Chantilly

“ I visited the Musée Condé with the intention of studying some more examples of the French fifteenth-and sixteenth-century art which had so much attracted me in Paris.
The high expectations I had conceived were not disappointed, and the result was that my studies in that marvellous collection were prolonged. Weeks grew into months. The Limbourgs, Jean Fouquet, and the Clouets held me in their spell; the Château of Chantilly, with the history of its famous owners, aroused my interest more and more. ”

“ In 1872 all the surviving members of the French Royal Family assembled at Chantilly to celebrate the wedding of Princesse Marguerite, daughter of the Duc de Nemours with Prince Ladislas Czartoysky;{122} and on this occasion the great battle-pieces representing the military glories of the great Condé were replaced in the Gallery.
In the early spring of that year, King Edward and Queen Alexandra—then Prince and Princess of Wales—paid a visit to the Duc d’Aumale; with whom they had contracted a warm friendship during his residence in England. ”

“ His favourite abode was the forest around Chantilly; and there he spent much time in painting animals direct from nature. By insisting that his ideas should be accurately transcribed he trained the weavers at Beauvais with much care, thus preparing the way for Boucher, the decorative genius of the next generation. A splendid Gobelins tapestry, executed after a cartoon by Boucher, adorns one side of the Grand Staircase at Chantilly. It represents a young woman seated in a garden to whom a boy and girl are offering fruit and flowers. ”

“ In the month of April 1671 Chantilly opened its portals to receive Louis XIV and his bride, the Infanta Maria Theresa. The Château itself was reserved for the Royal party, whilst the courtiers and the officers of the suite were lodged throughout the neighbouring villages. Sixty tables were served three times a day; and it was during this Royal visit that Vatel, the maître d’hôtel, whose skill directed the whole, suddenly committed suicide because he was unable to provide the necessary fish on a fast-day. ”

“ But his genius as a collector has furnished France with one of the finest Homes of Art in the World; and she does well to remember with gratitude this scion of the Bourbon race, who stretched out his hand to expiate much.{278} Every lover of Art throughout the world, and every wayfarer who in his wanderings finds his way to Chantilly, may well stand amazed at this collection and praise its creator. ”

“ Yet another French picture at Chantilly of the Clouet School has to be recorded, the authorship of which is uncertain. It represents Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress of Henri IV, seated in her bath, with her infant sons (one being on the arm of his nurse) beside her. It is a composition which occurs frequently and seems to be rather meant for an allegory than for a portrait. Other versions of it are in the Louvre, at Doughty House Richmond, and in the Collections of Baron Pichon and the Viscomtesse de Zanzé. ”

“ During the long years of exile, passed chiefly in England, he usually resided either at Orleans House near Twickenham or at Woodnorton in Worcestershire (till recently the residence of his nephew, the present Duke of Orleans) . It was, however, at the former place that all the valuable manuscripts, paintings, books, and objects of art brought from Chantilly were then housed. ”

“ One of the landscape gems of Chantilly is the Pelouse, a vast esplanade of greensward now forming, in part, the celebrated race track of Chantilly. Sport ever formed a part of the outdoor program at Chantilly, but that of to- [Pg 337] day is just a bit more horsey than that of old, a good deal less picturesque and assuredly more vulgarly banal as to its cachet than the hunts, the tourneys and courses of the romantic age. ”

“ The brave lady, who had played so important a part during the Fronde, and had shown so much courage and determination under her many difficulties and trials, had at this time completely broken down in health. She only appeared at Court festivities at long intervals, and although she was present at her son’s marriage she did not join the young couple at Chantilly. The Grand Condé, surrounding himself with friends, lived there from choice; and there Anne de Gonzague paid him frequent visits, whilst Claire-Clemence was left neglected in Paris. Society soon followed suit ”

“ The miniatures at Chantilly, forty in number, represent, if not the greatest, at least the most fascinating period of the master’s artistic career. Like the MS. of the Antiquitates Judæorum they also suffered many vicissitudes before finally entering the haven of the Musée Condé. Nicolas, Baron of Navarre and Bearn, a descendant of Etienne Chevalier, in the year 1630, when at the point of death entreated his nephew, to whom he bequeathed his manuscripts, to preserve and augment them “en faveur des gens doctes.” ”

“ Madame de Sévigné, who was repeatedly invited to the Château, says in her Letters that Condé was quite admirable in his retreat, from which he only emerged occasionally to pay a visit to the King at Fontainebleau, Paris, or Versailles, where a splendid suite of apartments was always reserved for him. Chantilly at that time became a small Court in itself. Not only was it a resort for kings, princes, ambassadors, generals, and statesmen, who never omitted to pay their respects to the Grand Condé, but it was also a rallying-place for the most distinguished literary and scientific men of the day. ”

“ The Duc de Bourbon, generally known as{091} Louis III, Prince de Condé, died soon after his father. Louise Françoise, his wife, had presented him with six daughters and three sons; of whom the eldest, Louis Henri, succeeded to the title of Prince de Condé at the early age of eighteen. [13] He, like his predecessors, also spent great sums on the embellishment of Chantilly. By him were built the great stables—a monument unique of its kind—in which vast buildings more than two hundred horses and packs of hounds for fox, deer, and boar hunts, were housed. ”

“ The celebrated painter of pastels, Latour, is represented at Chantilly by a portrait of Madame Adelaide de France, daughter of Louis XV. His portraits, now recognised as even superior to those of Boucher and Lancret, are fine studies of character, but they are very rare. The pastel of the handsome Marie Fel, an opera-singer from Bordeaux by whom this artist was befriended, is very celebrated; and a group of portraits at St. Quentin place him in the foremost rank of French portrait-painters. ”

“ A likeness of Rénée de France [103] which bears some affinity to the portrait of her sister Queen Claude is also to be found at Chantilly. It represents her at the time of her marriage to Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, son of Lucrezia Borgia: nuptials which were celebrated in the Sainte Chapelle at Paris. Like the other French princesses of her day she was extremely intelligent and studious, and during her time the Court of Ferrara became renowned as an intellectual centre to which French visitors were always warmly welcomed. ”

“ He married Diane de France, whose portrait is also amongst the drawings in this collection. She was a natural daughter of Henri II, and widow, at the early age of eighteen, of Orazio Farnese, Duca di Castro. Brantôme says of her that it was not possible to see a lady mount on horseback like her, nor with better grace. The woods of Chantilly offered great opportunities to her passion for the chase, and it was probably for this reason that, in the company of her mother-in-law, Madeleine of Savoy, she made it her principal residence. ”

“ À ta vertu, Condé, tu t’es enfin soumis
Tu n’étais pas encore au comble de ta gloire,
Senef, Lens, Fribourg et Nordlingen et Rocroi{088}
N’étaient que des degrés pour monter jusqu’à toi.
Le vainqueur s’est vaincu, c’est la grande victoire.
. . . . . . . . . .
Tranquil et glorieux,
Il vit à Chantilly comme on vit aux cieux.
Bossuet has described the last moments of the hero: “Such as he was in his warrior days, resolute, quiet, always occupied, without anxiety for what had to be done, such was he in his last hour. ”

“ It had been agreed that Chantilly should be the home of the newly married pair; and in 1843 the architect Duban received instructions to execute the necessary alterations; whilst to Eugène Lami—the same artist who painted the portrait of the young Duchess which now hangs over one of the doors of the Salle Caroline—was entrusted the decoration of the various apartments. The ground-floor apartments of the Petit Château—the same suite which the Grand Condé had selected for his son Henri Jules and his children—were the rooms chosen for the personal occupation of the Duke and Duchess. ”

“ Henceforth it became a favourite centre for the leading men of France, and within its hospitable walls kings and princes found sumptuous entertainment.
Matrimonial alliance in the beginning of the seventeenth century brought the property into the family of the Condés, a younger branch of the Bourbons; and later still, by the marriage of the last Prince de Condé with Princesse Bathilde d’Orléans, and the tragic death of their only son, the Duc d’Enghien, Chantilly passed into the possession of its last private owner, Prince Henri d’Orléans, Duc d’Aumale. ”

“ Francis I with his Queens, his mistresses, his courtiers, and the ladies of his petites bandes; the famous Preux de Marignan, the great Montmorency and the Colignys, Henri II and his numerous sons and daughters; Catherine de Medicis and la belle Diane—all these famous heroes and heroines of history are met together in effigy at Chantilly: a place they all knew so well and enjoyed so much during their lifetime. The question of how these drawings, so highly valued under the Valois régime, were ever allowed to leave France has never been satisfactorily solved. ”

“ THE ART TREASURES OF THE MUSÉE CONDÉ AND HOW THEY WERE BROUGHT TOGETHER NO sooner had the Duc d’Aumale resolved to bestow Chantilly with all its treasures as a gift to the French nation than he joined, with even more enthusiasm than he had previously done, the ranks of the great European collectors, and he frequently attended in person important sales in London, Paris, and elsewhere. ”

“ His Déjeuner de Jambon in the Galerie des Peintures at Chantilly presents a company of merry-makers on the point of becoming riotous; and opposite to it hangs a companion picture by de Troy entitled Le Déjeuner d’Huîtres. The host in this latter composition—a figure dressed in scarlet—is probably a Prince of the House of Orleans presiding at a feast in the Palais Royal. Many of the guests represented are said to be personages well known in their day: for King Louis Philippe was still able to distinguish them by name. They are certainly enjoying their oysters and iced champagne ”

“ It is rare indeed to discover all these qualities united in one man, and to find Condé’s equals we must look to men like Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington.
After the battle of Nördlingen, Condé fell ill of a fever, which compelled him at length to return to Chantilly. His mother, the Princesse Charlotte de Condé, his sister Geneviève, and his wife Claire-Clemence, with her little son the Duc d’Albret, whom he had not yet seen, welcomed him home. The historical “petite chambre” which he had always occupied was made ready for him, and “eau de Forges” to fortify his impaired strength. ”

“ He was also the founder of the French Academy in Rome; and Louis XIV, who conferred{252} on him the office of Court Painter, took him to Flanders during the campaign of 1676. The portrait at Chantilly of Pomponne de Bellièvre, first President of the Parlement of Paris (engraved by Van Schuppen) , represents his skill as a painter of portraits. His work can, however, be more profitably studied in the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre. ”

“ When therefore Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, and thereby caused an exodus of some of the best amongst his subjects, Condé, wherever it was possible, protected the persecuted Protestants; and Chantilly itself became a shelter for Huguenot fugitives.
Disappointed in his own son, Henri Jules de Bourbon—a man devoid of all ability, whose chief aim was to follow the Dauphin’s hounds—Condé in his old age attempted to take in hand the education of his grandson, the young Duc de Bourbon, and of his favourite nephew, François, Prince de Conti, left orphaned by the early death of his father. ”

“ PIERRE QUTHE.
Louvre.
François Clouet.
Besides a fine drawing in red chalk of this same Cardinal, presented to the Musée Condé by M. Moreau Nélaton, there exist two other drawings, evidently preliminary sketches for the same picture. One of these is in the British Museum (Salting Bequest) and the other in the Albertina at Vienna. These form a further proof that the painting at Chantilly is by François Clouet and not by Primaticcio. ”

“ Another artist of the Romantic School is Descamps, who is represented at Chantilly by no less than ten paintings and several water-colours. Amongst these a Turkish Landscape, painted during the artist’s early period, is perhaps the most attractive. On one side of the picture all is mystery and darkness, whilst upon the other fall the rays of a golden sunset. The problems of light and shade, to which he devoted himself so earnestly up to the very end of his career, are here treated with great effect. The same idea pervades his painting of Turkish Guards on their way from Smyrna to Magnesia. ”