Saylor.org ARTH207: "Georges de la Tour and French Baroque Painting"

This lecture is entitled George de La Tour and French Baroque Painting. Just a Caravaggio copycat? Now, George de La Tour was one of the most important artists working in 17th century France, and in fact, he was so successful that he earned the coveted position of court painter. Obviously, he's an important figure, and we should try and take a look at him and figure out what it was about him that was so appealing to people at the time. Now, earlier in his career, he created genre scenes, a lot like this image here, which is by George de La Tour. Later in his career, he focused more on religious scenes, and you see two examples of those over here and here. And just to, we'll obviously take a closer look at these paintings, but just want to write down the titles of these for you really quickly. This image right here is The Fortune Teller. Fortune Teller, and it dates to the 1630s. This image on the far left is known as Joseph the Carpenter. Joseph the Carpenter. Dates to around 1640, and the image on the bottom is known as The Adoration. Adoration, and it dates to the 1640s. Now, I want to take a look at de la Tour in the context of some of the others working at the time to get a sense of what it is about de la Tour that's unique, and what are his contributions, and what did he borrow from other artists? So let's take a quick look. Okay, well right off the bat, maybe another really famous artist comes to mind, and if so, I hope that artist's name is Caravaggio. And this over here on the left is a work of Caravaggio. It's known as The Cardsharps, and it's one of his earlier paintings, and I have it up here next to The Fortune Teller by Georges de la Tour because I think you see right away some similarities between these two artists, especially between these two paintings. Now, these are both genre scenes, and they show kind of kind of some shady stuff going on, and you kind of have to look at the details of the painting to see that right off the bat. But just to bring your attention to him, in Caravaggio's painting, there's a fellow over here kind of peeking over this card player's shoulder and sneaking a look at his cards. And over here in The Fortune Teller, we have someone kind of slyly picking this gentleman's pocket. So we've got some kind of not so perfect behavior going on in these paintings. And as you might remember from Caravaggio, this was one of the things he was known for, showing kind of the rough and dirty side of society. So it looks like Georges de la Tour is doing some of the same things in his The Fortune Teller. Even beyond that, if you just look at the paintings, they're very similar in the way they're set up. I mean, notice even the back walls of both of these paintings. Similar colors, even the way the light hits the wall is the same, with the light and shadow falling in similar places. You don't have a real sense of context in these paintings, what's going on beyond the scenes. So there's some real right away, immediate similarities, hopefully, that you see when you look at these. But it's really in Georges de la Tour's religious paintings that we see more clearly, not only the similarities, but also some of the differences from Caravaggio. So let's take a look at that. Okay, so on the left we have Joseph the Carpenter by Georges de la Tour, right over here, and on the right, you may recognize, again, this is Caravaggio, and this is the Martyrdom of St. Peter, which dates to about 1601. So here we have two religious images. Religious. And you know, we have some similarities in the way the picture is set up and the people that are included. Once again, I mean, especially if you take a look at St. Peter and Joseph. Their faces are extremely similar. So we've got some real similar types in both of these paintings. And once again, we have that same sort of ambiguous background, murky background. Hopefully you notice the use of chiaroscuro, right, the light and dark, the dramatic light and dark. But what's something you should keep in mind is what's distinct about de la Tour is this use of the candle. He loves to include a candle and candlelight in his paintings. He loved the effect of this, the dramatic effect of candlelight and the sharp light and dark that you could achieve with that. So there are some similarities. But what would you say some of the differences are between these two paintings? Well, they're both obviously religious, but Caravaggio and de la Tour chose to depict very different religious scenes, right? With the de la Tour, unless you were told right away that this was a religious scene, you might not know that this is a religious scene, right? I mean, it's just an older man and a young child, and the old man is doing some carpentry. And that fits with the biblical story, but that could almost really be anyone. That could be any normal family. Whereas on the right, we see this very dramatic, violent scene of martyrdom. And again, that could be almost anyone experiencing this dramatic scene, but it's a very different approach to that. It's very violent and dramatic. Whereas de la Tour, there's more of a thoughtful, meditative feeling, and certainly a great deal more intimacy. Intimacy, which is another hallmark of George de la Tour, along with the use of candlelight. And this stillness and the somber mood is even more noticeable if we compare George de la Tour's work to yet another Baroque artist who was also influenced by Caravaggio, and that artist is Rubens. So here on the right, we see Rubens, and hopefully this is familiar to you. This is his Raising of the Cross from 1610. And up here on the left, we have George de la Tour's Adoration. Now, this is a pretty extreme example because Rubens is, in a way, the anti-George de la Tour. Because he, as you might recall, was very interested in movement and boldness. Whereas, again, I mentioned before, de la Tour is more interested in stillness. Stillness and quiet versus the robust movement of Rubens. Robust movement. So I think this is just an interesting example to finish with because both artists were informed by the work of Caravaggio, but de la Tour sort of does the opposite of what Rubens did. Whereas with Rubens, we have these rippling muscles and the sharp diagonals and the flecks of different bright colors around the composition. In a way, it's a very noisy, bold painting. De la Tour chose to move in the opposite direction, focusing on this stillness, this quiet. There's a unity of color, right? Notice the predominance of reds and browns. We have, again, that dramatic candle lighting. Remember, that's a feature of George de la Tour. And again, the stillness and quiet. And he really pared down the drama as a way of drawing our attention in and creating paintings that were perhaps even more infused with a stillness and, again, that intimacy that really draws us in. It's sort of like if you enter a room and everyone's really quiet and focused on one thing. That catches your attention and you know right away something important is going on. And George de la Tour was the master of this.