Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

Retables de la Sainte Chapelle: retable de la Résurrection

@credits

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.

Ratification par le souverain pontife du Concordat de Bologne conclu entre le Saint-Siège et François Ier le 18 août 1516.

@credits

The Concordat of Bologna (1516), marking a stage in the evolution of the Gallican Church, was an agreement between King Francis I of France and Pope Leo X that Francis negotiated in the wake of his victory at Marignano in September 1515. The groundwork was laid in a series of personal meetings of king and pope in Bologna, 11-15 December 1515.

The Concordat stated that the Pope could collect all the income that the Catholic Church made in France, while the King of France was confirmed in his right to tithe the clerics and to restrict their right of appeal to Rome. The Concordat confirmed the King of France’s right to nominate appointments to benefices—archbishops, bishops, abbots and priors— enabling the Crown, by controlling its personnel, to decide who was to lead the Church in France.

Though the Concordat of Bologna left many problems unsolved, it provided the ground-rules for the limited Reformation in France: the sons of Francis and Catherine de’ Medici saw no advantage to the Crown in any gestures towards Reformation in France. The king of France had enormous powers to direct the Church’s wealth and provide sinecures in the offices of bishops and abbots in commendam, for his faithful followers among the powerful aristocracy. The Concordat ended any vestige of the elective principle, in which the monks or cathedral canons chose the abbot or bishop: there were some protests from these disenfranchised communities, whose approval of candidates had for some time devolved into a mere pro forma. It allowed the King to maintain control of the Church as well as the State. For many years to come, the Kings of France would struggle to keep the Catholic Church in power, as it was filled with supporters of their policies. This would lead to persecution of non-Catholics under Francis I, Henry II, Francis II, and Charles IX.

Plan du Havre de 1530

@credits

The name Le Havre simply means the harbour or the port. Le Havre was founded as a new port by royal command, partly to replace the historic harbours of Harfleur and Honfleur which had become increasingly impractical due to silting-up. The city was founded in 1517, when it was named Franciscopolis after Francis I of France, and subsequently named Le Havre-de-Grâce (“Harbour of Grace”) after an existing chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (“our Lady of Grace”).

Decorative Cartouche with a River God and Symbols of Francis I, 16th century Anonymous, School of Fontainebleau French Pen and brown ink, brush and gray brown wash, over red chalk underdrawing

12 5/8 x 11 1/8 in. (32 x 28.2 cm) Harry G. Sperling Fund, 2001 (2001.514)

@credits

The complex layering, extreme flatness, ornamental line, and compression and crowding of forms in the design of this work are all characteristic of the style that evolved at the château at Fontainebleau during the reign of Francis I. At his palace in the woods outside Paris, the king had assembled such talented Italian artists as Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540) and Francesco Primaticcio (1504–1570) to head a workshop dedicated to every facet of the palace’s decoration. This drawing’s technique seems closest to that of one of Rosso’s collaborators, Léonard Thiry (1500–ca. 1550), particularly his designs for engraved book illustrations.

The Battle of Pavia. Tapestry in the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte (Naples)

@credits

The Battle of Pavia, fought on the morning of 24 February 1525, was the decisive engagement of the Italian War of 1521–26.

A Spanish-Imperial army under the nominal command of Charles de Lannoy (and working in conjunction with the garrison of Pavia, commanded by Antonio de Leyva) attacked the French army under the personal command of Francis I of France in the great hunting preserve of Mirabello outside the city walls. In the four-hour battle, the French army was split and defeated in detail. The French suffered massive casualties, including many of the chief nobles of France; Francis himself, captured by the Spanish troops, was imprisoned by Charles V and forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Madrid, surrendering significant territory to his captor. The outcome of the battle cemented Spanish Habsburg ascendancy in Italy.