L’Alliance de la Poésie et de la Musique (The Alliance of Poetry and Music)
Charles Joseph Natoire
Description
March 28, 2009
This allegorical painting celebrates the union of two branches of the arts, poetry and music. Poetry is represented by the female figure clad in blue, while the figure draped in red is the personification of Music. Poetry, whose attributes typically include a lyre and a laurel wreath, is shown about to be crowned by a putto—a divine figure in the form of a plump, naked boy, often with wings. Music is shown holding a musical score opened to a scene from the famous seventeenth-century opera Armide. It is in opera after all that the art forms of poetry and music are joined. The two medallions attached to the columns in the background feature bust-length portraits of Armide’s composers, Philippe Quinault, who wrote the libretto (text), and Jean Baptiste Lully, who composed the score.
Natoire was celebrated for his paintings depicting sweet, softly yet richly colored figures. In his day, Natoire was considered the equal to artists more renowned today such as Francois Boucher, prized for his knowledge of Italian antiquity and his successful adoption of techniques borrowing from ancient Rome. This painting dates from just before Natoire’s assumption of the presidency of the French Academy in Rome in 1751.
Subject Matter:
Two women clad in flowing robes sit beneath a curved colonnade at the center of this delicately painted scene. The woman on the left, wearing a blue mantle, holds a lyre in her right hand and leans toward her companion, who holds open a musical score on her lap to which she points with her right hand. Books are piled on the steps next to the woman on the left and a putto sits next to her with a scroll unrolled across his lap. A second putto stands next to the other seated woman and plays a viol. A winged putto hovers over the heads of the two women, holding a small trumpet in his left hand and a laurel crown in his right, which he is about to place on the head of the woman with the lyre. Two bust-length portraits of men in oval frames wreathed with laurel hang from the columns in the background.
Physical Description:
Two women clad in flowing robes sit beneath a curved colonnade at the center of this delicately painted scene. The woman on the left, wearing a blue mantle, holds a lyre in her right hand and leans toward her companion, who holds open a musical score on her lap to which she points with her right hand. Books are piled on the steps next to the woman on the left and a putto sits next to her with a scroll unrolled across his lap. A second putto stands next to the other seated woman and plays a viol. A winged putto hovers over the heads of the two women, holding a small trumpet in his left hand and a laurel crown in his right, which he is about to place on the head of the woman with the lyre. Two bust-length portraits of men in oval frames wreathed with laurel hang from the columns in the background.
Usage Rights:
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