Henri P's new friend in Madrid - Chantal

http://cielbleudecastille.blogspot.co.uk

Inspired by this blog above, the old Abbé Henri Proust has made a short trip to the National Gallery in London to post about all those lovely canvases on subjects close to the passions of his new friend Chantal.

Chantal herself  is actually a daughter of the Cité Ideale and has taken her native affection for the seventeenth century to the city that was never far from the political concerns of Armand-Jean himself,
MADRID.

the Hapsburg coat-of-arms

Maybe she can find some imagery of cardinal duc's opposite number in Madrid
 in the court of Phillip IV, The Count of Olivares…..'el conde-duque'

Olivares by Velázquez

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Meanwhile three royal courts; three court painters

• Philippe de Champaigne - for Louis XIII of France and Navarre

Triple portrait produced for the Roman sculptor Bernini to inform the making of his marble bust of Armand Jean

• Diego Velázquez - for Phillip IV of Spain

by son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo

• Anthony Van Dyke - for Charles 1st of England

"…..his eyes follow you round the room."

(Both boys were later killed in the English civil war, on the Royalist side)

• And finally, the good Abbé's favourite son of France, Nicholas Poussin

An unusual un-faded canvas by Poussin showing his original coloration

Eden - just before that munch!

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Wenzel Peter - The Vatican Museum

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

Wenzel Peter

(Karlsbad 1745 - Rome 1829)

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

oil on canvas - cm. 336 x 247 - cat. 41266

The large canvas represents the climax of Wenzel Peter's career. He was an animalist painter, that is to say specialized in a very unique type of painting, and this led him to reproducing with extraordinary naturalism animals of the most varied species, as it were "photographed" in both standing and fighting positions. The Garden of Eden is the proof of the highest virtuosity, since the artist gathers around the figures of Adam and Eve those of over two hundred animals from all over the world, reproduced not only with pictorial ability, but also with a detailed knowledge and scientific precision. In 1831 Gregory XVI (pontiff from 1831 to 1846) purchased twenty works of the Austrian painter Wenzel Peter to furnish the Room of the Consistory in the Papal State Apartment.

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