual architectural and pictorial works in order to destroy them, by inscribing upon them visions of a Calvinist future. A new turn: whereas Ronsard’s epic inspired royal art, D’Aubigné’s destroyed it—his text is an epic of revolt and contestation. Over the course of the chapters, then, we thus see French epic assert itself in dialogue and frequently in declared competition with French art. Beginning with classical epics taken up by Italian marriage chests and in decorative schemes for French castles, we thus ended with a violent epic written by a member of the Reformed faith that alludes to, and imagines the destruction of, art and architecture in Paris, the Vatican, and elsewhere. At the outset, I made the decision to pay more attention to the ‘functioning’ of each ‘site’ than to formulating an overly linear narrative. I do not propose squaring the circle here. I have been tracing how two stories intertwine, how literary and non-literary epic arts evolved by constantly responding to each other in terms of form, figure, and function, and how both stories, via their deep connection to history, also grew out of history’s connection to each. Each of this book’s chapters has focused on different epic building sites, exploring the various forms of relationship between given literary epics and specific creations in the sister arts. As already noted in the Introduction, many other epic building sites suggested themselves for inclusion but were ultimately put to one side for study at some later point. Study of a larger corpus would, surely, change the story told here, most likely making it more complex while simultaneously allowing certain trends to become even more clearly delineated. In addition to the suggestions made in the Introduction, this book might also have discussed lesser-known historical epics, such as Laurent Pillart’s Rusticiados libri sex (Six Books of the Rusticiads) (1548), which details the uprising of farmers in the Lorraine region, or Renaud Clutin’s De pugna navali

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Figure 5.1. An annotated depiction of Noah’s Ark in a Protestant Bible. From La Bible qui est toute la Saincte escriture contenant le vieil et le nouveau Testament, autrement la vieille et la nouvelle Alliance (Geneva: de l’imprimerie de François Estienne, 1567), fo. 2iiir. (Bibliothèque nationale de France.)

Christianorum adversus Turcas (On the Christians’ Naval Battle against the Turks) (1572), about the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.8 In fact, many of the period’s approximately 200 epics could have formed important foci for additional chapters. As a thought experiment about future projects, one might imagine blueprints for productive readings of Du Bartas’s Protestant epic La Sepmaine, in relation to the woodcuts of Reformation Bibles (Figure 5.1). Does not the presence of such diagrammatic engravings, complete with legends (here relating to the dimensions of Noah’s ark), partake of the kind of encyclopaedic and biblical hermeneutics we find in Du Bartas’s epic? Or we might reread Clutin’s short De pugna navali as a response to the numerous artworks based on the famous naval battle at which the Holy League and European allies defeated Ottoman fleets in the Gulf of Patras, artworks such as Paolo Veronese’s paintings executed for the Doge’s palace in Venice (Figure 5.2).9 It is natural to wonder whether such an intense relationship between epic and art is specific to Renaissance France. The well-known connections between Virgil’s

8

These two texts will receive extended treatment in my forthcoming L’Aède et le géographe. See Iain Fenlon, ‘Lepanto: Le arti della celebrazione nella Venezia del Rinascimento,’ in Vittore Branca and Carlo Ossola (eds), Crisi e rinnovamenti nell’autunno del Rinascimento a Venezia, eds. (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1991), 373–406. In addition to L’Aède et le géographe, see also Phillip John Usher, ‘La Défaite des Turcs à la bataille de Lépante: des plaquettes populaires à la poésie épique’, L’Esprit créateur, 56 (Winter 2013), forthcoming. 9

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Figure 5.2. Paolo Veronese, The Battle of Lepanto (c.1572). Oil on canvas. Accademia, Venice, Italy. (Cameraphoto Arte, Venice /Art Resource, NY.)

Aeneid and the arts of Augustan Rome provide an immediate response: such connections obviously exist in other times, places, and traditions.10 But what if 10 Much has been written about the connections between the Aeneid and the arts during the time of Augustus. As Alessandro Barchiesi phrased it, the Aeneid belongs to a ‘visual culture that goes way beyond known precedents in Greek epic’. Barchiesi further underscores how Virgil ‘inserts his text into a process of communal appropriation of images and wants the Aeneid to participate in the exchange’ (Alessandro Barchiesi, ‘Learned Eyes: Poets, Viewers, and Image-Makers,’ in Karl Galinsky (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 295–7). See also Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 141–224, as well as Carel Claudius van Essen, ‘L’Architecture dans l’Enéide de Virgile’, Mnemosyne, 8 (1939), 225–36, James Morwood, ‘Aeneas, Augustus, and the Theme of the City,’ Greece and Rome, 2nd ser., 38/2 (October 1991), 212–23, and Stephen Harrison, ‘The Epic and the Monuments: Interactions between Virgil’s Aeneid and the Augustan Building Programme’, in

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we look only at epic in France? Is there something ‘special’ about the sixteenth century? A full answer would require many volumes, in lieu of which several specific moments will be adduced. To begin, we would do well to recall that the oldest epic poets of France were, of course, not writers confined to studies or libraries—often illiterate, they were called jongleurs (literally ‘jugglers’) because, as well as reciting epic poetry, they did indeed juggle, as well as perform acrobatic tricks, play instruments (especially the vielle), and even exhibit trained animals. Medieval audiences witnessed a veritable circus show of which the chanson de geste was just one (albeit essential) element.11 Medieval epic arts immediately appear to be quite different, certainly not bound up in a shared erudite culture. While there are occasional textual echoes— such as Du Bellay’s mention of those medieval bons romans, or Francus’ battle with the giant Phovère in Ronsard’s Franciade—it is fair to surmise that French Renaissance epic arts marked a near complete break with that which came right before. The shared erudite culture and the repeated affirmation of a hierarchy that situates epic as the genre seem to spring up in the sixteenth century—but they do not disappear. Nor do the paradox and judgement with which this study began. If we turn to the seventeenth century, much of what we have seen in the present study seems to retain its relevance. In the century of the Sun King, epic is again simultaneously fought over and defined by authors, critics, and artists who navigate between disciplines. The third book of Boileau’s Art poétique (1674) is a veritable digest of negative assessments of epic: he mocks Saint-Amant’s Moïse sauvé (1653), telling its author (whom he calls a madman (‘ce fou’)) that he should not, in describing the sea, have painted ‘les poisons aux fenêtres’ (‘fishes at windows’) as witnesses to Moses’ passing;12 and he jeers at the opening line of Georges de Scudéry’s Alaric, ou Rome vaincue (1654)—‘Ie chante le Vainqueur des Vainqueurs de la Terre’ (‘I sing of he who vanquished the earth’s victors’)13—calling such a line affected and encouraging future poets to adopt an opposite path: ‘N’allez pas dès l’abord, sur Pégase monté, | Crier à vos lecteurs d’une voix de tonnere’ (‘Do not, from the beginning, riding Pegasus, | Shout at your readers with a voice of thunder’).14 Homer, of course, is another story: ‘Son livre est d’agréments un fertile trésor: | Tout ce qu’il a touché se convertit en or’ (‘His book is a fertile treasure-trove of charmes: | Everything he touches turns to gold’).15 Spoken by the leading champion of the Ancients in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, M. J. Clarke, B. G. F. Currie, and R. O. A. M. Lyne (eds), Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the Epic Tradition Presented to Jasper Griffin by Former Pupils (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 159–83. Many other studies exist. 11 For a brief introduction to the multimedia nature of medieval epic, see Joseph J. Duggan, ‘The Epic’, in Denis Hollier (ed.), New History of French Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 18–23. For wider perspectives on the chansons de geste, see also Dominique Boutet, La Chanson de geste: Forme et signification d’une écriture épique du Moyen Age (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993), and Bernard Guidot, Chanson de gestes et réécritures (Orléans: Paradigme, 2008). 12 Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Art poétique, ed. Claude-Joseph Drioux (Paris: Librairie classique d’Eugène Belin, 1871), 36. As Boileau himself quotes, Saint-Amant had written that ‘Les poissons ébahis le regardent passer’ (‘The astonished fishes watch him go by’). 13 Georges de Scudéry, Alaric, ou Rome vaincue (Leyd: J. Sambix, 1654), 1. 14 Boileau, Art poétique, 37. 15 Boileau, Art poétique, 38.

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such an appraisal of seventeenth-century epic comes perhaps as no surprise. But, if we turn to his main opponent in the quarrel, Charles Perrault, we find assessments almost as harsh. In his Parallèle des anciens et des modernes, Perrault attempts a (rather paltry) defence, predicated on the idea that different literary genres possess different histories of progress. Epic poetry, begins Perrault, ‘ne comprend pas toute la Poësie’ (‘does not encompass all poetry’) and ‘supposé que les Modernes fussent inferieurs aux Anciens dans ce genre d’ouvrage’ (‘while it might be acknowledged that the Moderns are inferior to the Ancients in this particular genre’), then nevertheless ‘ils pourroient les surpasser dans tous les autres, comme dans le Lyrique, dans le Dramatique, dans le Satyrique, & dans les autres especes moins eslevées’ (‘they could still be better than them in all others, such as in lyric poetry, drama, satire, and in other less elevated genres’).16 This is not really a defence of the Moderns at all—the dull ‘glimmer of hope’ is indeed ‘something of a desperate rear-guard action’.17 Despite his contempt for Homer, not even Perrault could defend French epic.18 The epics of seventeenth-century France are not much read today—Boileau’s (and Perrault’s) criticisms continue to haunt predominant tastes. The most recent full-length study of Saint-Amant’s Moïse sauvé is two decades old, and no modern edition of the poem exists.19 Yet, already back in the 1950s Richard Sayce demonstrated the crossovers between Boileau’s critique of Saint-Amant or Scudéry and the ambient contemporary méfiance vis-à-vis baroque art and architecture, one emblem of which is the rejection of Bernini’s plans for the Louvre in 1664.20 The exaggeration that Boileau sees in Scudéry’s ‘Ie chante le Vainqueur des Vainqueurs de la Terre’ is the same excess that causes negative appreciations, in seventeenthcentury France, of Bernini’s David, Saint Teresa, or Bacchanal. As Sayce has shown moreover, Boileau’s critique of Scudéry sometimes hones in on those elements of his epic that most closely approach certain aspects of baroque architecture—at one point, he even mocks the poem as if it were an over-decorated building.21 Such rapprochements—at which Boileau jeers—are indeed not accidental: as Sayce has shown elsewhere, seventeenth-century epic poets adapted classical epic models in dialogue with contemporary artworks:22 Saint-Amant’s Moïse sauvé, for example, reveals reminiscences of the paintings of Poussin, whom the poet calls, moreover, 16 Charles Perrault, Parallèle des anciens et des modernes en ce qui regarde la poésie (Paris: La Veuve de Jean Bapt. Coignard et Jean Baptiste Coignard, fils, 1692), iii. 152. 17 Larry F. Norman, The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 57. 18 In the fourth book of the Parallèle, Perrault’s critique of Homer is extensive: ‘Perrault not only found the composition of the works suspicious; he was eager to show the story deficient, the characters badly drawn, the manners of the gods and heroes gross, and the similes inept. Despite traditional claims to the contrary, he also found Homer to be a bad astronomer, geometer, and naturalist’ (Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 126). 19 Dorothee Scholl, Moyse sauvé: Poétique et originalité de l’idylle héroïque de Saint-Amant (Paris, Seattle, and Tübingen: Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, 1995). 20 Richard A. Sayce, ‘Boileau and French Baroque’, French Studies, 2 (1948), 148–52. 21 Sayce, ‘Boileau and French Baroque’, 149. 22 See Richard A. Sayce, ‘Saint-Amant and Poussin. Ut pictora poesis’, French Studies, 1 (1947), 241–51.

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‘ce roy de la peinture’ (‘this king of painting’).23 Certain elements that literary critics found ‘ridiculous’ perhaps find their root in the epic poet’s decision to turn to visual models provided by contemporary painters.24 It is difficult not to agree with Sayce’s statement that ‘the striking coincidences between the literary artifices condemned by Boileau’ and ‘certain contemporary developments of painting, architecture, and sculpture’ confirms the necessity of embracing the period’s epic literature and art from an interdisciplinary perspective.25 The concerns of the present book also resonate closely with the eighteenth century. In 1723 while exiled in London Voltaire published an epic poem praising Henri IV’s efforts to bring an end to the Wars of Religion, La Henriade.26 Little nuance is required in asserting that the poem enjoyed immediate and wide circulation—not only were there fifty-eight editions in the eighteenth century alone, but audiences in England were soon able to read The Henriade: An epick poem (1732).27 Despite this success, a quip from the ‘Essai sur la poésie épique’ (Essay on Epic Poetry) that Voltaire included with the poem beginning in 1733 is still abusively quoted ad nauseam to suggest the opposite—that is, the line that goes ‘Les Français n’ont pas la tête épique!’, a fantastically difficult phrase to render in English. One might adapt it as ‘The French do not do epic!’ or perhaps ‘The French do not have an epic mind!’ But the quip must be reinscribed within its original context. Voltaire is sharing with his reader Monsieur de Malezieux’s judgement of the Henriade: ‘Vous entreprenez un ouvrage qui n’est pas fait pour notre nation’ (‘You are undertaking a work [of poetry] that is not meant for our nation’).28 It would be difficult to claim that Voltaire agrees. We must hear his irony. Indeed, Malezieux’s jibe is probably about as famous as Voltaire’s closing words in the Essai are forgotten: ‘c’est à la Henriade seule à parler en sa défense, et au temps seul de désarmer l’envie’ (‘only the Henriade should speak in its own defence—and only time will disarm envy’).29 In other words: Voltaire refuses to defend himself against Malezieux’s words, diagnosed here as resulting merely from envy—his poem alone can do that. For sure, earlier in the essay Voltaire seems to concur that earlier French epics—those of the French Renaissance and of the seventeenth century— failed. He does not even try to defend them. As if echoing Perrault’s comment quoted above, Voltaire states that, while the French have succeeded in so many genres (‘en tant de genres’), for epic the final balance sheet shows only ‘notre Quoted in Sayce, ‘Saint-Amant and Poussin’, 242. Sayce, ‘Saint-Amant and Poussin’, 250. Sayce concludes that between Saint-Amant and Poussin there was ‘an imaginative kinship’ and that ‘Poussin was a painter who tried to make painting an instrument of narrative’ while ‘Saint-Amant was a poet for whom the essence of poetry was visual evocation’ (‘Saint-Amant and Poussin’, 251). 25 Sayce, The French Biblical Epic, 246. 26 A useful summary of La Henriade is provided by Jacques Berchtold, ‘Voltaire et les choix de la Henriade’, in Jacques Berchtold and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard (eds), La Mémoire des guerres de religion: La Concurrence des genres historiques (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 344–6. 27 See Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem. In ten cantos. Translated from the French into English blank verse. To which are now added, the argument to each canto, and large notes historical and critical (London: Printed for C. Davis, 1732). 28 Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem, 10:492. 29 Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem, 10:492–3. 23 24

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stérilité et notre faiblesse’ (‘our sterility and weakness’).30 As poor a defender of French epic as was Perrault, Voltaire notes that France should not bemoan its lack of epic, because no great French poet ever even tried—so they did not fail! It would be unjust, suggests Voltaire (drawing on, while distancing himself from, Boileau), to judge France and French epic based on the poems of writers like Chapelain and Scudéry. On the other hand, ‘si un Corneille, un Despréaux, un Racine avaient fait de mauvais poems épiques, on aurait raison de croire l’esprit français incapable de cet ouvrage’ (‘if a Corneille, a Despréaux, or a Racine had written bad epic poems, then one would be right in believing the French spirit incapable of such a work’).31 After discussing various other points—Is the French language somehow insufficient? No. Is rhyme the problem? No.—Voltaire concludes as follows, as if beaten: ‘Il faut avouer qu’il est plus difficile à un Français qu’à un autre de faire un poëme épique’ (‘One must admit that it is more difficult for a Frenchman than for anyone else to write an epic poem’).32 Why? Because, responds the author of the Henriade, ‘de toutes les nations polies, la nôtre est la moins poétique’ (‘of all the civilized nations, ours is the least poetic’).33 And, at this point, he quotes Malezieux. But, precisely, he seems to hint that his epic will be different. As far as my own perspective is concerned, the key point here is that the misreading of Malezieux’s quotation—that is, the non-ironic reading—is challenged not just by the number of editions of the Henriade or by the immediate diffusion to non-Francophone audiences, but also by artistic reactions contained within the book itself. As Juliette Rigal has detailed, in a study whose consequences for the standing of eighteenth-century epic have not been fully digested by literary historians, the successful reception of the Henriade cannot be disassociated from the story of how the images that accompanied the text changed over the decades following the poem’s initial publication.34 Even a quick glance at images from different editions hints at a vibrant community of readers reading and reinventing Voltaire’s text to respond to evolving aesthetic and political concerns. To give just one example, we can note that the images in the 1728 edition, ten large illustrations (one for each book) and ten vignettes, all closely supervised by Voltaire himself, ‘conscientiously evoke, even in a moralizing tone’, each of the Henriade’s ten books. It has even been suggested—I think erroneously—that they could be ‘deleted without prejudice’, as if they add nothing.35 One such image is Figure 5.3, which shows a mounted Henri IV entering into Paris, guided by Religion, who carries a huge cross and Fame (La Renommée) blowing into a trumpet—like Ronsard’s muse on the façade of the Louvre. The figure of Henri IV separates the remaining space between soldiers on the left and bowing Parisians on the right. Now, between 1728 and the French Revolution, a total of seven more series of images would be included 30

Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem, 10:488. Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem, 10:488. 32 Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem, 10:490. 33 Voltaire, The Henriade: An epick poem, 10:491. 34 Juliette Rigal, ‘L’Iconographie de la Henriade au XVIIIe ou la naissance du style troubadour’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 32 (1965), 23–71. 35 Rigal, ‘L’Iconographie de la Henriade’, 28. 31

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Figure 5.3. Henri IV Mounted on his Horse. From book 10 of Voltaire, La Henriade (London, 1728). (Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.)

in subsequent editions of the Henriade—and each would show the Henriade being received in slightly different ways. For example—and in ways similar to what Dubreuil’s Franciade paintings selected from Ronsard’s epic—whereas the 1728 edition depicts Henri IV’s affair with Gabrielle d’Estrées only somewhat prudishly, the king shown only glimpsing his lover in the gardens and from afar, later pictorial suites, starting in 1748, bring the lovers into plain view.36 It is as if the subsequent generations of artists all responded to the Henriade, implicitly offering their own suggestions as to how the poem should be read. All respond to Malezieux’s taunting 36

Rigal, ‘L’Iconographie de la Henriade’, 69.

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slur. The Henriade alone, and not its author, can defend the poem—and the seven series of illustrations seem to trace exactly how well the poem defends itself against Malezieux’s blanket assertion regarding the (un)suitability of epic for French letters. Prejudices against French epic, and French epic’s dialogue with the sister arts, continue hand in hand into the century of Balzac and Flaubert. When Alexandre Soumet, a member of the Académie française, published his Divine Epopée (Divine Epic) in 1840, it became the occasion for renewed reflection on the status of epic within French letters.37 In his review of Soumet’s book, and as if echoing Du Bellay or Jacques Peletier Du Mans, the poet Théophile Gautier defined epic as ‘le but le plus escarpé que puisse tenter la pensée humaine’ (‘the steepest ascension that human thought can attempt’).38 And, while Soumet’s epic was less than successful—it is now, indeed, completely forgotten—Gautier nevertheless noted that it, like any French-authored epic, must be considered ‘un louable effort pour arriver au sommet olympien, qui n’a gardé sur son front, depuis tant de siècles, que l’empreinte ineffaçable de la sandale d’Homère’ (‘a praiseworthy effort to arrive at the summit of Mount Olympus, whose peak, for so many centuries, has been marked only by the ineffaceable imprint of Homer’s sandal’).39 As much as for Du Bellay writing in 1549, production of a French epic was still the measure of literary achievement and the authority of Antiquity was seemingly still intact; and yet France still, according to some, had no epic. It is difficult to read Gautier’s critique of Soumet without thinking of Sainte-Beuve’s excoriating remarks about the Franciade.40 It is also difficult not to connect Gautier’s critique to his own experience as a painter and his role as art critic.41 Until his death, Gautier would express his nostalgia for his career as a painter.42 Gautier’s proximity to Du Bellay was, of course, part of a wider Romantic fascination for epic and for the poets of sixteenth-century France. It has indeed been said that ‘a pagan dream of a new Renaissance . . . lies at the very heart of Gautier’s reflections on life as on art’.43 As François Rigolot has phrased it, there was, more generally, a ‘nineteenth-century infatuation with the Pléiade’, because young writers of the nineteenth-century ‘turned . . . to what classicism

37

Alexandre Soumet, La Divine épopée (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1840). Théophile Gautier, ‘La Divine épopée de M. Soumet’, Revue des deux mondes, 4th ser., 26 (1841), 126. 39 Gautier, ‘La Divine épopée de M. Soumet’, 126. 40 Sainte-Beuve’s critique of the Franciade (‘la tentative ne fut pas heureuse’ (‘the attempt was not a happy one’)), was taken up and echoed in 1857 by Prosper Blanchemain, the editor of Ronsard’s Œuvres complètes, who judges all French epic poems to be ‘faux, froids et ennuyeux à la mort’ (‘false, cold, and deathly boring’) (Phillip John Usher, ‘Introduction’, in Ronsard, The Franciad, pp. lx–lxi.) For further study, see also François Rigolot, ‘Sainte-Beuve et le mythe du XVIe siècle’, L’Esprit créateur, 14 (1974), 35–43. 41 On Gautier as art critic, see the numerous perspectives provided in Théophile Gautier—l’art et l’artiste: Actes du colloque international (Montpellier: La Société Théophile Gautier, 1982). 42 Marianne Cermakian, ‘Les Années d’apprentissage de Théophile Gautier: Peintre ou poète?’, Théophile Gautier—l’art et l’artiste, ii. 223–30. 43 Robert Snell, Théophile Gautier: A Romantic Critic of the Visual Arts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 119. 38

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had itself opposed’.44 And there was certainly a fashion for the Renaissance in the Romantic period, as witnessed by publications such as Prosper Mérimée’s Chronique du règne de Charles IX (1829) or Alexandre Dumas’s Henri III et sa cour (1829) or his later La Reine Margot (1845). Mathilde de la Mole, in Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noir (1830), was fascinated by the Wars of Religion and its chroniclers, including Agrippa D’Aubigné. And it is indeed no coincidence that the public success of Romanticism was marked by a play set in 1519—that is, Hugo’s Hernani (1830).45 The point to be made, then, is that the connection between Gautier’s defence of epic as the genre par excellence, France’s (seeming) inability to produce such an epic, and his role as art critic nourish each other. If Gautier’s idea of epic is related to reaching the summit of Mount Olympus, we might expect to find an echo of this in his critique of William Bouguereau’s Apollon et les Muses (1869), a painting destined for the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux.46 We learn little, however, apart from the fact that Gautier thought something was missing—just as Soumet’s epic, while not a failure, in Gautier’s mind lacked something essential. Even more telling is Gautier’s passion for Eugène Delacroix: ‘Delacroix of all living artists had embodied and promised to fulfil Gautier’s dream of a new Renaissance.’47 For Gautier, Delacroix’s Saint Sébastien synthesized and even went beyond Michelangelo and Raphael. And Raphael is, indeed, a model for Gautier: ‘la plus pure glace reflétant la plus belle femme du monde ne vaut pas une toile de Raphaël’ (‘the purest mirror reflecting the most beautiful woman in the world is not worth a painting by Raphael’).48 Gautier praised Delacroix as an ‘artiste poétique’ (‘a poetic artist’), by which Gautier meant that Delacroix privileged colour, movement, and effect in his painting: Il est poète par le choix particulier des lumières . . . par la disposition bizarre de la scène, par l’arrangement et le caractère des groupes, et non par l’idée en elle-même. (He is a poet because of the specific choice of lighting . . . by the bizarre way he sets up the scene, by the arrangement and character of the groups, and not by the idea itself.)49

Delacroix’s paintings can certainly be considered ‘epic’ in the popular sense of the term: they are huge, they take up events of great importance, they are bold and violent. Delacroix was also the painter of epics and epic poets: he painted Torquato Tasso in the Hospital of St Anna at Ferrara, where, believed to be insane, the author of the Gerusalemme liberata remained from 1579 until 1586—in response to this painting, Gautier expressed his compassion for the epic poet, describing how ‘le pauvre grand poète est assis sur le rebord d’un maigre grabat’ (‘the poor great poet is 44 François Rigolot, ‘The Invention of the Renaissance’, in Hollier (ed.), New History of French Literature, 639. 45 See Phillip John Usher, ‘Hernani’, Literary Encyclopedia, 15 November 2010 . 46 Marie-Hélène Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier—Critique d’Art—Extraits des Salons (1833–72) (Paris: Séguier, 1994), 65–6. 47 Snell, Théophile Gautier, 73. 48 Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier, 160. 49 Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier, 162.

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Figure 5.4. Eugène Delacroix, Dante and Virgil (1822). Oil on canvas. Louvre, Paris, France. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.)

seated on the edge of a meager sickbed’) and how ‘les autres fous irrités de la présence de cet hôte inconnu, plongent leurs bras et leurs têtes à travers le grillage de sa chambre’ (‘the other madmen, irritated by the presence of this unknown guest, stick their arms and heads into his room, through the bars’).50 Delacroix also painted Virgil’s Cumaean Sibyl, which Gautier also praises by affirming that ‘Giorgione et le Tintoret n’ont rien fait de plus palpitant’ (‘Giorgione and Tintoretto have produced nothing that is more thrilling’).51 In Delacroix’s rendering, Virgil’s priestess is said to be ‘quelque chose de sculptural et d’altier qui sent la peinture monumentale’ (‘something sculptural and haughty and which smacks of monumental painting’).52 Delacroix also painted the Elysée des poètes, based on Dante, not to mention his Dante and Virgil (Figure 5.4).53 From these various points, it emerges that Gautier saw French art succeeding (with Delacroix) where he saw it failing in epic—and yet, for Gautier, the two domains were clearly intimately connected, a topic that cannot be fully explored here. It would be possible to continue advancing in time, to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—although one cannot help feeling that the debates, which

50 52

Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier, 164. Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier, 165.

51 53

Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier, 165. Girard (ed.), Théophile Gautier, 170.

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take on related forms from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, somehow splinter and multiply almost out of control as we approach the present. There would surely be much to say about the 1930s:54 in Virgil’s Aeneid authors sought out and found both models of democracy and models of fascism: on the left, the works of Louis Aragon contain numerous epic echoes; on the right, Robert Brasillach (who was executed for collaboration) published his Présence de Virgile (1931), a speculative biography of Virgil that defended French culture (and its Virgilian latinité) against German philosophers and philologists—a case of what Oswald Spenser has called ‘Caesarism’—that is, the search for a ‘strong man’ during times of crisis. Productive enquiry might focus on such reworkings of Roman epic in relation to those engaged artists who took positions for or against fascism— surely Picasso’s Guernica (1937) stands, in a sense, as a proto-pessimistic reading of Brasillach’s triumphalist appropriation of Virgil. There would also be cause to reread Monique Wittig’s Virgile, non (1985)—translated, curiously, into English as Across the Acheron—for its Pasolini-like visionary quality; and to turn, also, to comic books (bandes dessinées) like Michel Laporte’s Douze récits de l’Enéide (2010), illustrated by Sochard Frédéric and whose happy ending—readers are encouraged to imagine general reconciliation and the happy wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia— both echo that Renaissance ‘epilogue’ furnished by Maffeo Veggio’s Aeneidos Liber XIII (Thirteenth Book of the Aeneid) and (dangerously) erase within the text questions of empire and domination. The ground-breaking work of Fiona Cox55—about Virgil’s presence in twentieth-century French writing—suggests multiple entrance points to further study. But it is challenging, in any general way, to think of major epic works in the twentieth century that also connect to the sister arts. The coordinates of study have seemingly changed, while the debates of the four previous centuries continue to haunt the halls of academia—where the Franciade, Alaric, and the Henriade are rarely studied without scorn. Even from this small sampling of epic arts at moments outside the Renaissance, it is clear that, over the centuries, French epic has been longed for, imagined, written, read, and critiqued by individuals also fascinated by, and deeply involved in reflecting upon, the sister arts. This book has studied this reality within a given time frame, from the late fifteenth century up to 1616, underlining in particular how the genre as genre evolved because of such connections and also how we, as readers, must seek out such overlaps if we are to read French epic with anything like the kind of appreciation contemporary readers probably also had, although immediately and, one might surmise, without needing to intellectualize the process. A fitting emblem with which to close this book can be found in Montaigne’s chapter ‘Des plus excellens hommes’ (‘On the Most Excellent Men’), of whom Homer is one—Montaigne considers him almost divine: 54 These comments draw on Phillip John Usher, ‘French Reception’, in Richard Thomas and Jan Ziolkwoski (eds), The Virgil Encyclopedia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming). 55 See especially Fiona Cox, Aeneas takes the Metro: Virgil’s Presence in Twentieth-Century French Literature (Oxford: Legenda, 1999), and Sibylline Sisters: Virgil’s Presence in Contemporary Women’s Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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Et, à la verité, je m’estonne souvent que luy, qui a produit et mis en credit au monde plusieurs deitez par son auctorité, n’a gaigné reng de Dieu luy mesme. (And in truth, I am often astonished that he, who produced and sang the praises of several deities thanks to his own authority/authorship has not himself been made a god.)56

Among the facts, anecdotes, and examples that Montaigne gathers in celebration of Homer is the following: Alexandre le grand, ayant rencontré parmy les despouilles de Darius un riche coffret, ordonna que on le luy reservat pour y loger son Homere, disant que c’estoit le meilleur et plus fidelle conseiller qu’il eut en ses affaires militaires. (Alexander the Great, having found amidst Darius’s spoils a magnificent casket, ordered that it be put aside for him, so that he could keep his edition of Homer in it—he explained that Homer was the best and most faithful adviser he ever had in military matters.)57

Montaigne’s chapter, which celebrates Homer, thus includes within it reference to a luxurious casket used to store Homer’s epics. It is as if the text itself reveals its insufficiency to contain its praise of Homer; it replicates its own celebration via a mise en abyme. By recalling how Alexander the Great kept his copies of Homer’s epics in a special coffret, Montaigne points to an understanding of epic that was certainly Macedonian, but also alive and vibrant in the French Renaissance. It might be finally said that the epic poets studied in this book perhaps do not even need special coffrets—in their dialogue with the sister arts, in which they sometimes mimicked or destroyed existing architectural or pictorial objects, and sometimes became inspiration for them, they created epics that became their own richly wrought works of art.

56 Michel de Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and Verdun L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), 751. 57 Montaigne, Essais, 753.

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Index Abate, Niccolò dell’ 31, 41 n. 80, 134, 137 n. 70 Académie Française 212 Achates 29 Achilles 1, 8–9, 55, 88, 89, 90, 93, 96, 115 n. 174 Aegaeon 109, 111, 141 Aeneas 5–6, 8, 28–9, 33, 49, 53, 55–60, 95, 105, 114, 120, 126, 140, 149, 203, 206 n. 10, 215 Aeneid, see Virgil, Aeneid Agamemnon 23, 53 Ajax 94 Alberti, Leon Battista 10 n. 26, 20 n. 73, 46 Albret, Jeanne d’ 134, 146 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 30 Alençon, Duke of 108 Allecto 112–18, 188 Allegoria delle vittorie di Carlo V 102–3 allegory 1 n. 3, 4 n. 11, 5, 8, 11, 14, 27, 29, 35–7, 55–60, 70, 74, 84, 87–91, 95–7, 99–100, 102–3, 154, 164 n. 21, 177, 189–90, 202 n. 2, 203 Allegory of the Good Architect 189 Amboise (Château d’) 80 Ancy-le-Franc (Château d’) 10, 30, 60–73 Andromache, see Andromaque Andromaque 132 Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques I 15, 61, 62, 81, 147 n. 120, 170 Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques II 186 n. 135 Anet (Château d’) 44 animal similes 94–5, 98, 117–18 anti-triumphalism 73, 158 Antoine III de Clermont 61, 71–3 Apelles 110–11 Aphrodite 1, 4 n. 11, 53, 55 n. 134, 110, 126, 143, 179, 189, 199–201 apocalypse 11, 161 Apollo 51–2, 100, 120 n. 2, 140 n. 83, 213 apophétie 168 architectural orders 42, 60, 183–4 architecture: and Calvinism 165–201 classical forms in Renaissance France 1 n. 1, 42–6, 140 and classical rhetoric 20 n. 73 depicted on book’s frontispiece 73–4 depicted by Primaticcio 42–6 at Fontainebleau 32 n. 42, 41 n. 79, 42–6, 61 n. 159, 80 n. 26 and gender 46–7, 185–6 and literature 4, 13, 15, 20 n. 73, 42–9, 73–4, 127–8, 166–88

and man’s place in the universe in Scève’s Microcosme 13 more/less durable than poetry 82–5, 127 in Paris 132–8, 171–90 pictorial representations of 123, 136–7, 184–5, 187, 193–5 relationship to La Franciade 121–32, 139–41 relationship to La Galliade 15 relationship to Ronsard’s Odes 127–8 relationship to the Odyssey 46–9 relationship to the Tragiques 160–201 renewal in Renaissance France 15, 16 n. 47, 42–6, 50, 60–1, 79–80, 129, 147–8 as reward for poets in Du Bellay’s Regrets 4 and Shakespeare 20 n. 73 in treaties 13 n. 34, 15 n. 45, 43, 44 n. 92, 60–1, 99, 122, 183–90, 203 n. 6 see also: Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques I; Androuet du Cerceau, Jacques II; architectural orders; Brosse, Salomon de; Brunelleschi, Filippo; Bullant, Jean; capital (of column); Cathédrale de Rodez; château; cornice; façade (architectural); Fontainebleau; François Ier; galleries; guillochis; Hôtel de Soissons; Le Breton, Gilles; Lescot, Pierre; Louvre; Martin, Jean; Orme, Philibert de l’; over-ornamentation; Palais de Justice; Philandrier, Guillaume; Serlio, Sebastiano; Vitruvius; windows Ares 51–2, 75, 110–18 Aretino, Pietro 64 Argonautica 156, 157 Ariosto 17 n. 56, 18 n. 57, 20 n. 73, 78, 94 aristeia 66, 115 Aristotle 37, 88 armour 143 artillery 109–11 Ascanius 55, 59, 114 assembly of the gods 52–3, 149 Astyanax, see Francus Athena 1, 52 Aubigné, Agrippa d’ 160–201 Avantures du Baron de Faeneste 178 Sa vie à ses enfants 161 Tragiques (Les) 160–201, 204 appropriation of triumphal arches 166–70 Book-by-book: Préface 165–71 1. Misères 161 2. Princes 161, 197–8

246 Aubigné, Agrippa d’ (cont.) 3. Chambre dorée 161, 165 n. 22, 171–81 4. Les Feux 161 5. Les Fers 161, 181–91 6. Vengeances 161 7. Jugement 161, 165 n. 23, 199 context of publication 160–1 generic definition 164 n. 21 Louvre (and the) 181–90 painterly nature 162–3 Palais de Justice (and the) 171–81 published under pseudonym 168 Vasari (and paintings of Giorgio) 190–9 Augustus 206 n. 10 Avant-chant nuptial, see Jamyn, Amadis Badius, Josse 56 Baldung Grien, Hans 162, 174 baroque 4 n. 14, 7 n. 18, 13, 81, 142, 163, 202, 208 Basil of Caesarea 35 Bégat, Jean 71 Belleforest, François de 144, 157–8, 175–7 Bellini, Giovanni 154 Bellona 197 Bergier, Nicolas de 12 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 208 Binet, Claude 121, 131, 139 Blois (Château de) 80 Boccaccio 29 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 17 n. 56 Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas 17, 207–10 Bosch, Hieronymus 162 Bouguereau, William 213 Boulogne, Bois de (Château de), see Madrid (Château de) Bouquet, Simon 133–8 Bourbon, (Connétable) Charles de 89, 94, 112, 116 Bourg, Anne du 173 Bramante, Donato 42 Briareus, see Aegaeon Brosse, Salomon de 170, 201 Brunelleschi, Filippo 45 Bruno, Leonardi 35–6 Brutus 66 Budé, Guillaume 37, 40, 82, 119 Bullant, Jean 183, 186 cabinet 49 n. 114, 87 n. 60, 90, 169, 182 caduceus 7 Caesar 60, 66, 68 Caesarism 215 Callimachus 127 Calliope 126, 128–32 Calvin, Jean 163, 164 n. 21 Calypso 33 Camões, Luís Vaz de 18 n. 56

Index Canter, Guillaume 37 cantus gestualis, see chanson de geste capital (of column) 139–40, 184, 185 Caron, Antoine 22, 83, 100, 101 n. 119, 137, 162 Carthage 5–6, 28–9 cartouches, 54–5 cassoni 10, 23–9, 203 Castello, Giovanni Battista 30 catabasis 6, 49 Cathédrale de Rodez 203 Cato 66, 178, 197–8 Catullus 125 Cellini, Benevenuto 1, 81 Cerisoles (Battle of) 101 Chapelain, Jean 20, 202, 210 Châtel, Pierre du 82 Chiron 89, 96 Chambord (Château de) 80 chanson de geste 20, 207 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 11, 79, 81–2, 89, 101–18, 111–19, 132, 204 see also Plus ultra Charles IX (King of France) 11, 13, 71, 81–2, 89, 101–18, 111–19, 132, 204 connection to the Galerie d’Ulysse 32–3, 40–1 dedicatee of La Franciade 132 depicted by Giorgio Vasari 191–5 marriage to Elisabeth of Austria 132–8 painted in the Vatican 191 royal entry into Paris 132–9 royal tour of France 181 Charon 59 Charybdis 63 château, see Amboise; Ancy-le-franc; Anet; Chambord; Chenonceau; Fontainebleau; Madrid; Oiron; palace of Prince Dicée; SaintGermain-en-Laye; Tuileries Chenonceau (Château de) 44, 50, 174 Circe 30 Clouet, François 22 Clouet, Jean 22 Clymène (character in La Franciade) 150, 152 Coligny, Gaspard de 191–8 Collège de France 124 column 42, 169, 182–7 comb (in art and poetry) 153–4 commentaries (Virgilian) 8, 29, 56–7, 74; see also allegory; Landino; Servius Conti, Natale 31 n. 34, 177 n. 91 copia 144 cornice 73, 89 Corrozet, Gilles 19, 80, 124 Cortile del Belvedere (Rome) 31, 44 corybant 141–2 Corneille, Pierre 210 Counter-Reformation 160

Index Cousin, Jean (The Elder) 21 Cousin, Jean (The Younger) 22 Crete 120, 139–40, 159 Cronos 141 Cympolea 141–2 Dante 17 n. 56, 35, 94–5, 161–2, 164, 165, 214 Dares 27 Da Vinci, Leonardo 21, 67–70, 73, 81 Deffence, et illustration, see Du Bellay, Deffence, et illustration Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eugène 213–14 devil, see Satan Diane de Poitiers 51, 72 Dicée, Prince (character in La Franciade) 140–4, 149–51 Dictys 27, 54 Dido 4 n. 13, 5, 8, 28–9, 56, 59, 140 discord, apple of 1–2 distemper painting 49–60 Dolce, Ludovico 10 n. 26 Dolet, Etienne 10–13, 75–119, 204 biographies 75 n. 2 Fata/Gestes 10 differences between Latin/French texts 99, 110 fatum (meaning of) 77, 108–9 related to Francois Ier’s architectural program 79–82 related to Galerie Francois Ier 84–99 related to non-French art 99–108 frescoes 102–3 tapestries 103–8 related to second ascension 79–82 representation of Marignano 108–11 representation of Pavia 111–18 self-definition as monument 82–3 sources 95, 109 knowledge of Fontainebleau 85 portrait 76 student in Toulouse 75–7 see also François Ier; Galerie François Ier; translation; Virgil domumductio 1 Dorat, Jean 4 n. 11, 35–7, 40, 74, 134 Dossi, Dosso 30 Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste 13–14, 16, 20 n. 74, 205 Du Bellay, Joachim 18, 19 Antiquitez de Rome 3, 122, 203 and architecture 4, 19 call for French epic 3–4, 138, 207, 212 compared to Dolet 78 Deffence, et illustration 3, 121, 122, 125, 128 echoed by Théophile Gautier 212 judgment of La Franciade 138–9 and Lucan 4 n. 14 ‘Monomachie de David et de Goliath’ 4

247 ‘Prosphonématique au roi treschretien Henri II’ 124 Regrets 4, 37, 122, 139, 203 role in Henri II’s royal entry 121–5, 131, 159 student at the Collège de Coqueret 36 translator of Virgil 4 n. 13 understanding of Odysseus 37 see also ‘Heureux qui comme Ulysse . . . ’; Pléiade (La); translation

Dubreuil, Toussaint 61 n. 163, 145–59, 160, 204, 211 Dumas, Alexandre 213 Dürer, Albrecht 101, 162, 174 n. 74 Edict of Nantes 12, 170, 201 Eglise Saint-Eustache 183 Egyptianizing decoration 44 ekphrasis 18 n. 58, 139–45, 172, 180, 201 Elisabeth of Austria, see Charles IX enargeia 13 entablature 44, 73 entrée royale, see royal entry epic: definitions: Aubigné, Agippa d’ 165–71 Du Bellay, Joachim 3, 121 Mans, Jacques Peletier du 3 Perrault, Charles 208 Ronsard, Pierre de 139–41 Télin, Guillaume 20–1 Voltaire 209 eighteenth-century 209–12 encyclopaedic 13–16 first post-classical representations in art 23–30 first use of word in French 20 n. 74 in French Renaissance: corpus 3 critical judgments of 1–2, 4, 18 interpreted via art 5–8, 13–14, 26–7, 37–40, 46–9, 54–60, 66–71, 88–97, 99–108, 129–32, 132–4, 145–59, 171–6, 182–8, 191–9 recent studies about 16–18 relationship to history 10, 26–30, 31–2, 40–1, 49–50, 71–3, 76–7, 79–83, 121–5, 132–7, 160–1, 180–1, 194–9, 199–201 renewal of French language (and) 3–4 medieval 207 mocked by Boileau 207 seventeenth-century 207–9 see also Aeneas; allegory; animal similes; Aubigné, Agrippa d’, Tragiques; Camões, Luís Vaz de; Dante; Du Bartas; chanson de geste; commentaries (Virgilian); Dolet, Fata; Dolet, Gestes;
; Francus; Homer; Lucan; roman; Ronsard, La Franciade; translation; Scève; Virgil

248

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 20 n. 74 Eris 1 Epirus 132, 149 Ercilla, Alonso de 18 n. 56, 18 n. 57 æ 46 eschatology 162, 165, 168, 179, 200 Estrées, Gabrielle d’ 151, 211  ÆEæ 39–40 Euripides 9, 150 Eurycleia 44–6 Evander 77 Eva Prima Pandora 21 façade (architectural) 1, 11, 15, 31, 50, 62, 111, 129–32, 139–40, 145, 159, 204, 210 Fama 113, 128–32, 210 Fantuzzi, Antonio 85 fascism 215 fatum 77, 108, 111, 118 n. 185 Félibien, André 22 n. 79 Fermeluy, Jean 12 Ficino, Marsilio 55 Fontainebleau 1, 2, 8, 9, 10–11, 21, 30, 31–49, 50, 52, 60–1, 63, 66, 69, 73, 74, 80, 81–2, 84–111, 119, 132, 144, 148–9 style of 11, 49, 50–2, 60, 63, 66, 69, 73–4, 85, 144 see also Da Vinci, Leonardo; Dolet, Etienne; François Ier; Galerie François Ier; Galerie d’Ulysse; Primaticcio, Francesco; Rosso Fiorentino; Serlio, Sebastiano foreshortening 69 fortuna 76–7 forzieri, see cassoni ‘Français n’ont pas la tête épique! (Les)’ 209–10 Francion, see Francus François Ier 1, 9, 11, 49, 60, 75–119, 124, 141, 170, 204 as Aegaeon 109 architectural initiatives 32, 42, 80–1 art collection 1 n. 1, 43 celebrated for excellence in the arts 52, 83, 124 dedicatee of the Galerie du Grand Ecuyer 50–1 depicted in non-French art 99–108 and Dolet, Etienne 13, 75–119 as Heracles 98, 122–3 marriages 98, 147 patronage of artists 31, 61, 81 royal entry into Toulouse 42 salamander, emblem of 85 second ascension 79–84 translations of Homer for 11, 32, 33 see also Galerie François Ier; Dolet, Etienne; Heracles; Madrid (Treaty of) François II 132

Francus 120–1, 126–8, 134, 137, 143, 145–59, 207 armour 143 mocked by Du Bellay 139 name 143–4 painted by Toussaint Dubreuil 145–59 on triumphal arch 132–8 as viewer of art 140–2 Fredegar (Pseudo-) 21 n. 77, 121, 210 frescoes 1, 22, 30, 49, 64, 68 n. 177, 88–91, 98, 102–4 frieze 73, 139–40 frontispiece 73, 137, 140 Gaguin, Robert 78, 109, 112 Galerie de Pharsale (Ancy-le-Franc) 10, 30, 60–73, 203 Galerie du Grand Ecuyer (Oiron) 10, 30, 49–60, 74 Galerie d’Ulysse (Fontainebleau) 10, 30, 31–49, 60–3, 73–4, 81, 148, 203 Galerie François Ier (Fontainebleau) 84–99 galleries 30 defined by Serlio 99 see also Galerie de Pharsale; Galerie du Grand Ecuyer; Galerie d’Ulysse; Galerie François Ier; Gallery of Geographic Maps Gallery of Geographic Maps (Vatican) 31 Gallic Hercules, see Heracles garden design 44, 148, 211 Garnier, Claude 157–8 Garnier, Sébastien 145 Gautier, Théophile 212–4 Genouillac, Galiot de 111, 116 Gessée, Jean de la 144, 145 Geuffrin, Nicolas 3 Giorgi, Francesco 15 Giovanni, Apollonio di 1, 25–9 Adventures of Odysseus 25–6 Dido and Aeneas 28–9 Glaucus 150 Gombrich, Ernst H. 18 Gouffier, Claude 49–51, 59, 60 Goujon, Jean 11, 15, 129, 132, 204 Goulart, Simon 135 Goya, Francisco 162 graffiti (as metaphor) 11, 160, 165, 195, 201 grotto 148, 167–9 guilloché, see guillochis guillochis 139–40 Guise, François de 72 Haye, Robert de la 131 Hecate 154 Hector 24, 120, 126, 129, 137, 144, 157–8 Heemskerck, Maerten van 102–4 Helen 1, 53 Helenus (uncle of Francus) 132

Index Hélisenne de Crenne 53, 95 n. 91 Hell 6, 17 n. 56, 35, 53–9, 74, 114, 154–5, 196 see also Mouth of hell Henri II 71 at the Château-Neuf de Saint-Germain-enLaye 147 death 132 dedicatee of the Galerie du Grand Ecuyer 50–2 dedicatee of Odyssey translation 33 enthronement 11 and the Franciade 121–8, 129–32 and the Galerie d’Ulysse 32, 35, 41 and the Galerie François Ier 96 royal entry in Orléans 170 royal entry in Paris 121, 144 royal entry in Rouen 52 Henri III 31, 41, 157, 161 n. 4, 180–1, 213 Henri IV 11, 80 n. 26, 160 abjuration 161 n. 4, 169 death 168 dedicatee of Garnier 157 and the Franciade 145–59 and Toussaint Dubreuil 145–59, 204 as Vert Gallant 150 in Voltaire’s Henriade 209–12 Henri VIII (King of England) 81, 96, 125 Henriade (generic title) 145 Henriade, La (Voltaire) 209–12 Hephaestus 55, 91 Hera 1, 29, 113–4, 140 Heracles 34, 61 n. 163, 123–4, 98, 122, 148 Hercules, see Heracles Hermes 7, 9, 132, 143, 149, 158, 189 Hesiod 109, 141, 171, 177 n. 91, 179 ‘Heureux qui, comme Ulysse . . . ’ 4, 37 Hippocrene 51 Horace 125, 128 Hugo, Victor 213 Hyante (character in La Franciade) 149–50, 152, 154–7 Hyginus 177 n. 91 hyperbole 73 iconoclasm 162–3, 173 Iphigenia 53 Ithaca 32–3, 37 Iulus, see Ascanius Jallier, Noël 22, 49, 52–3, 54, 56, 58 Jamyn, Amadis 134 Jason 4 n. 11, 156 Judgment of Paris 53 Juno, see Hera Jupiter, see Zeus Homer 1, 9, 23, 129, 157, 165, 207–8 n. 18 in Alberti’s De pictura 46 epic similes 88, 97

249

Iliad 26, 53, 109, 158 compared to La Franciade 158 depiction in art: galleries: see Galerie du Grand Ecuyer paintings 31 tapestries 9 translation by Hugues Salel, see Salel manuscripts 26 model for supreme poet 16, 129, 139, 212, 215–6 Odyssey 26 depictions in art: cassoni 25–7 frescoes 30 galleries: see Galerie d’Ulysse paintings 29–30, 31; see also Galerie d’Ulysse tapestries 29, 31 woodcuts 30 translations 26, 32, 33 in Rabelais 9 in the Regrets 4 see also Achilles; allegory; Galerie d’Ulysse; Odysseus; Penelope; translation Horae 179 Hôtel de Soissons 183 île de la cité 135, 172–81 Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye 9, 54, 121 Ino 150 irony 3, 201, 209 Italianism 11, 21, 31, 44, 60, 84, 111, 132, 139, 202 Jamyn, Amadis 134 Krieger, Murray 18 La Boderie, Guy Le Fèvre de 14–16 Landino, Cristoforo 29, 55, 59–60 Lanzi Palace 30 Laporte, Michel 215 La Rochelle (Siege of) 72 laughter 169, 197–8 Le Breton, Gilles 80 Lee, Rensselaer W. 17 Lemaire de Belges, Jean 9–10, 19, 54, 121 Leontius (Pilatus) 26 Lepanto (Battle of) 195 n. 151, 205–6 Lescot, Pierre 11, 15, 43, 61, 129, 131–2 Ligue (Catholic) 149, 180–1 Limoges enamels 5–6, 8, 56, 58–9 Long Gallery (Whitehall) 31 long poëme: terminology 20 see also epic Louvre 2, 11, 14, 15, 21, 22, 43, 61, 81, 128–32, 139, 145, 148, 165, 186–8, 208

250

Index

Lucan 1, 4, 10, 18 n. 57, 30, 60–74, 78, 79, 164–5, 203 Lucretius 59 Luxembourg (palace) 170 macabre 174 McGowan, Margaret 1 n. 1, 10 n. 26, 19–20, 37 n. 64, 43 n. 89, 43 n. 64 medallion 101 Macé, René 81 Madrid (Château de) 80–1, 100 Madrid (Treaty of) 76, 79 n. 19 mannerism 11, 44, 64, 67, 84, 101, 163 Mans, Jacques Peletier du 3, 33, 164 n. 21, 212 margins 95, 113 Marignano (Battle of) 89, 100, 108–11, 115–16, 118 Marot, Clément 19, 122, 128, 163, 171 marriage chests, see cassoni Mars, see Ares Martial 173 Martin, Jean 15, 43, 78 n. 12, 121 Master of the Aeneid, see Limoges enamels Medamothi (island of) 8–9 Medea 150, 154, 156 Médicis, Cathérine de 41, 132, 186–9 Médicis, Marie de 169 m garn 45 Menelaus 53–4 Mercury, see Hermes Mérimée, Prosper 213 metapoesis 41 metonymy 142, 175 metope 189 Metropolitan Museum of Art 5–8 Michelangelo 13–14, 21, 64, 69, 73, 195, 213 Milton, John 18, 20 n. 73, 94 Minerva 51–2, 91 mise en abyme 44, 140, 216 mise en prose 78, 202 Mitchell, William J. Thomas 18 Montaigne, Michel de 37 n. 66, 72, 215–16 Montmorency (connétable de) 72, 167 n. 33 Montreuil, Pierre de 173 moulding 73 Mount Helicon 51 Mouth of Hell 6, 155 Muses 51, 83, 213 see also Calliope mythology 1, 9, 19, 31 n. 34, 85, 87, 91, 96, 111, 116, 118, 177 n. 91 nation 8, 20–1, 59, 72, 75, 77 n. 9, 78, 79, 89, 97–8, 108, 112, 115, 146, 157, 186, 209 see also Trojan origins Navarre, Maguerite de 19, 96, 98 n. 106 Neptune, see Poseidon Nisus and Euryalus 115 n. 174

nstB 45 Nostredame, César de 12 Odysseus 26, 63, 203 according to Dante 35 according to Dorat 35–7 according to Natale Conti 31 n. 34 according to Virgil 33–5 as architect 47 depicted by Pellegrino Tibaldi 30 depicted by Pordenone 31 and perspective 46 and return of classical forms 41–6 as trickster 33 as vir prudens 37–40 on wedding cassone 25–8 ubiquity in Italian art 30 see also Homer; Galerie d’Ulysse Oiron (Château d’) 30, 49–60, 74 Orley, Bernard van 103–9, 112, 118 Orme, Philibert de l’ 15, 147, 182–90, 203 Orpheus 148 over-ornamentation 166, 208 see also baroque Ovid 9, 125, 166–7, 171, 177 painting 1, 8, 10, 32, 34, 41, 46, 49, 50, 59, 63, 66–70, 73, 82–103, 134–5, 139–41, 145–59, 202, 204, 205, 208–9, 211, 213–14 compared to poetry 18, 19, 22, 84–108, 178–80, 190–7 considered as synonym for art 21–2 as metaphor for poetry 4 as rival to literature 27, 75, 82–3, 84–108, 162, 180, 196–200 as source of poetry 14 related to the Aeneid, see Galerie du Grand Ecuyer related to the Fata 84–99, 99–108 related to the Franciade 145–89 related to the Metamorphoses 167 related to the Odyssey 29–30; see also Galerie d’Ulysse related to the Pharsalia, see Galerie de Pharsale related to the Tragiques 162, 179–80, 190–7 reproducing Ronsard’s aesthetics 151 see also Abate, Niccolò dell’; Alberti, Leon Battista; Clouet, François; Clouet, Jean; distemper painting; Dossi, Dosso; Dubreuil, Toussaint; foreshortening; Galerie de Pharsale; Galerie du Grand Ecuyer; Galerie d’Ulysse; Giovanni, Apollonio; Goya, Francisco; Limoges enamels; mannerism; Michelangelo; Picasso, Pablo; Pintoricchio; portrait; Rosso Fiorentino; Rubens, Peter Paul; Rugieri, Rugiero de’; Sala Regia; Tintoretto

Index palace of Prince Dicée 141–2 Palais de Justice 135, 165, 171–89 Palinurus 4 n. 13, 56, 58 Palissy, Bernard 14, 167 Pandora 21, 89, 91 Paris (capital of France) 9, 10, 11, 15, 73, 75, 80, 110, 121, 124, 125, 128, 130, 81, 132–38, 144, 146, 147, 159, 161, 165, 171–88, 199, 201, 204, 210 Paris (prince of Troy) 1, 9, 53–4, 59, 137, 144 see Judgment of Paris; Trojan origins ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ 146 Parlement (de Paris) 173–4 Parthenius (of Nicaea) 27 pathos 105 Patinir, Joachim 101 Patroclus 53 patronage 19, 41, 52, 82, 108, 127, 199, 203 Pavia (Battle of) 10, 11, 72, 76, 80, 82 artistic depictions of 99–108 Dolet’s depiction of 111–18 pavimento 46 Pegasus 51, 207 Peleus 9, 23–4, 89 Penelope 28 n. 15, 29, 33, 37, 44, 46–8 Perino del Vaga (Piero Buonaccorsi) 104–5, 149, 195 Perrault, Charles 49, 208–9 personification 89, 154, 178 Peruzzi, Baldassarre 31 Petrarch 4, 17 n. 56, 18 n. 57, 26–7, 154 n. 152, 156 Pharsalus (Battle of) 60 Philandrier, Guillaume 203 Phovère 207 Picasso, Pablo 162, 215 pilaster 61, 182–3, 186 Pilon, Germain 134, 180–1 Pindar 36 n. 60, 125, 129 Pizan, Christine de 24 Pintoricchio 29 Pléiade (La) 3, 4 n. 12, 12, 121–2, 134, 139, 153, 154, 203, 212 see also Dorat, Jean; Du Bellay, Joachim; Ronsard, Pierre de Plus ultra (devise of Charles V) 102 Poggi Palace 30 political alliances 72, 134, 137 Polyphemus 25–7, 38–40 Polyxena 9 Pompey 60, 66, 70 Pordenone 31 portrait 22, 27 n. 12, 75 n. 1, 76, 98 n. 106, 99, 149, 151 n. 142, 154, 174, 176, 178 Poseidon 1–2, 38, 148, 149 n. 128 Posthomerica 157 Priam 70 Primaticcio, Francesco 21, 30, 31–49, 61 n. 163, 64, 73, 81, 82, 85 n. 50, 141, 147, 204

251

prophecy 149–50, 154–5, 158, 162, 171, 186, 199–201 see also apophétie prudence see prudentia prudentia 37, 41, 52, 60, 74, 80, 124, 189–90 Pulmann, Theodor 70 putti 84 Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns 207–8 Quint, David 17, 18 n. 57, 73, 78–9, 161 n. 5, 163, 164, 179 Rabelais 8–9 Raphael 42 Ravaillac, François 146 recuperative narrative 112 Renommée (La), see Fama Reveille-Matin 144 Rhea 141 romans 78 n. 14, 110, 207 romanticism 212 Romulus 126 Ronsard, Pierre de 4, 8, 19, 36, 82 120–59 Abbrégé de l’art poetique 129 Amours 153 ‘Avantentrée du roi treschretien’ 125 complaints about foreign painters 82 definition of allegory 97 Discours des miseres de ce temps 199 ‘Elégie à Janet’ 22 Franciade (La) 2, 3, 11, 13, 16, 120–59, 160, 163, 176–7, 188, 204, 207, 210–11 birth of 121–8 critical judgments of 18, 212 n. 40 decasyllable (choice of) 139 depicted in paintings 145–59 depicting artistic objects 138–45 editions 144 extension of Henri II’s royal entry 125 judged by Du Bellay 138–9 ‘livre plein de Rois’ (called) 137, 149 Louvre (and the) 128–32 poetic museum (as) 139 ‘Préface sur la Franciade’ 139 quoted by Belleforest 176–7 sequels 3, 157–9 unfinished state 120, 144 see also Francus ‘Hymne de France’ 125 ‘Hymne de la Justice’ 171 Odes 126–8, 131 reader of Lemaire de Belges 121 role in royal entry of Charles IX 135 royal patronage 127 Second livre des poèmes 131 student at the Collège de Chenac 36 verses for royal entry of Charles IX 137

252

Index

Rosso Fiorentino (Giovanni Battista di Jacopo) 9 n. 22, 21, 44, 73, 81, 82, 84, 86, 92–3, 97, 99, 149, 203 royal entry, see Henri II, royal entry in Orléans, Paris, Rouen; Charles IX, royal entry in Paris Rubens, Peter Paul 68–9, 162 Rubicon 66 Rugieri, Rugiero de’ 61, 148 sack of Rome 102 Saint-Amant, Antoine Girard, sieur de 18 n. 57, 207–8 Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 144, 146, 161, 191–6 Saint-Gelais, Octovien de 95 Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Château-Neuf de) 145–59 Saint-Maur-des-Fossés 15, 51, 203 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 200, 212 Sainte-Chapelle (Paris) 165, 173–5, 178, 186 Sala Regia (Vatican) 49, 190–9 Salel, Hugues 32–3, 53 saliera 1–2, 141 Sangallo the Younger 195, 203 Sannazaro, Jacopo 121 Satan 115, 172, 181–9, 196, 198 as architect 186 satire 161 Saturn, see Cronos Scaliger, Julius Caesar 20 n. 74, 72–3 Scève, Maurice 13–16 Scibec de Capri 84 Scudéry, Georges de 202, 207–8, 210 sculpture 1, 7, 15, 22, 83, 84, 121, 129, 131, 134–5, 202, 209 see also Goujon, Jean; Pilon, Germain Scylla, see Charybdis Sebillet, Thomas 121–2, 124–8 Serlio, Sebastiano 13 n. 34, 15, 43–4, 60–1, 69, 72, 99, 203 n. 6 Servius 55–6 shield of Achilles 55, 88 Sibyl 55, 214 simile 11, 78, 84, 88–98, 117, 144, 154, 156, 208 comparison with allegory, 95–7; see also allegory, animal similes Sirens 63–4 sister arts 2–18, 22, 29–31, 77, 82–4, 99, 103, 111, 118, 120, 127, 159, 160, 162, 165, 203–4, 212, 215–6 see also architecture; music; painting; sculpture; tapestry Songe de Poliphile 121 Spenser, Edmund 4, 17 n. 56, 20 n. 73, 94, 96 n. 97 Speroni, Sperone 3 sphinx 42–4 staircase 183, 186

Statius 113 n. 155 statue 50, 136, 176, 182–3, 186 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) 213 strapwork 84–5 stucco 84, 195 Symeoni, Gabriel 43 tableaux spirituels 196–9 tableware 141–2 see saliera tapestry 8–10, 12, 18, 22, 29, 31, 82, 85, 100, 103–8 Tartarus 56, 113 see also hell Tasso, Torquato 17 n. 56, 18 n. 57, 20 n. 73, 44, 115, 164–5, 213 Telemachus 29, 44 y lamB 46 Themis 178, 179–80 Thetis 9, 23–4, 52 Thulden, Theodoor van 32, 34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48 Tibaldi, Pellegrino 30 Tiberius 27 n. 12 Tintoretto (Jacopo Comin) 162, 214 Tortorel and Perrissin 70, 163, Tory, Geoffroy 81 n. 32 Tour de l’Horloge 180–1 Tower of Babel 173–4, 201 translation 35, 78, 209, 215 and art 5, 7, 26, 33, 53, 84, 203 n. 7 and interpretive community 5, 7, 23, 74, 203 of architectural treaties 13 n. 34, 15–16, 43, 121–2 of the Bible 163, 171, 173 of Homer 26–7, 32–3 self-translation 12, 77, 110–11, 115–17 of verse into prose 78, 202 of Virgil 4, 5 n. 17, 30, 53, 95, 97 Trissino, Gian Giorgio 17 n. 56 triumphal arch 1, 42, 122, 132–4, 136–7, 167–8 triumphalism 11–12, 60, 73, 79, 108–11, 118, 130, 167, 215; see also anti-triumphalism triumvirate 72 Trojan horse 33, 53–4 Trojan origins (of the French) 9, 53, 121, 126, 137, 143, 157, 159 Trojan War 9, 23, 27, 49, 53, 59, 121 tuba (epic trumpet) 68, 126, 131, 132, 159 Tyard, Pontus de 18, 144 Tuileries 165, 182–8 Turnus 95, 114 Ulysses, see Odysseus underworld 33–4, 49, 53, 55, 113; see also hell, Tartarus Valle, Niccolò della 26 Varanne, Valerand de la 3

Index Vasari, Giorgio 31, 68–9, 82, 165, 191–7, 200 Vassy (Massacre of) 162, 199 Vatican 49 n. 116, 190–9, 201, 204 Vegio, Maffeo 29, 215 Venus, see Aphrodite Vermeyen, Jan 101 Veronese, Paolo 205–6 Viau, Théophile de 157 Vignola Giacomo Barozzi da 13 n. 34 Virgil 1, 4, 74, 78–9, 139, 165, 203, 214 Aeneid 5–6, 8, 10, 18 n. 57, 27, 30, 60, 66, 70, 73, 77, 88, 94, 95, 126, 129, 206 commentaries, see commentaries (Virgilian); Landino; Servius. continuations, see Vegio, Maffeo depiction in art cassoni 28–9 enamels, see Limoges enamels paintings 49–60 tapestry 104–5 woodcuts 5 edition by Johannis Gruüninger 5 edition by Josse Badius 56 epic similes 88 influence on modern French literature 215 influence on French Renaissance epic 3, 93 n. 32, 94, 95, 114–15, 118–19, 129,

253

138 n. 74, 140, 164 n. 21, 165 n. 22, 188 n. 141, 197 relationship to art at the time of Augustus 206 n. 10 translation (by Hélisenne de Crenne) 53 translation (by Octovien de SaintGelais) 95 Georgics 125, 168 n. 41, reader/interpreter of Homer 27, 33–5, 51 see also Allecto; allegory; Dolet, Fata; Sibyl; translation Vitruvius 15, 43, 122, 184, 202–3 Voltaire 209–12 Vulcan, see Hephaestus Wars of Religion 11–13, 60, 71–2, 74, 135, 145, 158, 160–1, 173 n. 67, 197–9, 209, 213 windows 21, 32, 61, 125, 129, 170, 182, 207 Wittig, Monique 215 woodcuts 5, 14, 22, 30, 32, 101, 136, 176, 205 Yates, Frances 18, 135 Zacchia, Lorenzo 68 Zephyrus 1 Zeus 1, 77, 94, 109, 110, 127, 172, 177, 179, 184