The Arts in Conflict in Ronsard's Des peintures contenues dedans un tableau

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Roberto E. Campo, Professor and Director of International & Global Studies Program (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: Jean Plattard once suggested that, like all the major French poets of the midsixteenth century, Pierre de Ronsard overwhelmingly preferred the narrative-type,1 historical and mythological painting produced at the Chateau de Fontainebleau by artists such as Il Rosso and Primaticcio to the concurrent genre of courtly portraiture practiced by painters such as François Clouet and Corneille de Lyon: "Les poetes donnaient naturellement a ces peintures historiques et mythologiques la preference sur les portraits." 2 The appeal, Plattard believed, was two-fold. On the one hand, there was "l'ampleur de la conception" (p. 492) of narrative painting-its conceptual magnitude, or ability to represent multiple (yet related) subject matters in a single frame. On the other hand, there was its "hardiesse et . . . liberte de l'imagination" (p. 492)-its imaginative boldness, as demonstrated by the ability of narrative painting to give form to the purely conceptual truths of ideal Nature (to borrow the Neoplatonic terminology of the period). For Plattard, Ronsard considered these qualities "comme caracteristiques du genie de la poesie et des arts en general" (p. 492).

Additional Information

Publication
Romance Quarterly, 39/4 (1992): 411-24
Language: English
Date: 1992
Keywords
Pierre de Ronsard, French poetry, Painting, Literary analysis, Second livre des Odes: Des peintures contenues dedans un tableau

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