Another blu-sky autumn view

 

thanks Ali K-B

Saint Anne teaches the young Virgin to read

The statue has been restored, particularly the support stone that was formerly fractured and decaying.

BRAVO!

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Saint Anne teaches young Mary to read

When the Ideal Town was built in the 1630s, the external girdling walls, the entry gates and the vehicle carriageways themselves were constructed at the Crown's expense.

Louis XIII and Anne d'Autriche, King and Queen of France and Navarre.

The Cardinal also sought to have his new town's children well educated by the Sisters, so he founded nunneries that followed catholic teaching orders.  These convents he located on the western side of the town, furthest away from the little moated river Veude that runs past the town's eastern boundary. The prevailing wind blows the smoke of the town's chimneys, away from the children at school, over the roofs to the east.  The western side of the town still accommodates these schoolchildren today.

The street that accommodated these schooling premises, as well as the church's presbytery, came to be called rue Sainte Anne. Saint Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary, and in a sense the grandmother of Jesus. In renaissance religious art she is typically shown teaching Mary to read. Just as the Sisters were doing to their charges in the adjacent buildings...

On one of the houses of 'rue Sainte Anne' - at the town's midpoint - there is a statue of Anne and Mary at lessons. It is in a sad state, but restoration has now commenced.

King Louis must have been flattered by the Queen Anne/Saint Anne allusion!

the dedicatee!

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In the cemetery with the Abbé Henri Proust

H.(Henri) A.(Armand) PROUST 1817-1897 - at 80 years;

 Sacerdos Christi in te domino speravi

Priest of Christ

O Lord, in thee have I trusted

the tomb

the man

the street

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Dying slaves

the Dying Slave blushes

 The Montmorency family became involved in one of the conspiracies against the régime of the cardinal duc led by the king's brother Gaston d'Orleans.  Henri II de Montmorency, Marshall of France and scion of the family, was a proven conspirator who finally went to the scaffold on the orders of Armand-Jean and Louis XIII; Richelieu had survived the plot!

In order to protect other members of the old aristocratic family, the surviving Montmorencys decided to make a peace offering to the all powerful cardinal duc on the understanding that the executions and retributions would cease with this single awful walk to the scaffold.  They knew well that the cardinal liked a good statue as he had bought many, both ancient and contemporary, to decorate his new château in Poictou. As they had sometime previously acquired the two 'Dying Slaves', famous 1513 sculptures by Michelangelo Buonarroti, they hoped that they could appease Richelieu by offering them to him as a gift.  The great man accepted them gracefully and placed the pair on the façade on his new castle, one on each side of his Grand Stair's block at first floor level.

Visitors might be reminded of their host's power and glory as they approached an audience with the First Minster of France.

Beauty and Threat in a single gesture...

In the Dôme in the Parc de Richelieu is a plaster cast of one of these famous statues; the original now re-located (after the Revolution) to the Louvre.

back to normal

Henri II de Montmorency

Origin of the slave statues

"The slaves were designed as part of the initial project for the Pope's tomb (in 1505), and Michelangelo began to carve them in 1513 when a second project was developed. A fourth, less grandiose project, elaborated after the pope's death, saw them rejected for financial reasons. Julius II, who had dreamed of a freestanding mausoleum at Saint Peter's in Rome, was buried in San Pietro in Vincoli in a wall tomb, albeit one adorned with Michelangelo's famous Moses (a contemporary of the Slaves). Despite being unfinished, the two great marbles were already admired. Michelangelo donated them to the Florentine exile Roberto Strozzi, who presented them to the French king.

The Slaves thus reached France during the sculptor's lifetime, and first occupied two niches at the Château d'Ecouen (constructed by the constable, Anne de Montmorency) before Cardinal de Richelieu took them to his new château in Poitou. The two Slaves had originally been intended to feature on the pope's tomb alongside similar figures, including the four marble Slaves in the Academy of Florence, carved (and also left incomplete) in 1531–32."

in the Louvre

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The phantom cardinal-duc

…a huge spooky and shadowy figure appeared...

Le Chasteau de Richelieu

 or

L'Histoire des Dieux et des Heros de l'Antiquité,

avec des Réfléxions morales.

par Mr. Benjamin Vignier - à Saumur

chez Henri Desbordes, imprimeur

& Marchand Librairie

1681

avec privilege du Roy

Benjamin Vignier was the steward in charge of the Château de Richelieu shortly after the cardinal duc's lifetime. He left this detailed description of the palace in 1681, presumably in the lifetime of the second duke. It is the principal written text describing the magnificent building at its apogee and detailing the artistic treasures that it contained, in particular the painting, the statues and busts of Roman antiquities.

click here below

https://books.google.co.uk/books/reader?id=rcitqP22K1sC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&pg=GBS.PA24

Richelieu in Love

or

The Youth of Charles 1

This 1850's play about Queen Anne of Austria and her paramour Lord Buckingham was a popular production on the London stage.

click here below

https://play.google.com/books/reader?printsec=frontcover&output=reader&id=65Q-AAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PP1

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Pont Louis XVI and the statue of the cardinal

The widened bridge 'de la Concorde' in Paris today

L'architecte Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, qui a créé en 1775 avec Daniel-Charles Trudaine l'École royale des ponts et chaussées (aujourd'hui École nationale des ponts et chaussées), est chargé en 1787 de la construction de ce pont en arc.

Ce pont était en projet depuis 1725, lors de la construction de la place Louis XV (aujourd'hui place de la Concorde), pour remplacer le bac qui assurait alors la traversée à cet endroit.
Assurant la construction en pleine tourmente révolutionnaire, il utilise pour la maçonnerie des pierres de taille provenant de la démolition de la Bastille, prise d'assaut le 14 juillet 1789. La construction sera terminée en 1791.

En 1810, Napoléon Bonaparte y fit placer des statues en l'honneur de huit généraux morts au champ d'honneur pendant les campagnes du Premier Empire.

The architect Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, who in 1775 created (with Daniel Charles Trudaine) the "Royal School of Bridges and Roads" (now the "National School of Bridges and Roads") was responsible in 1787 for the design and construction of the new arched bridge.

A bridge had been planned since 1725, during the construction of the Place Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde), replacing a former ferry crossing, then at this location.

Ensuring that the construction continued during revolutionary turmoil, Perronet used the stones and masonry from the demolition of the fortress of the Bastille, which had been stormed on 14 July 1789. Construction of the bridge was completed in 1791.

In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte placed on it statues in honor of eight Generals killed in battle during the campaigns of the First Empire.

the pont Louis XVI on 1830, with the 12 colossal statues

the pont Louis XVI in 1829, more-or-less  the date of the statue by Claude Ramey père
that is now located in the town of Richelieu in Touraine

À la Restauration, on les remplaça par un ensemble de douze statues monumentales en marbre blanc de quatre grands ministres (Colbert, Richelieu, Suger, Sully), quatre militaires (Bayard, Condé, Du Guesclin, Turenne) et quatre marins (Duguay-Trouin, Duquesne, Suffren, Tourville). Mais cet ensemble est trop lourd pour le pont, et Louis-Philippe Ier fait enlever ces statues pour les transférer à Versailles.

At the Restoration, these eight were replaced by a set of twelve monumental white marble statues of four Ministers (Colbert, Richelieu, Suger, Sully), four soldiers (Bayard, Condé, Du Guesclin, Turenne) and four sailors (Duguay-Trouin, Duquesne, Suffren, Tourville). But all this was too heavy a load for the bridge's structure, and Louis-Philippe I removed the statues and transferred them to Versailles.

In 1932 the monumental statue of the cardinal duc de Richelieu was erected in his eponymous town in Poitou.

SEE THE MAP OF LOCATIONS ON THE RIGHT COLUMN FOR THE LOCATION OF THE STATUE TODAY

English description of the statue of Ramey père of 1830

These three pages are from the following book;

"Museum of painting and sculpture, or, Collection of the principal pictures, statues and bas-reliefs in the public and private galleries of Europe."

Author:

Etienne Achille Réveil (drawings); Jean Duchesne (text)

Publisher:

London, Bossange; Paris, Audot

1828

page 222 of "the Museum of painting and sculpture...."

The inauguration of the statue in Richelieu town on 17 July 1932

CLICK HERE FOR THE SCULPTURE TODAY

the signature at the statue's base

ANOTHER POST ABOUT THE STATUE OF THE CARDINAL DUC

the statues in place

Perronet's original concept drawing for the pont Louis XVI

The statue itself, now in 37120 Richelieu

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A putto on the town's church

a putto above the entrance to the church - carved in 1635

Pictures of the chapel of the Sorbonne

the location of the Sorbonne

Last resting place of the cardinal, the Chapel of the Sorbonne in Paris, is hard to get inside.  So I hope Peter of http://www.peter-pho2.com/2012/06/sorbonne.html will not mind the Abbé adding these to our collection of images of the Paris world of the cardinal duc himself.
click here for other posts on the Sorbonne and the cardinal's sepulchre.

The external views of the chapel designed by Jacques Lemercier in the 1620s; the minor façade to the internal court of the Sorbonne, the major to the public square without, both in strict Jesuit manner, following Vignola.

the high altar and the cupola from inside

the tomb of the cardinal complete with his magically levitating cardinal's hat

More details of the statue of the cardinal...

With this second post on the subject, we take a bit more time with the statue of the cardinal duc, Armand-Jean du Plessis, the founder of so many French activities and organisations that have endured to our day.  The statue is located on the place that sits between his château's domainal parc to the south and his model town to the north.

He poses giving a cardinal's blessing to the viewer with his right hand, while holding the document of foundation of the Académie Française (dated as 1635) in his left.

the cardinal scrubs up well...

the all-seeing, all-knowing statesman

The statue has several 'credits' attached to it.

the sculptor's credit 1828

the relocation of the statue in 1932

the Second Regiment of the Marines

dedications from the Second Regiment of the Marines

• The sculptor - C(laude) Ramey, père - Dijon, dated 1828
• The inauguration of the statue in Richelieu 17 July 1932, probably as part of the bequest of the domainal parc to the Sorbonne (of which Armand-Jean was the first rector, and in whose chapel he rests to this day) by the eigth and last duke.  It had formerly been located on the Pont Neuf of Henri IV in Paris for the period 1828-1932.
• Two plaques of the Second Regiment of the Marines to their first Chef de Corps, one from 1932(?) and the other from the Lieutenants of the Second of the Marine, dated 9 December 1995 to their founding 'father'.  The old strategist and pupil of Pluvinel's equestreian & military academy is not forgotten!

the cardinal up closer

the foundation of the Academie Française

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