Georges de la Tour and the Enigma of the Visible by Judovitz Dalia;

Author:Judovitz, Dalia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2018-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Meditations on the Vanity of Painting

Every picture could be called vain in the sense that it is a sort of shadow or figure of truth.

GABRIELE PALEOTTI

But is it the spiritual power of painting that La Tour celebrated in The Flea Catcher and his later paintings of “blowers of light”—or merely its vanity? And does his evocation of the painter’s ability to rekindle the spiritual meaning of an image through the manipulation of light and shadow reveal something fundamental about painting as an artistic medium? To answer these questions, we turn to the previously mentioned Boy Blowing on a Charcoal Stick in Dijon, which shows a young boy in profile with cheeks inflated like bellows, blowing on a charcoal stick in order to light a lamp.58 The boy’s breath animates the flame, intensifying the contrast of light and dark with chiaroscuro effects and casting tints of color on his face.59 The exaggerated visual presentation of his blowing out breath to rekindle and animate the fire also implies a reference to man’s creation out of dust into a living soul by God, who “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the popular iconography of a child blowing on a brazier or a charcoal stick reprised Pliny’s descriptions of ancient artists, who proved their pictorial virtuosity through displays of their skills in rendering “glowing embers and their reflected light.”60 In early modern France, coals are associated with the baker’s craft, but they also enjoyed an association with the craft of making paintings.61 According to Cotgrave, the French word for coal (charbon) also signified “the first lines or lineaments of a picture termed so, because most Painters draw them with a piece of charcoal.”62 Thus the glowing embers depicted in these works are more than the expression of a pictorial conceit and artistic mastery; they also attest to La Tour’s efforts as a painter to rekindle the spiritual meaning of the painted image. Consequently, in addition to figuring the infusion of the pictorial image with spirit, La Tour’s “blowers of light” also present a metacommentary on pictorial virtuosity as a painter of light.

References to pictorial mastery in the handling of light and capture of visual appearances abound in The Flea Catcher. The inordinate care devoted to the rendering of the chair with a candle facing the beholder and occupying the left half of the canvas demands further attention. The touches of light reflected on the red chair’s upholstery studs mark the painter’s touch while also inviting a meditation on painting. By depicting the glowing reflections of the candlelight, La Tour turns the upholstery studs into mirrors of sorts. The glistening daubs of paint render manifest the operation of painting by highlighting its capacity for representation as well as its material properties as canvas, reflective surface, and support. Tracing the touches of the painter’s brush, these reflections of light on the red chair’s upholstery buttons figure the painter’s intervention, his master touch in capturing the visible even while reminding us of its fugitive and perishable character.

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