Treasures of the Louvre Page #4

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this is Denis Diderot.

Now Diderot wrote penetrating

critiques of the Salon,

and in doing so he effectively

invented art criticism.

And he threw down a challenge

to artists with an ambition

to impress him in the Salon -

"First of all move me, surprise me,

rend my heart,

"make me tremble, weep, shudder,

outrage me,

"and delight my eyes afterwards,

if you can."

Diderot was delighted by one artist,

whose wonderful and poignant

self-portraits you can find

in the Louvre.

And this is the painter,

Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin.

Chardin did this pastel drawing

of himself when he was 76,

and the infirmity of old age had

stopped him painting in oils.

In his still lives,

Chardin was painting on a much

smaller scale than a Rubens.

And the canvases of Chardin have

an apparent simplicity about them.

But this art is not simplistic,

and in these paintings

small, not big, is beautiful.

The work of Chardin mesmerised

Diderot

who saw something magical at work.

"Oh, Chardin, it's not white,

red and black

"that you are mixing on your

palette,

"it's the very substance of objects.

"It's the very air and light that

you put on the tip of your brush,

"and place on the canvas."

I talked to curator

Marie Catherine Sahut about Chardin

and what he taught Diderot.

SPEAKS FRENCH:

TRANSLATOR:
'All Chardin's efforts

went into the magic

'of turning inanimate everyday

objects into beautiful artwork.

'And for Diderot, I think, it was all

about entering into the paintings

'and the mind-set of Chardin,

'and trying to find out what it was

that made it so magical.

'The word "magic" is, in fact, used

a number of times by Diderot,

'and Chardin taught him

to go right up to a painting,

'as, when you get up close

to a painting,

'it ceases to have any

significant meaning.

'It becomes just streaks of paint.

'And then gradually,

as you move away from it,

'everything slowly creeps

into focus.'

There is one painting of Chardin

that I especially wanted to look at

here -

the one that is considered

his masterpiece - The Ray.

Yes, it's a still life.

But with such energy and motion -

look at the cat about

to pounce on the oysters!

And what really draws the eye,

is the eviscerated form

of the ray fish.

TRANSLATOR:
'I think Chardin created

a true character of the ray,

'personified in many senses with

a seemingly tragic character.

'He uses the form of the ray,

this triangular shape that you see,

'but also its whiteness

to construct his painting.

'And then there's

the semblance of a face,

'that many people

read into the painting.

'Which is, in fact, neither the

mouth, nor the eyes, but the gills.

'It's a sort of anthropomorphic

vision of this ray.

'Which is, of course,

also rather dramatic,

'with his insides coming out,

reddened.'

Whatever genius we now recognise

in the still lives of Chardin,

this style of art was seen by

the Academy as inferior

to the more high-minded

genre of history painting.

Works inspired by the past can be

seen in the Salle Rouge...

..where hang the creations of one

artist from the last 18th century

who received the acclaim

of the Salon

with paintings that looked

back to antiquity

as a source of moral instruction

to the present.

This is a self-portrait

of the artist who features

in the next part of our story -

Jacques Louis David -

and it captures him at a bad moment

in his life

when he was in prison

during the French Revolution.

But the curious thing is

the expression on his face.

Is he angry? Is he frightened?

Or is this the self-regard

of the tormented artist?

He was certainly vain enough, but

we're getting ahead of ourselves.

In 1784, David painted this -

The Oath of the Horatii.

And he did it for the man who'd

given him a studio and lodgings

in the Louvre - Louis XVI.

It tells the story of three brothers

sworn to defend Rome.

Look at the outstretched arms

reaching towards the father

who holds the weapons

of war in his hand.

And look at the way the picture

splits in two -

between its masculine

and feminine characters.

The style is simple, austere

with sombre colours.

The painting took

the Salon of 1785 by storm -

hailed as an instant masterpiece

of neoclassical art.

But what meaning did it have

for the monarch who paid for it,

and the others who saw it?

Everyone agreed it was

a patriotic painting.

But was there something more

subversive going on here,

addressed to those now seeing

themselves as citizens?

Because this was a painting

whose message would change

during a turbulent decade

of French history.

Just in the ten years after David

had painted The Oath of Horatii,

his patron, the King, was dead.

He was sent to the guillotine

here in the Place de la Concorde.

This was the most shocking moment

yet in the drama of the Revolution

that had begun with the storming

of the Bastille.

On a windy morning,

on January 21st, 1793,

Louis the XVI mounted the scaffold,

watched by thousands.

There was a roll of drums...

..and then the 12 inch blade fell.

CROWD ROAR:

As was the custom, the severed head

dripping with blood, was held aloft

for display to the citizens

of the first French Republic.

As so began the Terror,

when 18,000 men and women were sent

to the guillotine,

and David, now an elected deputy

to the National Convention,

was up to his neck in it.

David voted for the killing

of the King,

and eagerly signed arrest warrants

so others could go to their deaths.

When Robespierre's great rival

Danton went to his death,

David was there shouting out

mockingly...

"Le voila, le scelerat ! C'est ce

scelerat qui est le Grand-juge !"

"Here, look at the criminal

who thinks he's the big judge."

David became Robespierre's

cultural commissar.

He demanded that artists

be at the service of the people,

the meaning of their art

appropriated for the Revolution.

David included his own art

in this command.

So, when his masterpiece The Oath

of the Horatii was shown again,

it was interpreted as a work

of revolutionary virtue,

with oaths to La Patrie,

much "fraternite",

and a taste for martyrdom.

But what paintings like this needed

was a public place

to educate loyal citizens

of the Republic.

So David and fellow revolutionaries,

turned to an idea

proposed by Enlightenment

thinkers like Diderot,

who'd advocated that a permanent

exhibition space be created -

a museum. So, where?

On the 10th of August, 1793,

exactly 12 months after

the fall of the Ancien Regime,

the Louvre was declared Musee

de la Nation, "the people's museum".

And the ceremony took place

here in the Grande Galerie.

What actually happened was that all

art in France was nationalised,

all art in fact in the territories

that France also had its eye on.

So what happened really was that

from the royal collection in

Versailles, from churches,

from aristocrats, from exiles -

all art now belonged to the people,

"la grande patrie".

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