Religious and romanesque ecstasies
at the origins of classicism
After a rapid development between around 1520 and 1530 in Italy, Mannerism, the artistic sensibility characterised by elongated forms, sharp colours and exacerbated refinement, spread throughout Europe. Three major centres, Fontainebleau, Prague and Haarlem, became meeting points from which this international style would proliferate. Prestigious Italian models (Titian's Magdalene) were reinterpreted by Northern European painters who travelled between the various centres of European art. The fact that engravings were the favoured method of diffusing the models explains the graphic and sometimes slightly dry execution of the paintings.
Representing the ascetic existence and ecstasies of saints provided a means of teaching faith through images, in accordance with the precepts of the Council of Trent. The importance given to landscape reveals a Northern European influence. In the profane domain, painters from the second school of Fontainebleau favoured rare subjects, illustrating sagas, such as the Astrée, with cycles of elegant and Romanesque paintings.
Between 1550 and 1650, these four paintings translate privileged moments of artistic sensibility, demonstrating the interplay of international influences. The painting recently attributed to Rubiales is the work of a Spanish artist marked by the Mannerist Flemish culture, he nevertheless spent his entire career in Italy. The strange Pieter van den Houten led such a cosmopolitan life that his name is known in Latin, Italian and French forms. The majority of identified works by this Flemish artist are in Spain.
Unlike the first two painters, Giuseppe Cesari, known as the Cavaliere d'Arpino was a renowned artist, as famous in his own lifetime as Caravaggio or Annibale Carracci. Painted towards 1615-1620, Susanna and the Elders is a good example of the work of this artist, a favourite of popes, whose classical expression features mannerist elements. The contribution from the Genoese painter Vassallo, represented in the Musée des Augustins by a very similar work, is an ambitious church painting with baroque fervour, marked by the lesson of van Dyck.
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