Chantilly Lace

I've been trying to put together the paper on Gericault. I have to choose a piece of his work that I can see here in Paris and find a way to relate it to some piece of architecture that's also here. There are a lot of options, and when I set out to put together my proposal this morning, I thought I knew what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to go to the stables at Chantilly (just north of Paris) and use them as the architecture—either that or the stables at Versailles, where Gericualt used to go.

Chantilly has a chateau that looks like a fairytale castle. I heard about it by chance from the taxi driver who took Toni and I to the train station the day we headed south to Avignon.

Gericault painted horses more than anything else and one of them is at Chantilly. There's an art museum there in the château, the Musée Condé, the biggest art museum outside of Louvre, which seems very much worth seeing.

I'm actually more likely to use Versailles however, because the stables at Chantilly are closed for renovation at the moment and because Versailles is where Gericault actually went to paint horses. But there's an equestrian show at Chantilly through November that sounds rather incredible. It's called the Les Princes de Chantilly and it's historically-costumed performance and dressage. I'd really like to try to get there, even though it's a bit of a hike.  Apparently there are equestrian demonstrations at the Versailles as well, though not as elaborate. 

So, it seems pretty straight forward except for the fact that I learned today that Gericault painted a portrait of Lord Byron. At first, I refused to believe it. I thought it must be one of those Internet "truths" that are all mixed up, but after hours of poking around, I've started to believe that it's actually true. The painting is housed at Musée Fabre in Montpellier, which is about as far south as Avignon, but further to the West.

What I don't know is what Gericault used as the source for the portrait. Gericault was in Italy. He left Paris late in 1816 and spent a year in Italy, returning in the fall of 1817. Lord Byron arrived in Italy in October of 1816. By November he was established in Venice, where he lived for the next three years. He did, however, travel to Rome in the spring of 1817. Gericault was in Florence and then in Rome. I don't know the dates. I haven't found any evidence as of yet that their path's crossed and that Byron sat for the portrait. I think if that were so, I would have discovered it already. But who knows? One could also argue that Gericault would not paint a portrait of Byron from a secondary source. In any event it's curious. Gericault would likely have heard talk of Byron's presence in Italy and might have known when he was in Rome. I'm thinking of my recent discovery that Stendhal met Byron. So anyway, that's one thing that I want to know more about.

The other connection to Byron is that Gericault painted an image from Byron's Mazeppa, a poem that also attracted Franz Liszt. Mazeppa tells the story of an illicit love affair discovered and punished. Mazeppa slept with the very young wife of a much older Count who was his host. (Does this sound familiar? It's pretty much Gericault's story, and the story Stendhal is telling in The Red and The Black.) When the young lover is found out, the Count has him tied naked to a wild stallion, which is then turned loose. According to Mazeppa, who is telling the tale in Byron's poem, he almost died several times before finally being rescued.

Gericualt painted the rider and the horse and it seems like a good choice for my paper, but I haven't been able to locate the original. I don't know if it's in Paris, or even in France. I've identified everything by Gericault at the Louvre, which is a lot, but it's not there. I'd also like to identify the date it was painted. I suspect it was after Gericault's affair with Alexandrine was found out. It seems like a kind of self-portrait, or at least it would be interesting to speculate about the degree to which it is. So. Now I'm feeling frustrated with my inability to read French well and with the scarcity of biographical detail I've thus far found in English.

Ultimately, all of this is only important in so far as it gets applied to my novel. But it feels like it is important to the novel. As I've already noted, Lord Byron was a huge influence on almost all the artists I've been researching. It's remarkable, really, the impact of his influence, especially after his death. I hadn't fully grasped it. It's another one of the organizing themes in the book, really. So. Tomorrow I'm going to find out from Amy how to locate Gericault's original Mazeppa. There is a way. I know that much.