The topography, manipulated, is adapted to the desire to show together the main places of this tragedy. On the left we recognize the church of the convent of the grands-augustins (now disappeared) where the tocsin sounded that triggered the killings, the seine and the pont des meuniers. In the center in the background, the louvre and, in front of the building, catherine de medici the black widow, main instigator of the massacres. In the center in the background, the private mansion in which admiral de coligny, leader of the protestant party, was killed before being thrown out of the window, decapitated and emasculated. Gathered around his corpse, the leaders of the catholic party, the dukes of guise and aumale and the chevalier d'angoulême. On the right in the background, the porte saint-honoré and, on the hill of la villette, the gallows of montfaucon, where the admiral's body will be hung by the feet. Bringing together more than 150 figures, the work is a veritable catalogue of cruelty during the civil war. A pregnant woman disemboweled (on the right of the painting in the background), children dragging an infant on the end of a rope (in the middle background, to the right of the pont des meuniers), a woman skewered on a roasting pike (just behind the children dragging the infant), naked and piled-up corpses (notably at the feet of catherine de medici), pillaged houses (behind the catholic leaders). King charles ix fires an arquebus at his own subjects from a window in the louvre (probably from the left tower of the building). This painting is quite exceptional because of the quality of its execution, but also because contemporary representations of the st. Bartholomew's day massacres are very rare. It bears the signature of the painter françois dubois, a protestant from amiens who took refuge in geneva after the massacres. Object Type: painting. Genre: history painting. Date: between circa 1572 and circa 1584. Dimensions: height: 93.5 cm (36.8 in); width: 151.4 cm (59.6 in). Medium: oil on panel. Collection: Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts. La masacre de San Bartolomé, por François Dubois
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