The Decoration of the Paris Panthéon by Paul Chenavard – A particular Brotherhood.
Pierre-Olivier Douphis
On
April 16, 1848, one month and a half after the February Revolution, the French provisory Government asked Paul Chenavard (1807-1895) to decorate the French Panthéon in Paris. This project was one of the most impressive works of art ever imagined: seventy scenes – representing the great men who had contributed to the evolution of Mankind – would have decorated the interior of what was to become the Temple of Humanity. From the Deluge to Napoléon Bonaparte, Zoroaster, Pericles, Caesar, Jesus-Christ, Charlemagne, Pope Leo X, Louis XIV, Voltaire and many others would have been depicted in paintings on the walls, between the columns, but also on the piers and even in mosaics on the ground (fig. 1). Unfortunately, as soon as this commission was made public, some artists, led by Paul Delaroche, leagued against it. They accused Chenavard of depreciating the artistic value of their own production by asking 10 francs per day and per person. At the same time, the catholic party also raised against the project because it judged the themes chosen by Chenavard inappropriate in a building it still considered as a church[1]. Due to this opposition, after three years of intense work – during which twenty-one canvases were created – Napoléon III gave the Panthéon back to the Church in 1851, and the artist was thus unable to complete his project.
This was a real shock for Paul Chenavard, since the decoration of the Panthéon was the project of his life: in 1827, he met – supposedly – Hegel[2], with whom he discussed the Philosophy of History[3]. The German philosopher told him that the artistic representation of this philosophy was still to be done. Later, during the July Monarchy, the artist designed the majority of the scenes that were to be shown in the Panthéon. This could explain the fact that he did not produce many paintings and exhibited only once at the Paris Salon[4]. Nevertheless, after 1851, he was allowed to keep his workshop in the Louvre until the 1855 Paris World Fair. Yet, he hoped in secrecy that his pieces would be placed in another Paris building. But the Second Empire was not interested. In 1871, after the return of the Republic, the artist thought that his works would be placed where they were due. But the new conservative government left the building to the Church and asked the best artists of the time to produce religious decorations (which can still be seen there). Meanwhile, it sent nineteen finished paintings to the Lyons Museum. In 1885, Chenavard and his admirers made a last attempt when the building was turned back into a Panthéon for Victor Hugo’s funeral. But removing the 1871 decorations and replacing it by Chenavard’s would have presented some difficulties. Therefore, the 1848 Temple of Humanity decorations remained a dream.
But even if Chenavard’s canvases were not displayed in the Panthéon, the entire project is still known thanks to a series of articles entitled “Le Panthéon, Peintures murales,” written by a friend of his, the French writer Théophile Gautier. Those articles were published in a newspaper – La Presse – in September 1848[5].
They are important because they are the first to acknowledge that, as early as 1848, the artist was helped by collaborators in order to enlarge the modelli he had produced. Gautier further stated that if Chenavard had worked alone, “it would have taken two hundred years”. But with the help of “twenty-five or thirty friends, disciples or simple workers” the necessary time could have been seriously reduced. The author gave the artist’s forecast: “Within two years, the ‘cartons’ will be delivered to the public’s judgment. Within eight years, with its decoration completed, the Panthéon will be the rival of Rome’s Saint-Peter[6].”
Thanks to Gautier’s writings, one could understand that the collaboration Chenavard wanted to create could be considered as a national atelier. The revolutionary government wanted to build such ateliers in order to give all unemployed workers a job. Unemployment had also stricken the artistic milieu and a majority of artists hoped and asked for the creation of the “République des arts” which could have helped them obtaining commissions[7]. The Panthéon decorations could have been the first step toward this utopian era: painters would have worked at it for a few years and the French State would have paid them for their task. This can explain why Chenavard received letters from artists who were ready to work with him. But the new government, which was in a very uneasy situation, wasn’t prepared to pay twenty or thirty painters to work in the Panthéon. Then, contrary to what was expected, in September 1849, only three people received official commissions: Dominique Papety, Philippe Comairas and Hippolyte Holfeld. A fourth one, Jean-Louis Bézard, was chosen after Papety’s death. Everyone was to paint a scene: Papety/Bézard worked on the two panels that represent The Capture of Carthage, Comairas on the two panels of Attila (fig. 2) and Holfeld on the Christening of Constantine. They all received eight hundred francs. We also know that Bézard worked until the end of 1850, Comairas until the beginning of 1851, and Holfeld until 1853. Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that Chenavard carried out the fifteen remaining scenes single-handedly. Maybe unofficial collaborators were associated to the project? The artist himself backs up this supposition: when the Archbishop of Paris, His Grace Sibour, came to visit him in his workshop, in September 1852, an “assistant” was also working there. Unfortunately, we know nothing about this collaborator (his name or his trade) or about other assistants who might have helped him (How many were there? Which scenes did they work on? Etc.).
It’s hard to imagine what went on between 1849 and 1855, when Chenavard was preparing the Panthéon decorations. There are no archives we can rely upon. But it is clear that the collaboration set in motion in order to accelerate the decoration was a failure. Chenavard and his aides were not fast enough to be able to present a completed work to his opponents. But, in collaborating with other artists, he had reached his other goal – avoiding any personal style.
An art with no style
In his articles, Théophile Gautier explained that Paul Chenavard needed collaborators ready to “sacrifice their personality for the benefit of the works.” The author went on: “He thinks that great works have to be impersonal and look like the product of a mysterious aggregation, rather than the expression of a particular nature[8].” Chenavard took example of the “ unknown workers who elevated and chiseled the cathedrals.” Gautier shed light on the artist’s point of view: “Chenavard wants his paintings to unfold on the walls and on the friezes without anybody thinking of the hand that drew and fixed them.” And he concluded: “The entire work will look like it came out of the same hand and of the same palette on a single day and, so to speak, without any effort.”
In Chenavard’s mind – because he had learned a lot in front of the masterpieces of the western world – there were fundamental differences between easel and mural paintings. First of all, there was a thematic difference: while the first ones represent portraits, landscapes or genre pictures, the others show historical, religious or philosophical scenes. Then, there was a difference between the techniques: with the former, the artist had to develop his own style, and that’s why Gautier wrote about “easel paintings of a more or less limited dimension whose execution is and has to be the high point,” while “with [mural paintings], the benefit of chiaroscuro, transparency and stroke disappears; a beautiful layout, a great style, a simple and dull color[9] – that’s what it requires.” Ever since his return from Rome, Chenavard wanted to follow the great examples of the past: the frescos of the Sistine Chapel, of the Vatican Chambers and of the Pisa Campo Santo.
Reading Gautier’s writings helps one to understand Chenavard’s philosophy: to him, if the easel paintings speak to the senses, the mural paintings speak to the mind. In his opinion, the latter were the only ones that produced great art. He hated the little canvases that pleased the bourgeoisie and wanted to express the great philosophical ideas of his time, just as Giotto, Benozzo Gozzoli, Raphael or Michelangelo had expressed those of their own century.
Those painters had only been preoccupied in expressing the ideas of their time. In the 19th century, artists thought a great deal about how their works would be judged in the following centuries. If Chenavard wanted to leave something important behind him, it was to have his work – not his name – worshiped. That’s why he wanted to give up style and color in his paintings: he thought style was the mark of an epoch and that color brought out irrational sentiments. But a painting with no style and no color could be seen at any time and in any place. The onlooker would not think of the time of its realization but only of its message. Chenavard wanted to create a timeless work, a work that would be directly dictated by Reason – that is to say, in Hegelian terms, by the absolute Spirit who has often been seen as God himself.
Collaboration with other artists was therefore important. Such a work couldn’t be carried out by a single artist. It had to be done for the entire people, and the only way for the entire people to recognize themselves in the decorations of the Paris Panthéon would have been to have the best artists of the whole world work on them. Unfortunately, for reasons we can easily understand, Chenavard couldn’t ask the best artists to come and work with him. Asking for the collaboration of France’s best artists was already difficult enough, or impossible, and he was only able to work with artists who were moderately famous at the time[10].
But this work was (to the extend possible) carried out. Thanks to his three official collaborators and to some unknown ones, the artist succeeded in creating twenty-one 181-inch-high canvases that were devoid of color, style and of his personal touch. If today these works are not exhibited in the Panthéon, Paul Chenavard did at least produce them and they show the esthetical point of view of a very particular artist.
A prophetical art
Chenavard had great expectations for his decorations. They represented a universal philosophy numerous intellectuals of the 18th and of the first half of the 19th century adhered to. But, rather than letting it remain in books that the people would never read, the artist wanted to share it in a great monument that was the symbol of the emancipation of Humanity. He thought art represented a better way to teach people and to change their mind. It’s a fact that Chenavard considered himself as a prophet. Gautier clearly expressed this in his text: “He is a historian of ancient religions and the prophet of the new religion – the reign of Reason, the last and supreme stage in the evolution of humanity.”[11] And, in order to help Chenavard tell of the coming of this new religion, his collaborators would act as his “disciples” (a word that Gautier used as well), since they would constitute a brotherhood.
Besides, it is not surprising to see that, at the same time, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was created in England, a couple of decades after the creation of the German Nazarenes as well as that of the less codified Barbus (the Bearded), in David’s workshop. We do not know if Chenavard had heard of the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and of his comrades before they were exhibited at the 1855 Paris World Fair, but it is certain he knew those of the Nazarenes[12], which had greatly influenced him (as well as, perhaps, those of the Barbus).
The idea of founding corporations came from the Century of Lights, which recommend the creation of influential groups to counteract the stranglehold of the repressive institutions (the Church, the Kingship, the Nobility) and to replace God and King by Reason. Many European thinkers expressed that idea: Vico and Herder before Hegel, then Goethe, Carlyle, Comte, Lamartine, etc. Whether they were deists or atheists of various kinds, they all believed in the same thing: that Reason rules Humanity. The origin of the Masonry – which was certainly the best-known group in those mystical milieus – is to be found there. More radical groups like the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierists, who advocated that society should seek progress and the happiness of humanity, followed it. Following their example, artistic fraternities appeared at the beginning of the 19th century – they saw the artist as a worker of universal well being.
Replacing God with Reason[13], this new religion needed works of art as icons. And artists thought they had to follow the example of their predecessors. They would form fraternities similar to medieval lay corporations (one thinks of the “cathedral workers” Gautier mentioned) or to convents. It is true that those brother-painters had a lot in common with monks: they worked in the same spirit, often dressed in the same way, believed in the same things and toiled toward the same goal. In that case, the best example to follow was Fra Angelico, who was both a great painter and a sincere believer who truthfully expressed his beliefs in his art. Thanks to those fraternities, painters would have influenced and challenged each other for the sole greatness of art.
However, the brotherhood Chenavard wanted to create was somehow different from the other ones. In a sense, self-aware artists who used them to be acknowledged as real and competent workers, whose productions were personal pieces and whose signature was a guarantee of quality, founded those. In Chenavard’s brotherhood, collaborators would have been disciples who would have enlarged the scenes drawn by the master and would have not even signed them.
According to Chenavard, those sacrifices were necessary, for his brotherhood’s work would have suited the expectations of the thinkers of the time. It was not the artist’s name, which was to be read on the canvas, but the message of those thinkers. The artist was to show Humanity’s struggle toward its emancipation. Under Hegel’s influence, he would have shown the blooming of Logos/Reason[14] in the history of Mankind. For that purpose, the artist was to create pure art, without style or color. Escaping from its time, it would have evoked the medieval and Renaissance frescos as well as Antiquity’s bas-reliefs (like those on Constantine’s arch in Rome, fig. 3), which were considered as the examples of absolute beauty. And, by working like ancient artists, it would have been easier to retrieve their greatness. Furthermore, the Panthéon paintings would not so much have brought the art of the past back to life as showed the timelessness of its purity.
It is obvious that Chenavard’s art would have been mystical. This mysticism runs through Gautier’s entire text, and especially in the following sentence: “[Chenavard] finds that great works have to be impersonal and seem to be the product of a mysterious aggregation rather than the expression of a peculiar nature.[15]” The word ‘mysterious’ expresses here much more than it seems. It tells us that the Panthéon decorations had something to do with religious mystery, which recalls the Greek mysterion. If Jesus-Christ needed apostles to build up the economy of salvation, Chenavard needed collaborators to reach the mysterious greatness of art.
The artist/prophet could then be, like the philosopher, the intercessor between the people and Reason. But it seems that, if all artists are able of such an intercession, only the greatest are clearly aware of their function and know how to carry their message to the people. Furthermore, in collaborating with them, average artists could have shared the message of Reason and would have been considered as disciples – disciples who, then, could have spread the prophet’s message in their own works.
However, the younger generation was not yet ready to accept those ideas and, if Théophile Gautier seemed to adhere at that time to Chenavard’s mystical ideals, some years later, poet Charles Baudelaire, another friend of his, purely rejected it. In a text called L’Art philosophique, which was published after his death, he wrote: “What serves to achieve the utopian and decadent character of Chenavard himself, is that he wanted to indoctrinate under his direction artists like workers, in order to enlarge his cartons and to color them in a barbaric manner.”[16] On the one hand, Baudelaire didn’t say a word about the content of the decorations and took only interest in the form they would receive. Thus, the poet expressed that content and form should be linked and that, if one of them was bad, the other couldn’t be good. On the other hand, he didn’t understand the mystical importance of collaborators as disciples. He only saw them as workers to whom Chenavard denied the status of artists. To him, the lonely artist was capable of reaching mysterious artistic spheres.
These two reasons, according to Baudelaire, prevented Chenavard from founding his utopia. Furthermore, it led to a dead-end. Rather than regenerate art, his desire to abandon what made a great piece of art as well as a great artist (style, colors, handmade works) would have hastened its decadence. Baudelaire’s criticism enables us to see that, beyond his philosophical and mystical ideas, Chenavard needed collaborators to achieve his goals.
A great impotence
Many artists have said that it is more exciting to begin a project than to lead it to its end. Such is the case for Chenavard who, during all his life, started numerous works but had great difficulties finishing them[17]. Maybe could he have completed the Panthéon decorations if he had lived in a time of liberty, if he had made greater efforts and if he had found enough collaborators to help him. But the fact remains that he was not able to finish it alone. In that case, political opposition to his work appears as a pretext for him not to accomplish his task. Thus, it isn’t surprising to see that, in a way, outside elements helped him to hide his own impotence[18].
For it is indeed a question of impotence. Yet, it is not a material incapacity to hold a pen or a brush (there are various and beautiful drawings and paintings which demonstrate his artistic skills, fig. 4 & 5) but the fear to transpose the work he had imagined into material. During the creative act – which is, since Plato, considered as a lower charge – this imagined work looses its quality. During the transition from thinking to gesture, absolute beauty becomes relative. Perfection evaporates from the work. During the materialization, it becomes finished – that is to say, temporal, simplistic and, moreover, fragile. “The artist who seeks perfection in everything achieves nothing,” wrote Eugène Delacroix in his Journal and it is possible that, when he wrote that, he was thinking of his friend, Chenavard. So, perhaps he had clearly seen the problem that laid in his friend’s mind.
This psychological impotence was also supported by the way the history of art was studied in the 19th century. At the time, several art theorists, like Charles Blanc – another great friend of Chenavard’s – thought that the genius of an artist could be measured by his ability to transpose as best as he could absolute beauty into a piece of art. Looking at the creations of the time, those theorists were struck by the poorness of their themes as well as by the techniques they used. According to them, art was decaying and was, in the 19th century, on the verge of dying, since it was no longer able to express the Ideal. But, beyond their pessimism, they remained optimistic for they hoped an artist would come and restore art’s greatness. Chenavard shared this idea; and, during his youth, after his discussion with Hegel, he did believe he was that artist and that the Panthéon decorations would revitalize art. But, seeing that it was a harsh task and that a lot of people opposed his project instead of encouraging it, the forty-year-old artist felt that he was no Michelangelo. Eventually, he became ready to give art what could appear as a fatal blow, for he was certain that it was necessary to its regeneration. But only a few people were ready to follow him. On the contrary, other artists believed that following tradition was the only way to succeed when a few others – the avant-garde – thought that the artist had to be free to represent what he wanted (and that was Baudelaire’s point of view). Art definitively took a third path – neither the Academy’s, nor Chenavard’s pessimistic – while at the same time optimistic (which is as hard to understand as to explain) – one.
It is then certain that, by giving up the desire to create, Chenavard avoided having to reflect upon the difficulty of transposing absolute beauty in works of art as well as trying to express his obscure philosophy through artistic means. After the Panthéon failure, by producing very few canvases and by talking a lot, he preserved Art in all its magnificence, and kept it in the realm of ideas.
To him, the few works he had created were completely devoid of any artistic interest (for, if he was a prophet, he wasn’t the prophet of Art but of Reason), and since they were empty of any esthetical[19] possibilities, other people were able to realize them. He finally could see them as corrupted reflections of his personal ideas.
In the Paris Panthéon decorations, no one would have found personal gratification – neither Chenavard who didn’t want any, nor his collaborators who couldn’t have received any either. If the decorations had seen the light of day, they would have been like a ghost: since the artist refused to involve himself in his work, it would have existed without any personality and without any soul. Since he wanted it to be everyone’s creation, it would have been nobody’s, for, in the wake of individualism, nobody was ready to be hidden behind universalism. Born without fear and pain, mature since its inception, ideally perfect from the very first attempt, it was due to overcome degeneracy. Any idea of death would then have been forbidden, except that his inhuman project was finally condemned to never having had the possibility to exist.
Chenavard’s 1848 project for the decoration of the Paris Panthéon is a complex one. Not even because of the theme he chose to represent and of the philosophical echoes that aren’t of much interest today, but also because of the artist’s personality. Indeed, by refusing to associate his name to the decorations, he wished to abandon style and color and to work with collaborators who would have helped him in bringing his message in front of the spectators’ eyes. But all this finally appears to be a pretext to hide his proper impotence to create works of art. It’s hard to deny that he truly believed in the possibility of creating a brotherhood to decorate the Temple of Humanity but, above all, it is certain that the army of aide, which would have gathered around him, would have masked his incapacity to produce great decorative pieces. And, despite what Gautier wrote concerning the speed with which the work could have been done thanks to other artists, it appears that, from a psychological point of view, Chenavard was torn between the material and the ideal. On the one hand, he had to achieve the Panthéon decorations as soon as possible, and that’s why he hired artists to work with him. On the other hand, his quest of absolute gave him no choice but to work alone all his life on his project. Alone, because he was the only one who could understand what he had to do. All his life, because his project strove for perfection, but it would never have reached it. Finally, Paul Chenavard considered the Panthéon as a refuge. The decorations that he prepared there never would have been achieved, except at the moment of his death, having to leave the building behind him, like a second skin, his double.
