Rediscover the Trompe-l’oeil and anamorphosis artistic movements in France with me
By Dr. Martine Sauret
For many years, I have heard that Trompe-l’oeil and anamorphosis did not really exist in France from 1470–1600. Being very puzzled with what I had seen in churches, tapestries, ceilings, ornaments, decorations in France for that period, I decided to embark on a quest to understand the reasons why it was so contested.
Although well known in Italy and Spain, both artistic currents, which flourished during the Renaissance between the North and South of the Mediterranean world, do not seem to have been much considered by art historians or critics in France, since it was not at the center of production of those techniques. The complexity of the dialogues between the arts has often gone unnoticed over centuries in France.
Both projections underline a change in representations of decoration, and ornamentations. Be it in the castles, the school of Fontainebleau paintings, sculptures, engravings, stained-glass windows, tapestries or through certain writers such as Rabelais, Agrippa d’Aubigné, or the architects Philippe de l’Orme and Androuet du Cerceau, engravers such as Théodore de Bry or printers such as Geoffroy Tory. The trend reflects drastic changes in using traditional perspective, camera obscura or inverted perspective. The work explores the sense of interaction between those artists and discusses the beginning of an autonomous genre for writing and painting with the emergence of Renaissance values in France.
The impact of new archival material, renovated structures and the study of specific French anamorphosis and trompe-l’oeil examples has not been closely studied in the light of their controversial, pervasive and precise effects on art and writing in the French Sixteenth century. Artists such as Raphael and Brunelleschi or cartographers such as Apian and Ptolemy deeply influenced their sense of writing and structural designs. The clash between Catholics and Protestants, the tumultuous wars of the time and the discovery of the New World affected artists’ and writers’ perceptions about the ‘’other’’ and contributed to a different perception of the French society.
Integrating different historical, sociological and philosophical perspectives, I examine both projections and show that the mathematical, cartographic and artistic achievements of French Trompe-l’oeil and anamorphosis in the late 15th century to early 16th century will influence Europe in the following centuries in their deconstructing of the world and their particular way of critiquing the society.
I hope you will join me to rediscover those two artistic movements in France and pursue this fascinating subject.
Errances et Cohérences dans les anamorphoses et les trompe-l’oeil en France
enjeux et pouvoirs de 1470–1600
by Dr. Martine Sauret
New York, 2023. XX, 330 p., 21 n/b, 58 en couleurs.
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1262667
