The two pieces are part of a long series of manipulated portraits. I have done the Tudors, the Bourbons and the Valois royal dynasties, but in lenticular only.
These two represent a new direction. I call them assemblages because the consist of several parts. The background are lenticular 3D and then I place layers of a digitally manipulated portrait, suspended in clear resin. The final touch is a framed lens floating above the face, again manipulated in some way.
Jewelry for walls!
The portrait behind Man on Fire was named Count Louis-Joseph Marie du Plessis de Grénédan. It was painted by François Gérard in 1801.
Grénédan was an ultra royalist aristocrat who barely made it through the French Revolution. After Napoleon’s defeat he enthusiastically embraced the restoration of the Bourbon Louis XVIII. Grénédan wanted the return of hanging as a mans of execution since he thought the guillotine was to be used on the higher ranking individuals since the guillotine had been made sacred by the spilt blood of Louis XVII and Marie Antoinette.
Gerard was a liberal and supported the new Republic. One can only wonder what Gérard would have made of this man…
For more on Grénedan go to:
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Joseph_du_Plessis-Mauron_de_Grenédan
The portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière was painted in 1806 by the French Neoclassical artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and today hangs in the Louvre.
It is the third of three portraits of the Rivière family the artist painted that year. Caroline’s father, Philibert Rivière, was a successful court official under Napoleon’s empire, and sought to commemorate himself, his wife and daughter through a commission with the then young and rising artist. Although Ingres favored subject matter drawn from history or Greek legend, at this early stage in his career he earned his living mainly through commissions from wealthy patrons.
The family lived outside Paris, at St Germain en Laye , and Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière would have been between 13 and 15 at the time she was portrayed; Ingres described her as the “ravishing daughter”.
Tragically she died within the year of this portrait’s completion.
You must be logged in to post a comment.