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Retables de la Sainte Chapelle: retable de la Résurrection

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The two retables decorated the altars against the rood-screen in the upper chapel, the Sainte Chapelle, in the Palais in Paris, from the 16th century. In February or March 1553, Léonard Limosin was commissioned to produce the two retables on the themes of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The medallions feature portraits of François I, his wife Claude de France, Henri II, and Catherine de’ Medici. The angels bearing the instruments of the Passion were based on drawings by Nicolo dell’Abate.

The two retables were most likely installed in time for the Feast of the Assumption in 1553, as the document commissioning them, recently published, indicates. They were removed from the Sainte Chapelle during the Revolution. They ended up in the hands of Alexandre Lenoir who passed them on to the Musée des Monuments Français in rue des Petits-Augustins, Paris, where they were mounted on the pedestal as part of the reconstruction of the tomb of Diane de Poitiers, Henri II’s mistress. The two retables were acquired by the Louvre in 1816, when they were put on show in the Apollo Gallery.

In the library of the French national School for the Fine Arts are nine drawings attributed to Nicolo dell’Abate, an Italian artist who was called to Fontainebleau in 1552 to work on the chateau alongside another Italian artist, Francesco Primaticcio. The drawings still bear the tiny holes where the design was pricked through onto another medium, in this case enamelled copper. These drawings are a clue to the close links between Léonard Limosin and the Fontainebleau School. The commission for the retables notes that the Crucifixion and Resurrection, along with the royal portraits and the medallions illustrating the Passion, are to be based on drawings by Léonard Limosin. As well as the drawings of the eight angels, the medallion of the prayer in the Garden of Olives is also attributed to Nicolo dell’Abate.

Léonard Limosin used small strips of silver coated with translucent enamel for some items of clothing. The coloured enamels are placed on an underlying layer of white. On the strips around the Crucifixion scene are drawings in gold monochrome on a blue or black ground. This retable bears the insignia of François I, while the retable featuring the Resurrection is decorated with the insignia of his son Henri II.

Lettre de Catherine de Médicis adressée à Henri III, en fuite à Chartres, relatant les événements survenus à Paris après la journée des Barricades. Long post-scriptum autographe et signature de Catherine de Médicis. Fait à Paris.

Catherine de’ Medici’s letter to Henri III, in Chartres, telling him about the events that happened in Paris after the Day of the Barricades

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In the French Wars of Religion, the Day of the Barricades (Journée des barricades), 12 May 1588, was an apparently spontaneous public uprising in staunchly Catholic Paris against the moderate, hesitant, temporalizing policies of Henry III. It was called forth by the “Council of Sixteen”, representing the sixteen quartiers of Paris, led by Henri, duc de Guise, head of the Catholic League, and coordinated in detail by Philip II of Spain’s ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza.

The timing of the tumult was not as well coordinated with the sailing of the Spanish Armada against England as the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, had planned, but it still effectively distracted any French Huguenot interference. The genuine animosity of the staunchly Catholic people of Paris towards Henri III, his unacceptable mignons and his fashionable court, perceived as effete and disengaged, all too ready to come to terms with the Protestants and the heir presumptive to the French throne, Henri of Navarre, who had not yet been formally designated heir to the childless Henri III, and their alarm at the troops posted in the city were easily exploited.

From this strong position Guise forced the King to sign at Rouen the Édit d’union, registered at Paris 21 July. By its terms the King promised never to conclude a truce or peace with the “hérétiques”, to forbid public office to any who would not take a public oath of their Catholicité and never to leave the throne to a prince who was not Catholic; secret clauses extended amnesty to all deeds of the Catholic League, accorded support to its troops and made over to the League additional fortified places de sécurité. Two weeks later the duc de Guise was named lieutenant général of the kingdom. That December the duc de Guise and his brother Louis II de Lorraine were assassinated.