no town is complete without its own polo field

Behind a line of houses along the coupure du parc - the snippet of the park - a 19th century suburb of Richelieu carved out of the northern extremity of the ducal parc, is that grandiose and stylish asset, a 300 x 200m polo field. Not only a polo field, but a string of live polo ponies as well.

We will have to stop calling it 'that poor little town of Richelieu', or maybe insist that all the BIG money lives in Chaveignes, the little commune that includes the coupure du parc.

Location on the map in the column to the right....

And the local taxes are lower in Chaveignes, they say.

Persian polo as played in the 1550s

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Bacchus? - Obélix? - Mandragore? - Depardieu?

The keystone of the Orangery of the château de Richelieu built in the 1630s to designs by Jacques Lemercier has this blobby portrait in vine leaves? hop leaves? cut in the 'tuffeau' stone work. One can see many images incorporated, not just the hirsute face......

the 'dolmen' at Ligré - 5km from Richelieu

Stonehenge is more impressive, it is true, but not by that much.  On a hill top above the wine village of Ligré to the north west of Richelieu we find the dolmen or burial tomb that overlooks the sweep of the river Vienne.
One itches to get the one fallen stone upright to re-complete the stability this ancient structure.
Was it covered with an earthen burial mound?
It makes it clear that even in pre-history the region was influential.  In later centuries Chinon castle, a couple of miles away, was to rule the Europe of the Plantagenets from Spain to Hadrian's wall in Scotland.   Touraine has been the play-park of noble families and kings for a long, long time.

p.s it is now stranded in a field of rape seed; last year it was sunflowers, I think.

see the location on the map of Richelieu locations to the right....

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the Grande Rue internet cafe owner & photographer J.L.L.

Jean-Louis Lawrence runs an internet cafe located on the Grande Rue.  He is an expert in l'informatique and computer installations of all sorts.  Fascinated by the digital camera, his shop is filled by photos that show his love of the cité idéale of Richelieu.  The shop is, like all internet cafés, quite a hub for the town and is often full of every sort of person clicking away.

He too runs a blog on events in the town - but this time in the native French language.

Here is the address:

http://www.richelais.eu/blogducardinal/index.php/

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1902 book illustrations by Maurice Leloir in the book 'Richelieu' by Théodor Cahu

CLICK HERE
for more illustrations
Even the  cardinal himself could not prevent smoke coming down his own chimney
(here apparently in Luçon!) when the wind blew the wrong way - try shutting the window, Émminentissime! 
And he never sorted out what to do with all those messy oak logs lying by the hearth.
Bet he trips up over those tongs too...

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Theatre costumes by Désiré Chaîneux - Comédie-Française,1904

the cardinal duc's guard

the cardinal duc's trumpeter

the cardinal duc's officer of the guard

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from 'La Legende de Richelieu' - Conseil général de la Vendée, July 2008

I hope they won't mind - the pencil and wash drawings are so elegant!

A Philippe de Champaigne web-site; the complete works

Champaigne was the court painter to the cardinal duc de Richelieu.  This  site tells one all one needs to know (and more) of the artist through whose eyes we perceive the painterly aesthetic of the court of Louis XIII and his first minister Armand-Jean du Plessis.

http://www.philippedechampaigne.org/

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Les Très Riches Heures 4 - the summer months

 AUTUMN * WINTER * SPRING * SUMMER

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Here are the last three months of the year cycle, the summer months.  Click on the seasons above to see and read about the other nine paintings painted by the Limbourg Brothers in about 1410.

Although the Duc de Berry owned a large part of central France and governed the Languedoc, he was often unable to meet the enormous expenses of his extraordinarily luxurious life. A great patron and friend of artists and a passionate collector, he commissioned works of all kinds; he loved sumptuous buildings, rare jewels, and richly illuminated books.

An avid builder, Jean de Berry personally supervised his restorations and constructions. The master architect for most of them was Guy de Dammartin, who successfully created in the upper stories a graceful decoration that fit in with the imposing grandeur of the whole. The palace and Sainte-Chapelle in both Bourges and Riom, the renovation of the palace and the Château du Clain in Poitiers, and the completion of the facade of Bourges Cathedral were accomplishments worthy of the importance of the Duke's three capital cities as well as monuments to his good taste in architecture.

By restoring châteaus and by building anew, the Duke provided himself with a series of beautiful homes throughout France: Nonette in Auvergne, Lusignan in Poitou, Genouilly and Concressault in Berry, and Gien, Montargis, Etampes, and Dourdan between the Loire and the Seine. The most famous residences, noted for their beauty and magnificence, were the Hôtel de Nesle on the left bank of the Seine facing the Louvre, the Château de Bicêtre to the south of Paris, and the Château de Mehun-sur-Yèvre, four leagues from Bourges.

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
with a lecture about the Belles Heures
also by the Limbourg Brotherst

July

château sur le Clain, Poitiers

August

chateau d'Étampes

September

château de Saumur

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Hobbes and 'Leviathan' - frontispiece by Abraham Bosse

In 1651 the celebrated Parisian hugenot engraver Abraham Bosse, born in Tours, made this famous illustration for the for the frontispiece of the publication of englishman Thomas Hobbes' philosophical work that considers the nature of the commonwealth in a perspective drawn during and after the slaughterous English civil war.  He had met the philosopher during Hobbes' 1640-1651 stay in Paris. In 'Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of the common wealth, Eccesiastical and Civil', the polity is represented as a giant figure overlooking a rather ville-de-Richelieu-like townscape, his body made up of many individual citizens (all men!), his individual face and hands implying a personalising figure of state. He elucidates for the first time in European political philosophy the 'social contract' of governance and the need of the consent of the governed.   A monarchy that cannot act except though its body of citizenry.  And a monarchy that occupies both a temporal and religious role; sword and crook. This near 'heresy' later got him in trouble with the catholics in France and even the church in England.

While the cardinal de Richelieu, and his successor cardinal Mazarin would lead the French monarchy of Louis XIV, XV and XVI to the fatal absolutism that was finally smashed in the French revolution of 1789, Hobbes was postulating the kingship to be exemplified by Charles II and later by William and Mary and the Georges. In short, the formalisation of a limited constitutional monarchy.

Bosse would certianly have known of the late great prelate's architectural wonder, located not far from his town of birth.

Maybe, I spy with my little eye, within the famous image, the twin obelisk-ed towers of Our Lady of Richelieu built by Jacques Lemercier only a few years before in the 1630s.  Certainly the little ideal town depicted in Bosse's illustration looks pretty familiar.

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Picasa albums of pictures of the model of Richelieu

If you click

HERE

you will be connected to an album of photos of the cité idéale of RICHELIEU constructed as a computer-assisted-drafting -  a CAD - model of the town, emphasising the original layout concept of the king's architect, Jacques Lemercier, and his client, the wise cardinal-duc.  This model was initiated as a study of the old entrance gates, in particular the existing northern monumental gate to town and castle called the Porte de Chinon, or originally the Porte de Paris.  This structure is now in poor condition and needs restoration.  The model emphasises how it could look, returned more to its original state, now including the 'missing' draw-bridge, which was, by contemporary report, shut every evening to protect the good burghers from the perils of the night.

If you click 

HERE

you will be connected to a Picasa photo album of the existing porte de chinon,  taken in mid-winter 2009 in the weak December sunshine. One notices immediately how the original design has been encrusted with 'improvisations', as generations of richelais have built 'lean-to's onto the free walls of the perimeter.  Other original bits have been removed or demolished, as they had only a formal rather than a practical purpose.

Some people worry about the copyright of graphic material available on the web and how it may easily be plagiarised or copied.  As the entire purpose of this particular blog is to publicise the little town to a wider audience, copy away; fear not; help our effort to lay bare this belle dormante.

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The Éminence Rouge soon to be in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

The Abbé Henri Proust received a kind e-mail from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA that reports that a version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers will be sortly presented at the Hale Centre theatre.  One can follow all the adventures of this huge new theatre at their Facebook page here: Hale Centre on Facebook

The part of his Eminence is to be played by actor Craig Bowen, who, in immersing himself in the part, has read of matters RICHELIEU on this very site.

Now his Eminence was  great fan of the theatre and penned a few dramas himself*, even if he did have his spats with the great Corneille over El Cid, which disputably started the general lapse in standards by going outside the formalities of the Classical Manner.  Richelieu had his own private theatre (rather like Mr. and Mrs. Hale). So his shade will be proud to be re-animated on their boards by Mr. Bowen.  A 'latter-day' Garrick!

Craig Bowen on stage 

The Hale Theatre Building

The Hale Centre Theatre at Harman Hall, the largest center-stage theatre in the North America, made its theatrical debut in October 1998. A professional cast of local thespians perform plays written by Ruth and Nathan Hale, founders of the theatre, as well as traditional plays and musicals. The 41,900-square-foot facility is the first theatre-in-the-round built in the Salt Lake Valley in 36 years. The theatre seats up to 560 people and innumerable effects can be produced by the stage that both rotates and elevates in sections.

*they weren't much good, apparently!

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a CAD model of the cité idéale of Richelieu

This model was constructed in Form-Z version 4.0.3 (rather out of date, but not completely legacy software - current version 7.0.1!) from the digital cadastral plan of the town, itself downloaded from the French governmental web site. It shows the extent of the original constructions at the death of the cardinal duc in 1642. Only the central strip of the town has been modelled.

Above the town floats the monogram of the good cleric - Armand Iacobus Cardinal Richelieu. This monogram AICR was a motif often used decoratively in the now-demolished château. It can be still be seen in the doors from that structure preserved at the Mairie.

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