MPS N° 9 - WEAPONS & TEARS

MPS MEN PORTRAITS SERIES n° 9 November – Décember 2020 © Francis Rousseau English version by Ann Menuhin

WEAPONS & TEARS

menportraits.blogspot.com © Francis Rousseau 2011-2020

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

The god Mars from Roman mythology (equivalent to the god Ares in Greek mythology) is the god of warriors but also the god of youth and violence, these two values going hand in hand in the antique world.

In ancient Rome, Mars was the primordial protecter god, the father of the legendary founders of the city, Romulus and Remus.

Mars played an equivalent role among other peoples of Lazio and beyond, notably among the Sabines, Samnites and Osques.

Along with Jupiter and Quirinus, Mars is part of what historians call the pre-capitoline triad.

Mars is the most important of the gods of war honored by the Roman legions.

His cult had two major moments, in March and October, which traditionally in Rome marked the beginning and end of the war season.

The Romans had named the first month of the year in his honor, which coincided with the return of good weather and the resumption of war after winter. Subsequently, January, the month for the election of magistrates, was agreed on as the start of the new year.

March became the third month, and so December (etymologically the tenth month) became the twelfth.

ANONYMOUS FRENCH (16th century) Mars, God of War gold, silver, lapis lazuli, opal, ruby, pearls and polished and enamelled chalcedony, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Marking the end of winter, Mars is therefore in fact the god of Spring and by extension symbolizes the god of youth.

With spring, war and youth coinciding, it was quite logical that youth and violence were equally linked. All the more so since it was the youth who were enlisted in priority in the ancient wars.

Ancient monuments, sculptures, cameos and miniatures and ancient coins represent the god Mars in a fairly codified way. Usually he was represented as the figure of a man armed with a helmet, a lance, a sword and a shield; sometimes naked, sometimes in war dress, or even with a cloak over the shoulders. Sometimes he wore a beard, but more often he was hairless (like here); he often held a staff of command in his hand. On his chest, we can make out the aegis with the head of the Medusa. He was sometimes mounted in his chariot drawn by fiery horses, sometimes on foot, always in a warlike attitude and always on the move. His nickname Gravidus means: "loaded, full, heavy, fertile", an index of ancient attributes linked to fertility and agriculture, values obviously linked to youth.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

nherited from the combat protections of ancient Greece and Rome, Italian armour from the Renaissance onwards became an item of pageantry, often used in lavish ceremonies.

Giving birth to a true art of armour, however, they still retained their warlike function by thickening to cope with the firearms that appeared during the second half of the 16th century. Parts of traditional armour, such as the vambraces, cubitiers and leggings, disappeared to compensate for the increase in weight.

These reinforced or entirely newly forged versions were used for jousting and subsequently for carousels. Beyond their role of combat protection, armour also, and above all, was a prestigious item for its owners and exhibited, through the richness of the decorations and the finesse of the craftsmanship, their power and their nobility. Suits of armour were also sometimes offered as diplomatic gifts or collected for their beauty alone without ever being worn, because in this case battle would have sullied the work of art it had become.

At the start of the 16th century, the art of armor was dominated by Italian mannerism. The capital of the European armoury was located in Milan. Since the 14th century, the Milanese workshops had been manufacturing combat armour known for its smooth and simple shapes. Such armour made it possible to deflect blows.

GIOVANNI-BATTISTA MORONI Portrait of a Gentleman in Armour (1540 -1560) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The steel, shiny and polished "to white", dazzled the enemy on the battlefield as soon as the slightest ray of sunlight struck it. Milanese armour (like that worn by the gentleman opposite) was ordered by all the courts of Europe, which now preferred it to the ribbed armour with overly protruding edges inherited from the Gothic period.

From the 1530s, the Milanese master gunsmiths custom-made ceremonial armour like the one seen opposite, but which was nonetheless ergonomic and flexible, constituting a veritable second skin. These technological jewels were then entrusted to goldsmiths who developed a new type of ornamentation described by contemporaries as "Grande Maniera". These luxurious armours have relief shapes, such as the embossed decorations that can be seen on the shoulders, arms and elbows (opposite) or the chisel engravings made after the models of painters; they are made of iron, but enriched by the work of various craftsmen: damasceners, gilders, enamellers ... This collective work required nearly a year. The ceremonial armour could cost as much as several thousand pounds, while the simple war armour was worth a hundred pounds (equivalent to the annual salary of a craftsman). This trend had an avowed aim: to make armour into heroic sculpture, thus linking it with the splendour of the mythical harnesses of the heroes of antiquity.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

SIR WILLIAM ORPEN (1878-1931) The NCO Pilot, RFC War Museum, London

During World War I, British pilots were generally all officers, the rank of non-commissioned officer (NCO) being incompatible with pilot status. At the end of the war, the profession of pilot seemed definitively reserved for officers, excluding non-commissioned officers. However, in 1921, the British Air Ministry decided to re-establish specific non-commissioned pilot training for candidates from the ranks of mechanics and skilled craftsmen.

They had to possess "courage, reliability, vigilance, liveliness and energy".

The idea was that after having served five years as pilots, they would return to their original jobs on the ground. But this was never the case!

The overwhelming majority of non-commissioned officers were employed for fairly ordinary daily routine tasks, while officer pilots received ongoing training in war techniques.

The people chosen from the NCO rank were generally men with significant mechanical experience. Thus a former taxi driver, who had acquired at least five years of experience as a mechanic of aircraft vehicles and engines could be chosen as NCO; today we would speak of "validation of prior learning".

The man opposite painted by Wiliam Orpen, must have been one of these: rigger or mechanic, he had just entered this "new continent" that was the world of piloting, the height of extreme adventure, especially in wartime.

The British Air Force did not regret this “on-the-job” training which proved to be very useful in supplying the pool of pilots needed by the Royal Air Force throughout the Second World War during which the role of the Air Force was even more important and decisive than during the First.

MEN PORTRAITS ____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

In this magnificent portrait of a soldier, the figure (undoubtedly a sergeant-at-arms of the Heavy Cavalry, a portion of his lance just visible) is protected by a completely classic and banal model of battle armour, which does not detract from either its efficiency or its price, especially since this soldier had to equip himself at his own expense. At the time when it was manufactured and worn, one did not yet speak of armour to designate these steel protections but rather of "harnois" or "harness" (a word from the military term Hernest meaning "provisions for the army"). Oddly enough, it is from the 18th century on that the word "armour" was used even though we had ceased to wear these protections for at least a hundred years already!

The type of combat armour worn opposite, with an average weight of 30 kg, was practically selfsupporting, the pieces riveted together thus distributing the weight evenly, unlike the medieval coats of mail where almost all of the weight rested on the fighter's shoulders.

Armour, like military equipment in general, has always been very expensive.

From the outset, only important figures could afford such protections. The troop equipped itself, the most remarquable made for Roman armies of ancient times.

SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO (1485-1547) Portrait of a Man in Armour (1512-13)

The organization of the Roman Empire and the taxes levied then made it possible to equip and maintain an army corps in a homogeneous and regular manner. This was no longer the case in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance.

Renaissance combat armour was an outward sign of wealth. This was very important because what ensured a guarantee of safeguard to its wearer was the market value of the armour and the possibility, in case of defeat, of a future ransom often ensuring his life.

But in reality, over time, the lord well established in his local power, sheltered behind his ramparts, and iron-clad in his formal armour found himself less and less exposed personally.

As combat tactics evolved, the heroic, heavy and dangerous lance charge had gone out of fashion and there was a shift from bravery to a more pragmatic and less risky organization than the chivalrous notion of glory. The richer and more powerful the fighter, the more beautiful his armour, the less inclined he was to expose himself to the hazards of battles.

It was therefore when armour reached its technical (and aesthetic) perfection that its usefulness shifted more to representation and appearance and it ceased to be effective.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

BLACAS CAMEO Sardonyx Cameo, 14-50 Apr. JC British Museum

The Blacas Cameo is an unusually large ancient Roman cameo, (9.3cm long by 12.8cm high), sculpted from a solid piece of sardonyx with four alternating layers of white and brown.

It shows the profile portrait of Augustus wearing the aegis of Minerva and a sword belt, and probably dates shortly after his death in AD 14, possibly AD 20-50.

It has been in the British Museum since 1867 when the museum acquired the famous collection of antiques that Louis, Duke of Blac, had inherited from his father, including also the Esquiline treasure. Usually this wonder is exhibited in Room 70 of the British Museum.

It is one of a group of spectacular imperial engraved gemstones, sometimes referred to as "State Cameos", which presumably originated in the circle of the inner court of Augustus, as it shows him with divine attributes that were still politically sensitive, and in some cases have explicit sexual content, inconsistent with exposure to a large audience, such as the Gemma Augustea in Vienna (which also owns the Gemma Claudia showing Emperor Claudius and his brother with their wives) and the Grand Cameo from France, exhibited in Paris.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

During the Heian era (794-1185) Japanese armour, already in existence for several centuries, evolved to consist of strips and small plates of metal or leather waterproofed under a coating of lacquer and laced to each other by ties of silk, precious metal or leather. Around the year 1000, these pieces of armour weighed between 20 and 30 kg, very heavy and bulky for the infantrymen who had to withstand all its inconveniences (unlike the cavalrymen whose weight was carried by the horses), the Japanese quickly abandoned them for lighter and more mobile models (dōmaru or haramaki) as equipment for infantrymen.

The dō-maru armour had an opening on the right side and closed with cords; thanks to the steel alloy used, it weighed no more than 10 to 20 kg.

The haramaki armour, on the other hand, was laced at the back and only protected the chest.

Over time, high-ranking samurai also began to use this kind of breastplate, which was much less restrictive during combat.

In the 16th century, with the help of European trade, Japanese armour was enriched with the morion, a high-crested metallic helmet of Hispanic origin that can be found in the silhouette of the Conquistadors. The arrival of firearms required a reinforcement of the armour: it would henceforth consist of plates of iron and steel, rather than being lamellar, i.e. in strips.

During the Sengoku era (1467-1573), as the need for armour increased due to relentless conflict, the breastplate was introduced.

Samurai from the Edo Period Colorized photograph, 1875

It consists of large laced or riveted bands. The long scale motif lacing was dropped. Then one opted for even lighter combat clothing facilitating rapid movement; these new armours (Tōsei gusoku) weighed between 10 and 13 kg maximum. At the same time, the silver armour of King Henry VIII of England weighed 30.13 kg!

The Edo era (1600-1868) was a rather quiet time for Japan. Armour was less in demand and instead became ceremonial clothing with an accent on the richness of the decor, until 1877 when the samurai disappeared.

The samurai opposite, to show his face, removed the upper protective part of his traditional armour. Thus no Kabuto (helmets with frontal ornament); no Menpō (face mask with a mustache to intimidate the enemy!) and no Yodarekake (or gorget protecting the throat).

On the other hand, he kept the Sode (the shoulder pads), the Dō (the breastplate), the noble part of the armour which protects the torso, the heart and the entrails; Kote (protective forearm sleeves) and Tekkō (protective hand gauntlets). In this photo we can also see the beginning of the Kusazuri or skirt made up of several thin strips so as not to hinder mobility while protecting the hips. He must undoubtedly also wear the Haedate or thigh boots protecting the thighs under the skirt and the Suneate, leggings protecting the legs and sometimes even the feet.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

JEAN-EUGÈNE-CHARLES ALBERTI (1777-1850) Left: Warrior with Drawn Sword, 1808 Right: Warrior with Lance and Shield, 1808 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

he Dutch painter Alberti was particularly fond of subjects from antiquity, which he painted at will. A pensioner of the King of Holland, Louis Bonaparte, he never failed to regularly send his “compulsory consignments” from Paris and Rome directly to his country which has treasured them.

The two warriors represented in the two consignments opposite fight completely naked. In the one on the left, the scabbard of the sword conceals (and at the same time symbolizes) the sex.

For the one on the right, the principle is the same except that his spear is completely hidden behind the arm.

Beyond these representations modestly or even prudently copying the figures observed on ancient vases, the question that arises is whether, in reality the Greeks really fought totally naked?

Although the image of Greek civilization is inextricably linked with that of male nudity (full female nudity was not allowed), Greeks obviously did not live naked all day!

On the other hand, nudity (gymnos) was strongly recommended during physical exercises (hence the words gymnasium, gymnastics).

It was also thus in war, but only among the Spartans who considered it "more loyal to fight without clothing, nudity implying a frank connection with the adversary, each having nothing to hide".

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

This man, Lé Tiep, whose portrait the Swiss painter Eugène Burnand drew, was part of the 3e RTT (3e Régiment de Tirailleurs Tonkinois) regiment formed by France under the Third Republic in 1886. Recruited in French Indochina to constitute the " Corps du Tonkin ”, the Indochinese infantrymen were mainly natives of Laos, Tonkin, Annam and Cambodia. In 1914, at the start of the First World War, the Tonkin division which comprised 4 regiments was based in Hanoi, Nam Định, Bac-Ninh, Hải Phòng and the Seven Pagodas. It had been a former infantry division of the French Army stationed in Hanoi in the French Protectorate of Tonkin. Begun on April 1, 1886, the organization of the Regiment was completed on May 20.

The strength then numbered 67 officers and 3,403 troops with the mission to occupy the regions of Hau Phong and Hai Duong which had just been created. These battalions and regiments were engaged in the Great War and the Franco-Thai War during which they fought bravely. Their noncommissioned officers formed the cadres of the future Cambodian, Laotian and Republic of Vietnam armies.

Likewise, some chose the ranks of Viet-Minh and Pathet Lao. At the end of the First World War, in 1919, Nguyên Tât Thanh, who would later be known as Ho Chi Minh, co-signed with his four comrades the manifesto "Claims of the Annamite People", written by Phan Van Truong.

EUGÈNE BURNAND (1850-1921) Tonkinese Riflemen in "Portraits of War" Lé Tiep de Phu Luong, Thua Thien province, French Army.

However, this manifesto, intended for diplomats meeting at the Paris Peace Conference, found no echo; this failure made him understand that the right of peoples to self-determination, defended by Wilson, mainly concerned Westerners! Thus marked the beginning of Vietnamese resistance to colonialism.

In 1930, the Viet Quốc Dân Đảng organized a mutiny affecting fifty troops belonging to the 2nd battalion of the 4th Tonkinese Tirailleurs or Riflemen Regiment, six French officers and noncommissioned officers were killed.

Indochinese units of the French colonial forces also distinguished themselves during the Battle of France where they always fought with the same bravery. Indochinese soldiers stood out in particular in the Meuse where the Wehrmacht suffered heavy losses.

In March 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army stormed the French garrison stationed in Indochina and composed of Indochinese infantrymen. The French cadres were decimated during this coup and the Tonkinese Tirailleurs regiment was annihilated by the Japanese forces.

After this tragic episode, the Tonkinese infantrymen were officially dissolved in 1945.

On September 2 of the same year, the Vietnam Declaration of Independence drafted by Ho Chi Minh was read in public at the Ba Dinh Flower Garden today Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

. JEAN-LEON GERÔME (1824-1904) A Bachi-Bouzouk Private collection

Bachi-Bouzouk, Captain Haddock's favorite insult in The Adventures of Tintin, actually refers to a mercenary horseman in the Ottoman Empire army and in Turkish means "bad head".

At the very least it is perfectly clear!

Little (if at all) subject to the same rules and the same discipline as the military, the bachi-bouzouks could be compared to what were the Hussars in the 17th century in the Austrian army or to other military corps made up of auxiliary warriors and soldiers mainly used to terrorize people. The bachibouzouks were famous for having been active and exceptionally cruel in the Balkans in the service of the Ottomans. They participated in particular in the siege of Vienna and the fall of Constantinople.

The extent of the repression they inflicted on the Bulgarians during the Bulgarian uprising of April 1876 outraged the whole world to the point of provoking the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.

The bachi-bouzouks were also used by the Young Turks to massacre nearly 30,000 Armenian Christians in Adana in April 1909. Disreputable beings therefore, except when it came to committing the worst! They were also much in demand for information missions, espionage, prosecution, illegal occupation of land, kidnapping with demands for ransom, blackmail, in short ... all abuses commonly associated with soldiers (and often permitted!) in times of war.

We can better understand why their name, when uttered by the honest Captain Haddock, conjured up the "worst" of all things. During the Crimean War (1853-56), an expeditionary force of the French army, the Spahis d'Orient, briefly existed which was nicknamed the corps of "bachi-bouzouks" because of its notorious indiscipline; it is certainly these bachi-bouzouks that we find on several occasions in paintings by the painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. This painter literally became infatuated with these soldiers after a twelve-week expedition to the Middle East at the beginning of 1868. On his return, he reconstructed an oriental universe in his Parisian workshop and dressed a few oriental-type models with fabrics he had acquired in the Levant. Gérôme was at the height of his career and a recognized specialist in rendering textures These reconstructed costumes vaguely recalled the motley costumes of the bachi-bouzouks, who of course had never had a uniform and dressed according to their plunder. These few paintings by Gérôme offer a rather striking contrast between the reputation of brutality and violence of the bachi-bouzouks and these silk costumes, these sophisticated headdresses, these pearls and ornate trimmings which give the subjects a nobility and a sumptuous allure ... which they certainly did not have in reality.

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SCHOOL OF CUZCO (16e - 18th century) Angels Arquebusiers Peru

The theme of angel and archangel arquebusiers ("los ángeles arcabuceros") or warrior angels is a peculiarity of South American colonial art,the School of Cuzco, in the vicekingdom of Alto Peru. However, we find the same military angels in Calamarca or Carabuco in Bolivia and even in parts of Ecuador.

It was after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, from 1535, that the School of Cuzco developed. European artistic techniques were then taught in the Americas by artists from Europe (Spain, Holland, Italy) including the Italian Jesuit Brother Bernardo Bitti. This religious art form had the sole purpose of converting the Incas to Catholicism and it was for this purpose that the Jesuits established a school for the Quechuas and Mestizos, where drawing and oil painting were taught. In medieval European and Renaissance painting, warrior angels were depicted with spears, shields or swords, such as were found in Roman times. When the Andean artists of the Viceroyalty of Peru set out to reproduce European models, they naturally adapted the arsenal of the heavenly armies to the times in which they lived. This is how angels and archangels gave up their traditional weapons for arquebuses, the most modern firearm in 15th century Europe that revolutionized the art of war and allowed the ultra-rapid conquest of the Americas, literally terrorizing the local populations with their fiery power.

What can also strike the viewer in these paintings, both mystical and warlike, is the contrast between the feminine softness of the angelic faces, the strangeness of the celestial wings, the magnificence of the costumes in all points similar to the embroidered outfits of gold and wide-brimmed hats adorned with feathers of the soldiers of the Catholic Kings and their posture, weapon in hand, ready to kill!

Most of these arquebusier angels of the School of Cuzco all had names, but were in reality apocryphal angels, with names coming from the Judeo Christian scriptures proscribed by the Lateran Council in 1261. Thus only two archangels, Raphael and Gabriel are recognized by the Catholic Church the 7 others are proscribed such as Uriel (often represented as Saint Michael), Hoziel, Yeriel Timor Dey, Eliel Potencia Dey, Salamiel Pax Dey, Oziel Fortitudo Dey, Oziel Oblacio Dey. Due to pre-Columbian traditions which defined art as the result of a common work, many of these magnificent paintings have remained anonymous.

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS About this warrior, George Catlin writes in his "Letters and Notes" *: “Sha – có-pay, the chief of this Ojibbeway tribe who inhabit the northern regions is a man of immense height and very dignified appearance… but of a pride and a sufficiency almost in proportion to his height.

The day I painted his portrait, he arrived in a beautiful, impeccably tanned suede tunic fringed with strands of human hair in abundance. He explained to me that he had torn them, at the beginning of his life as a warrior, from the heads of his enemies, and that he was proud to wear them now as so many trophies and proof of what his arm had been capable of performing in the battles he had fought. His tunic was beautifully embroidered and painted with curious hieroglyphics that represented the history of his battles and the different phases of his life. The Six, since that's the translation of his name, wore a pair of what he calls "hairpipes" on his temples.

A ceremonial headdress of cascading eagles' feathers adorned the back of his head. " George Catlin, who was the undisputed expert on American Indians and their ways and customs, was often criticized for having always depicted them in their formal costume rather than in their daily clothes.

This is to forget that the purpose of his portraits - now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum - had not escaped the notice of any of those cunning warriors who were willing to go down in history, but only on condition that they brought with them some

GEORGE CATLIN (1796-1872) Sha–có-pay (The Six), Chief of the Plains Ojibwa Smithsonian American Art Museum

of the prestige they had enjoyed during their lifetime.

As it is, the work of George Catlin offers an essential testimony of Native American culture. His style, characterized by clean, quick strokes and a minimal use of colors, was more or less imposed on him by the difficult conditions of travel through the Indian territories and by the necessary speed of execution.

In 1838, Catlin created the Indian Gallery, intended to collect the material he had created. It was presented on the east coast of the United States as well as in Europe, where it met with immediate success. In 1845, the French king, Louis-Philippe, received him in Paris, at the Palais des Tuileries, accompanied by a troupe of Amerindian dancers. The latter performed a show of traditional dances. The king and the court were so impressed by the brushstrokes of the master who painted the event on the spot, that Louis-Philippe commissioned a series of canvases, now exhibited at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. In 1860, destitute, Catlin attempted to explore the South American equatorial jungle, but didn't rediscover his special relationship with this world and the Amerindian peoples there. * Georges Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 8, 1841, reissued in 1973

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS

LEONARDO DA VINCI Head of a Soldier (1504-1505) Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Leonardo da Vinci has been widely credited with a fascination for war, machines of war and soldiers' equipment. However, in his eyes, even though war may be necessary, he considered it above all a "savage madness" (Pazzia bestialissima).

He studied and incidentally invented weapons while keeping a step back from their use.

Leonardo da Vinci had a moral ethic and believed that man should be actively engaged in combating evil and doing good, because "he who neglects to punish evil, helps to achieve it". He also indicated that he had no illusions about the nature of man and how he could use his inventions, as is clear in this preamble to a presentation of the submarine: “I don't describe my method of staying underwater or how long I can go there without eating. And I do not publish it or disclose it, due to the evil nature of men, who would use it for assassination on the bottom of the sea by destroying ships, sinking them, them and the men they carry. ".

Leonardo da Vinci also placed moral reward well above material rewards: “It is not wealth, that can be lost. Virtue is our real good and the real reward of its owner. It cannot be lost, it cannot abandon us, except when life flees ”. But at the same time, he did not hesitate in a letter to Ludovico Sforza, to sell himself as a military engineer arguing that he was the cheapest at the moment, "with skills and secrets that can really make the difference with all those who claim to be war experts ”. Then he lists everything he is capable of building "bridges, scaffolding and stairs, tools to destroy walls and fortresses, siege machines, bombards and mortars, secret passages, tanks, weapons for naval battles, ships that can withstand bombs, all kinds of material that can be used, both for the protection of the city and for a siege ”.

A careful examination of his drawings, however, indicates that many of his technologies presented as innovative were borrowed from several immediate or more distant predecessors. For example, his famous paddle-wheeled boat which already existed in the 5th century under the Southern Song Dynasty in China, or his helicopter already present a century earlier in the notebooks of Mariano di Jacopo aka Il Taccola (1382 -1453), an early Renaissance Sienese artist and engineer.

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This French soldier painted by Caillebotte wears the uniform of Second Empire soldiers and in particular that of the line infantry. His cap is the one the captains wore. The line infantry is arguably the oldest and most universal of the army corps. Dating back to ancient Greece, the infantry includes all the military units that fight on foot, the soldier being called in this case an infantryman.

Under the Second Empire, the infantry gained fame especially during the War of 1870 against Prussia.

The 2nd French Infantry Division to which undoubtedly belonged the infantryman opposite, is one of the oldest of the French army, part of the Army of the Rhine, commanded by Marshal Mac Mahon.

The Franco-Prussian war had a profound impact on France and on the lives of many French painters.

Caillebotte, like his contemporary Gauguin, served during this conflict. But while Gauguin, on his return from the front, found only the ashes of his house, Caillebotte returned to a family even richer than he was before the conflict, his father having increased his fortune as the main supplier of army blankets. Oddly enough, it was after this traumatic conflict that the two men became artists. Gauguin began to draw; Caillebotte frequented Léon Bonnat's studio. The whole country, until then one of the great world powers, emerged from the conflict humiliated and crushed by its battles against Germany.

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894) A Soldier, 1881 Private collection

The disillusionment of the French at this moment came both from outside and from within. The capitulation of the imperial government of Napoleon III had led to the establishment of the "Commune" in Paris as well as in other cities. The brutality of the repression in Paris was of considerable magnitude.

Tens of thousands of "Communards" perished in a bloody massacre, and popular fury precipitated the overthrow and then exile of Napoleon III and his government.

The image of the soldier has, throughout history, been immortalized by many other artists, notably by Manet, whose iconic "The Fifer" featured an unorthodox image of the army. In a time when the painting of battles must be epic and portraits of generals, majestic, Manet presented a simple fifer, a young boy gazing tenderly at the viewer, completely unaware of the immeasurable cruelty of the world he inhabited.

Caillebotte's "Soldier", painted between 1879-1881, is as unconventional as Manet's "The Fifer", even though it is its exact opposite. He stands, smoking a cigarette, a pensive figure seeking to distance himself from the viewer's universe, a universe to which he no longer belongs, too aware of the physical and psychological dangers he faces. This posture out of the world and this gaze on a distant elsewhere undeniably contains a criticism of war in general ... and of the elites who shamelessly mowed down millions of citizens' lives?

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CHARLES LEBRUN (1619-1690) Louis XIV, roi de France et de Navarre, vers 1662 Musées du châ̂teau de Versailles et Trianon

Louis XIV (1638-1715) known as Louis Le Grand or the Sun King, 64th King of France and 44th King of Navarre in the splendour of his youth when he just turned 24! At this point, he had only really been king for barely a year in fact only since the death of Cardinal Mazarin, who had prolonged, with his mother Anne of Austria, an iron regency well beyond his majority. This portrait is therefore the first portrait of the king as such... and not just your ordinary king since he has just established the regime, hitherto unknown in France, of the Absolute Monarchy. Indeed, the day after Mazarin's death, on March 10, 1661, by a "coup de majesté" that today we would qualify as a coup d’ Etat, Louis XIV decided to abolish the post of Chief Minister (equivalent to a modern Prime Minister) and personally take control of the whole government. Alerted by minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert of the country's very degraded financial situation, due to the ruinous war against the House of Spain and to the five years of the Fronde, but also to the unbridled personal enrichment of Mazarin and that of the superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, the king decided… to decide henceforth on his own. On September 5, 1661, his 23rd birthday, the king had Fouquet arrested in broad daylight by d'Artagnan. He abolished the post of Superintendent of Finance and created a Chamber of Justice to examine the accounts. In 1665, the judges condemned Fouquet to banishment, which allowed the finances of the kingdom to recover a hundred million pounds.

In his Memoirs for the Instruction of the Dauphin, Louis XIV gives an outline of his thoughts on absolutism: “The maxim which says that to be wise it suffices to know oneself well, is good for individuals; but the sovereign, in order to be skilful and well served, is obliged to know all those who may be within sight ” To the notion of absolute monarchy, he also adds the notion of monarchy of divine right which he defines as follows: "He who gave kings to men wanted them to be respected as his lieutenants, reserving the right to himself alone. to examine their conduct ”.

Louis XIV, holding his power directly from God, is not indebted for his decisions to humans but to God alone… not only for his decisions but also for his conduct! and his last wife Madame de Maintenon well knew how to remind him of this bitterly at the end of his reign….

Here in front of us is that young man-his portrait in ceremonial armor embossed with the royal "fleurs de lys".

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The Abduction of the Sabine Women is the subject of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin. It is taken from Plutarch's "The Life of Romulus" and illustrates the founding episode of Rome in which the Romans seized the Sabine women, to marry them.

The first painting (opposite) painted in 1634-1635,at the MET in New York, was painted in Rome.

The second version (see next page), painted in 1637-1638 is at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

In the version opposite, Poussin uses his own "furious" mode of expression, according to him, to perfectly describe "the incredible scenes of war".

His concern is to be intelligible to those who do not know the subject. For this, he gives his characters very expressive attitudes. The violent colors (red, yellow, blue) participate in the creation of this atmosphere of terror and upheaval.

Classical painter who precisely constructed his compositions and left nothing to chance, Poussin, before painting these two canvases, had made small wax figures which he placed in front of a landscape.

NICOLAS POUSSIN (1850-1921) L’Enlèvement de Sabines, 1634-45 The MET, New York

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This version was painted for Cardinal Luigi Omodei. After a passage in the collection of Louis XIV, it arrived at the Louvre in 1685 and has not left there since then.

Besides the fact that some figures differ from the version painted three years earlier (see previous page), the architectural composition is more complex.

The construction of the painting is based on two diagonals which intersect in the triumphal arch at the back in the center, which is therefore the vanishing point. The curves and circular effects give the crowd the impression of movement.

The two paintings describe a founding episode in the city of Rome. Romulus, on the left, giving the signal for the abduction of the Sabine women, whom the Romans will take forcibly as wives. His pose derives directly from ancient imperial statuary. The very dramatic composition of the two canvases reflects the tension of the episode: the characters are very numerous, the Roman soldiers are agitated in all directions, the women try to flee, an old man implores Romulus ... however there are no screaming children in the foreground, as in the previous version.

The theme of kidnapping was a great success in the 16th and 17th centuries, allowing the fusion of female and male bodies, as in a sculpture, as well as illustrating much appreciated crowd and panic effects.

NICOLAS POUSSIN (1850-1921) L’Enlèvement de Sabines, 1636-37 Musée du Louvre, Paris

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AGNOLO BRONZINO (1503-1572) Portrait of Cosimo de Medici in armor Detroit Institute of Arts, USA

Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464) son of Giovanni di Bicci de Medici and Piccarda de Bueri is also known under the name of Cosimo L'Ancien. A major figure in Florentine legend, this banker and captain was the founder of the prestigious political dynasty of the Medici, effective rulers of the Republic of Florence during part of the Italian Renaissance. He received a humanist education and learned Latin, Greek, French and German before heading, at the age of 13 (!), one of his father's woolen workshops and traveling Europe as a inspector of family bank subsidiaries.

Immediately after the death of his father in 1429, he opposed the oligarchic regime of the then omnipotent Albizzi family in Florence. Endowed with a remarkable political sense, Cosimo de Medici, succeeded in leading the head of the oligarchy, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, into a political trap which would eventually close on both him and the city of Florence. Arrested, imprisoned in the Palace of the Signoria and then exiled for ten years, rather than condemned to death, thanks to numerous bribes, Cosimo went to settle in Venice, while installing a veritable fifth column of partisans in Florence.

Throughout his exile he remained in very close and constant contact with them.

And this is where the trap closed: overnight, Cosimo, through his supporters who remained in Florence, demanded that all the Florentine debtors of the Medici Bank (and there were many) repay their loans without delay, thus paralyzing overnight the city's economy, before completely suffocating it. A financial siege rather than a military siege that succeeded beyond all expectations! With the support of Pope Eugene IV with whom he had been negotiating since his Venetian exile, Cosimo returned to Florence, to the cheers of the people! Albizzi and his supporters were, in turn, forced into exile by the newly elected Council of Priors. Like his father in the past, Cosimo was then appointed Gonfalonier of Florence and was able to implement his main political plan: to make his family the sole arbiter of the Florentine state. His exceptional fortune, based on the bank bequeathed to him by his father, with its subsidiaries in various Italian states (and abroad) was put to the service of his political ambition. To muzzle his opponents, he used two techniques: banishment (very common in the Republic of Florence), but also "tax adjustments", which consisted in ruining the victim by increasing, through a system of penalties, their taxes. Cynical and devious, this extraordinary character said: "We are ordered to forgive our enemies, but it is nowhere written that we must forgive our friends". But Cosimo was also the one who initiated the patronage of the Medici family. Advised by the sculptor Donatello, Cosimo had the frescoes of the Convent of San Marco painted by Fra Angelico, among others. He conceived the idea of the Platonic Academy of Florence, took a very keen interest in art and science, in the service of which he put his fortune with the liberality of a great prince. The Medici legend was born.

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The Cairo revolt is an episode in the Egyptian campaign led by General Bonaparte under the Directory regime, which wanted to remove this far too popular young general from the center of power and, incidentally, cut off the English route to Asia.

On May 19, 1798, Bonaparte left Toulon with 54,000 men, including scholars and artists. Once in Egypt, the French fleet having been totally destroyed by Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Aboukir, Bonaparte was forced to stay in Egypt. It was by trying to impose an administrative model based on a land reform of the entire country that Bonaparte, on October 21, 1798, provoked the popular uprising of the inhabitants of Cairo.

The moment represented in this painting, painted ten years after the fact, is when the French, after entering the great mosque in Cairo, fight the rebels who have entrenched themselves there. An idealised painting if there ever was one, representing the ferocity of the combat of the French army not as if it were a simple military repression but rather a battle of demigods, this exceptional painting in Girodet's corpus shows an attack in which the figures, despite the sculptural hieratisme, are not devoid of movement. The frenchman brandishing his sabre and trampling the corpses seems to have been taken from Poussin's "Massacre des Innocents". Likewise, his enemy, depicted in heroic nudity and supporting the body of an insurgent, appears straight out of an ancient bas-relief.

ANNE-LOUIS GIRODET (1767-1824) Révolt in Cairo the 21st of Octobre 1798.

Détail, 1810 Musées du Château de Versailles

The tumult of the second plan where a multitude of figures appear alone endows the stage with a singularly violent movement. No portrait other than that of the soul of the besieged and the anger of the attackers! The individuality here fades under the force of the allegory of combat.

Commissioned in 1809 to be exhibited in the Galerie de Diane at the Palais des Tuileries, this masterpiece

by Girodet, comfortably taking on an historic mixing of exoticism with heroism, is a perfect illustration of the construction of the Napoleonic legend.

It was in fact in the years 1808-1810 that a very active cultural policy was carried out aimed at perfecting official imperial mythology. Among the commissions that Napoleon gave to Girodet: "The Apotheosis of French Heroes who Died for the Fatherland", directly inspired by the lyricism of Ossian's poem. The heroism of Girodet, whose painted beings lose their carnal nature retaining only the impulse of the ideal, will still be evident in the portraits of Chouans commissioned by Louis XVIII for Saint-Cloud. To illustrate the Napoleon rooms of the Louis-Philippe historical museum, the constitutional monarch assigned him to Versailles.

In the fierceness of this fight, we find the demand for national honor which made General Bon pronounce, as the insurgents declared their submission, these terrible words: "The hour of vengeance has come; you have started this, it is up to me to finish ", initiating a continuous bombardment which crushed the rebels.

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This heroic soldier lost in a muddy field with only two birds for companions, is on the way back to his homeland.

He is one of the fighters in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, a conflict in which the Russian Empire was allied with Romania, Serbia and Montenegro against the Ottoman Empire. This is the first conflict with PanSlavism as a backdrop, assigning Russia the duty to liberate the Slavic peoples still under Turkish domination and to constitute a Pan-Slavic confederation.

The starting point of this war was the Bulgarian insurrection of April 1876 suppressed by the Turks in a bloodbath, 1,500 Bulgarians were in fact massacred by the Turkish bachi-bouzouks. This carnage touched people deeply not only in Russia, but also everywhere else in Europe. William Gladstone in the UK and Victor Hugo in France solemnly protested.

A regime crisis broke out in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. Sultan Abdulaziz was overthrown. Murad V was deposed after 90 days of reign, then Abdülhamid II succeeded him. The Russian government tried to take advantage of this institutional crisis within the Ottoman Empire. It was hostile, however, to the Belgrade mission of General Mikhail Tcherniaev, hero of the wars of Central Asia, who left, on his own initiative, to command the troops of the principality of Serbia. In June, the latter hastened to declare war on the Ottoman Empire. The Serbian and Montenegrin armies entered Turkish territory, but neither the Bosnians nor the Bulgarians, after previous unpleasant experiences, dared rise up.

Tcherniaev proved to be a bad strategist and the Serbian troops were finally pushed back, notably by the Turkish general Osman Pasha.

lLYA REPIN (1844-1930) Return to the Homeland of a Hero of the Last War, 1878 Private collection

The European powers obtained an armistice quickly broken by Serbia. Ottoman troops headed for Belgrade, but a Russian ultimatum made them retreat. A new armistice was decreed on November 3, 1878. It put an end to this brief but bloody conflict.

In the painting opposite, far from the large paintings of battles which had made some painters famous up until the middle of the 19th century, Repin opted for a decidedly modern and humane approach to war.

Since the beginning of the 1870s, Repin had become one of the key figures of Russian realism, succeeding in reflecting in his pictorial production the diversity of life that surrounded him and reacting strongly to current events, as here! His pictorial language has a plasticity which is personal to him; he appropriated different styles, from that of the Spanish and Dutch painters of the 17th century to elements of the French impressionists who were contemporary to him, although he never admired them for all that.

It is due to this moving canvas of the soldier returning to his homeland that Repin's work would flourish.

He then composed a gallery of portraits of his contemporaries, worked as a painter of history and genre scenes.

According to Vladimir Stassov, Repin's work is thus an "encyclopedia of Russia after the abolition of serfdom".

He spent the last thirty years of his life in Finland, at his Penates property in Kuokkala. He continued to work there, although less intensely than before. He wrote his memoirs, part of which were published in his book “Далёкое близкое” (Far and Near).

MEN PORTRAITS _____________________ WEAPONS & TEARS This gathering of American soldiers, watched quizzically by Japanese soldiers, was immortalized by war painter Bernard Perlin. The episode takes place at the start of the occupation of Japan in September 1945. After the signing of Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945, which ended World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in the Pacific, became military governor of Japan. MacArthur, who was branded by the media as Viceroy of the Pacific, behaved like a proconsul, with the rank of head of state. As such, he assumed responsibility for a country bled dry by the war, forced to repatriate 6 million combatants to the archipelago and to cede three quarters of the Empire of the Rising Sun which had resulted from the Japanese expansionist policy carried out from 1929 in Asia. In this ruined country, only the ancient imperial structure was preserved. The American occupying forces which ruled the country until the holding of future free elections found it difficult to cope with the problems encountered: unemployment, prostitution through the "Association for Leisure and Amusement", black marketering, orphans, undernourishment, epidemics, diseases, the health consequences of the two nuclear bombings, displacement of people by the millions ...

On September 8, 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco ended this period. Japan regained its sovereignty and the right to defend itself, but American troops remained in the archipelago.

The same year, in December 1951, Japan was admitted to the United Nations.

But the Treaty of San Francisco was not signed by the USSR, which re-established diplomatic relations with Tokyo only in 1956.

BERNARD PERLIN (1918-2014) American soldiers in Tokyo, 1945 Private collection

1892 - The MET Museum, New York

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ÁGISTON SCHOEFFT (1809–1888) Maharajah Sher Singh Seated on the Golden Throne of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, c.1850 Private Collection

Here is a document which perfectly illustrates the legendary splendor of the Maharajahs covered with pearls and precious stones and seated on golden thrones, an activity which this Maharajah graciously accepts, although with a sombre gaze. This portrait of the great Sheer Singh was painted in Vienna (Austria), nothing being too extravagant to celebrate the greatness of these fabulous Indian princes.

Coming from Sanskrit, the term Maharajah is a contraction of two words which mean "great" and "king".

This title was originally only for potentates ruling over very large areas, with an impressive number of vassal kings under their control. From the Middle Ages, the title was used more by Hindu monarchs reigning over small states but wanting to believe that they were descended from former Maharajahs.

Maharajah Sher Singh (1807 - 1843) was Sikh ruler of the Punjab from January 1841 to September 1843, the date of his assassination. Son of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, on whose golden throne he sits in this portrait, he was celebrated as a "handsome man with wide chest and rare elegance, fond of fashionable clothes and lavish jewelry". Nevertheless, his bellicose appearance made him very popular with the army. He loved hunting and was well versed in the arts and European culture which he liked to develop in his court, always inviting many foreign visitors.

In 1829, Maharajah Ranjit Singh bestowed on him civil and military honors and the privilege of sitting on a chair in his Darbar. A great warrior and proud conqueror, Sher Singh, to deserve this honor, had participated in many campaigns to expand the kingdom. In May 1831, he defeated, in Balakot, the turbulent Sayyid Ahmad Barelavi who had launched a jihad against Sikh domination. Between 1831 and 1834 he became governor of the province of Kashmir. In 1834 he was one of the heroic commanders of the army which marched on Peshawar to successfully recapture the city from the Afghans. Sher Singh ascended his throne on January 20, 1841. In July of the same year, he married Rani Dukno, the daughter of the Rajah of Suket, renowned for being one of the most beautiful women of her time.

He then distinguished himself by his relative leniency during the siege and subsequent capture of the city of Lahore, where he refrained from reprisals and generously treated those who had opposed him, although this military operation caused thousands of deaths. By proclamation, he even assured the people of Lahore peace and security, as the army was warned to refrain from assaulting citizens in any way. Despite his facade of clemency and bravery, this soldier king was still assassinated. It was rather incredible, as he tried to retrieve his new hunting rifle held in the hand of a certain Ajit Singh Sandhawalia, who rather than give the rifle to his master, pulled the trigger! After this unfortunate maneuver, Sher Singh barely had time to say "What a betrayal" and then expire.

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ANTOINE-JEAN GROS (1771-1835) Portrait de Louis-Eugene d’Etchegoyen, 1810 Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, Japon

The French painter Antoine-Jean Gros, also known as "the baron Gros", title granted to him by King Charles X, did not paint many equestrian portraits with the exception of those of the Emperor Napoleon I (who was his first and main sponsor) and of some Marshals of the Empire. Hence the relative value of this beautiful preromantic portrait of a career soldier, Baron Louis-Eugène d'Etchegoyen, descendant of an illustrious Béarn family ennobled by Louis XIV and his magnificent white Arabian horse, extremely stylized and very svelte on his long legs.

After the change of regime in France in 1815, the two barons, Baron Gros and Baron Etchegoyen continued their respective careers, the first as a painter under the Restoration and the second as a Knight of Saint John of Jerusalem (Order of Malta), his father occupying the functions of "Honorary Gentleman of the Chamber of HM King Charles X! This is therefore a portrait made under the Empire, of a personage whose military career the Restoration later consecrated, proof that a soldier's valor could cross regimes! For it is not just any uniform that Louis-Eugene d'Etchegoyen wears in this portrait but that of the black hussars, also known as death hussars, a corps of volunteers which had been formed at its own expense under the Revolution to fight the allies. It should be noted that the color black was used extremely little in the French uniforms of the monarchy and not at all under the 1st Empire, with the notable exception of defectors from the Black Hussars, the survivors of whom had all been assembled in a regiment of light cavalry. At the time of their revolutionary splendor, when they committed nothing less than the abominable genocide of the Vendée, the black hussars of death wore on the cuff a skull and cross bones, macabre emblems that the Empire no longer tolerated. It's hard to imagine that the young Baron Etchegoyen, with his almost feminine air and the beautiful egret feather that tops his hat, was one of those assassins, rapists and thieves! And indeed there is little chance that he was, if only because of to his age! On the other hand, he joined what we would now call an elite corps, on his first posting in 1810.

Gros was himself the painter of the great Napoleonic battles. His Battle of Eylau in particular, in which the young Louis-Eugene d´Etchegoyen distinguished himself (although it was more behind the scenes than in the foreground), has remained extremely famous and is preserved in the Louvre. Gros painted this battle during the winter of 1807-1808, after obtaining the official commission following a competition he had won. Vivant Denon, the director of the Napoleon museum, had given Gros most of the aspects of the composition: the exact moment to paint, the number of extras, the corpses in the foreground, the (gigantic) dimensions of the canvas ... imperial propaganda left nothing to chance.

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ANTOINE-JEAN GROS (1771 - 1835) Bonaparte au Pont D’Arcole, 1796 Château de Versailles

Left: the young and brave General Bonaparte training his troops to assault the Pont d'Arcole, wearing the dark blue uniform of the generals of the very young Republic. Three years later after the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire, he put an end to the French Revolution by instituting the Consulate, the first step towards an Empire which was to ensure him omnipotence in Europe and allow him, as Louis XVI had done before him, to ally France to Austria through his marriage to Marie-Louise of HabsburgLorraine, eldest daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria!

Right: Emperor Napoleon I, whom the whole of Europe now detested, forced to sign his abdication in April 1814 at the Château de Fontainebleau. After his military defeat, the marshals forced the Emperor to abdicate. In order not to avoid a civil war, Napoleon gave in. He was deposed by the Senate on April 3 and signed an unconditional abdication on April 6, 1814. On the night of April 12 to 13, Napoleon took a dose of "Condorcet poison" which should have killed him. Then he sent for Armand de Caulaincourt to dictate his last wishes. Feeling extremely unwell, he told Caulaincourt: "How hard it is to die, how unfortunate to have a constitution that postpones the end of a life that I so long to see the end of!"

For 300 days he reigned in exile before disembarking a year later and regaining power…. for 100 days which led to the formation of the Seventh Coalition which would defeat him at Waterloo and cause his final abdication and exile on the remote island of Saint Helena where he died in May 1821.

HIPPOLYTE-PAUL DELAROCHE L’Empereur Napoléon 1er en 1814 (peint en 1840) .

MPS MEN PORTRAITS SERIES n° 9 November –Décember 2020 ©Francis Rousseau- tous droits réservés

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