At the Château d’Écouen, celebrations and cruelties in the time of Antoine Caron

2023-05-05 18:02:52

From left to right: Augustus and the Sibyl of Tibur (circa 1573), oil on canvas, Louvre Museum. RMN-Grand Palais (Louvre Museum) / Gérard Blot

The Renaissance Museum brings this Parisian Mannerist master back to life, who worked for all the monarchs, from François I to Henri IV. Highlight of the course: the hanging that Catherine de Medici ordered from him.

What disturbing strangeness! Today, despite André Breton who appreciated his premonitory sense of the unusual, despite Georges Bataille who adored his tragic and festive fantasy, despite Michel Leiris fascinated by his scenes of violence, Antoine Caron (1521-1599) is an artist with almost forgotten by the general public. However, he worked successively for five monarchs, from François I^is to Henri IV, as well as for Catherine de Medici. Fortunately, after the surrealists, psychoanalysts and ethnologists, art historians got back to work.

Some, at the beginning of the XX^e century, had begun to unearth his work; those of the XXI^e specify and present it. The Swiss Frédéric Hueber published the complete catalog in 2018. And, since his arrival at the National Museum of the Renaissance that year, the curator Matteo Gianeselli had been working on a monographic exhibition.

On the spot, within this castle of Écouen, another Renaissance masterpiece due to the constable…

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