Pietà of nouans. Painted by jean fouquet, circa 1460-1465. Wood (walnut). Nouans-les-fontaines (indre-et-loire), bnf parish church / patrick lorette. This extraordinary painting is the only survivor of a genre that fouquet must have practiced many times, that of the great church altarpieces: here we see a donor in prayer, an ecclesiastic whose identity we do not know. The latter is introduced into the passion scene by a saint, who can be identified as saint james thanks to his pilgrim's staff and his rustic costume. After being detached from the cross, christ is placed by joseph of arimathea and nicomedes on the knees of the virgin. In the foreground lie the instruments of the passion. It is both a "pietà" and a "descent from the cross" because the virgin leaning against the upright beam does not hold, alone and contrary to tradition, christ who is partly in the arms of joseph of arimathea, partly on his knees, surrounded by numerous characters. One of the most curious things about this painting is the total absence of violence that emanates from it. The wound in christ's side is practically "cauterized", not a drop of blood comes out, nor does any flow from his languid right hand. Furthermore, the virgin is, as with michelangelo, astonishingly youthful. No sign of exaggerated suffering. Eyes red with tears, no more. We are therefore light years away and the opposite of the theatricalized hyper-realism of the baroque which will follow the counter-reformation. The characters also escape any "semitic" caricature already in vogue at the time and present, not the heads of "jews" according to racist "criteria", but good faces from tours. Everything in this scene that should be trying is, contrary to theological logic, extremely gentle. The hands of the virgin, located in the first third of the painting (in the second third, those of the donor), express, in their paralysis, all the pain contained despite the fact that they are "poorly painted". The attempt by fouquet or his companion in his "expressionist" project would be doomed to failure, unless, the altarpiece being made to be seen from a distance, he deliberately accentuated and forced the line of these hands to make it more effective. The other hands, on the other hand, exempt from any dramatic use, abandoned, are completely “presentable”. It should be noted that these characters are, despite the rigor of the subject, of an almost “botticellian” sensuality. Object Type: painting. Genre: religious art. Date: 15th century. Dimensions: height: 146 cm (57.4 in) ; width: 237 cm (93.3 in). Medium: oil and walnut wood. Depicted People: Jesus. Collection: Église Saint-Martin de Nouans-les-Fontaines. Pietà de Nouans
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