Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy, born in a place called St. Avitus near Lacapelle-Biron ( Lot-et-Garonne ) to 1510 and died in Paris in 1589 or 1590 , is a potter , enamel , painting , glass craftsman , writer and learned French. It belongs to the French School of the Renaissance. Much of his work is on display at Castle couen.

Rustic dish for reptiles and crayfish, Bernard Palissy, 1550

Jug, 1580-1600, follower of Bernard Palissy, the Victoria and Albert Museum , no. 7178-1860.
This spectacular piece was acquired by the museum in 1860, when the craze for the artist at its peak.

Born into a family of modest, self-taught, he boasted of not speaking "neither Greek nor Latin. " In 1539 he settled at Saintes , married, made his famous research on white enamel, it happens to develop gradually from 1545.

In 1546 , he converted to Protestantism and discovers the talents of Palissy, who now works for the disgraced Marshal. Anne de Montmorency, a great aesthetic, employs Bernard Palissy to decorate the castle Ecouen during erection, and protects him, like many other artists such as Jean Goujon and Masseot Abaquesne.

Around 1555 he lived in Fontenay le Comte and binds with the seneschal Tiraqueau Michel, son of the poet .

In 1557 , he is back to Saintes , where his pastor Charles de Clermont, "said La Fontaine. The latter, who succeeded Philibert Hamelin , pastor trained in Geneva , became the first pastor of Marennes .

In 1559 , the edict against the Protestants, signed in couen by Henry II , in which Palissy had offered many works, leads him to jail in Saintes. His incarceration raises a wave of protests, combining Louis de Bourbon , the lord of the Guy Chabot , Baron de Jarnac, Antoine de Pons , Count of Rochefoucauld, Francis III. In 1563 , he was transferred to Bordeaux and his studio is desecrated. He is saved from prison by the action of the constable of Montmorency , her protector, who shall promptly submit a petition to the Queen Mother, and received the king's order to restore his freedom . Without him, Palissy would out of prison than to walk to the scaffold. The same year, he had printed its receipt true in La Rochelle.

From late 1566, he worked to achieve a rustic cave in Paris, first for the constable, then to Catherine de Medicis at the Tuileries. Two of his son's help in this work. In 1572 , a protg of Catherine de Medici, he survives the St. Bartholomew's in hiding at Sedan. Back in Paris in 1574, he gives the following year science courses and is put up posters at all junctions to announce their beginning in Lent . His lectures focus on water and fountains, metals, alchemy cons, cons gold drinking recommended by the bailiff Roch , for antimony, about the rainbow sky. He then has the disciple Guy Patin.

In December 1586 , he was arrested as a Huguenot , on the orders of the League , he was sentenced to banishment in June 1587. But he remains in Paris. Arrested again in May 1588, he was sentenced to death, will appeal and sees his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Imprisoned first at the Conciergerie , he died at the Bastille in 1589 (or 1590 ?), "hunger, cold and ill-treatment".

He was married and father of six children, three boys and three girls.

Bernard Palissy, artist

From 1530 , this self-taught studying the art of cooking glazes. From 1536 to 1556 , he devoted twenty years of his life to discover the secret of enamel. Who knows the story of Palissy ruined, burning its floor to get there? It is seeing a cut of glazed pottery, a superb white, he decides to get into the enamel. He will then strive to uncover the secret of the composition of the enamel white, they say, is the source of color. It was in 1555, after twenty years of physical and mental ordeals, it can cover the pots with a mottled enamel: the only one that makes the real merit of his earthworks. His most famous pieces are, however, vases, statues, basins, dishes, utensils variety which he attributes the term figulines rustic. These ceramic decorations in relief naturalists include fruits, leaves or reptiles. They are the response of Palissy taste caves imported from Italy in the ^{mid-sixteenth} century.

Works

Bassin 'rustic', Louvre , Paris. A similar piece is kept at the castle Ecouen.

• Great production of earthenware glazed with sets of "plants, fruit, small animals."
• Already "on glass and china painter" of trade, he also composes windows.

Works at the Louvre

Dishes

• Basin "rustic" adorned with a medallion representing Diana and Callisto and Proserpine and Pluto. Workshop of Bernard Palissy (1560 ca.)
• Container: The Childhood of Bacchus (1580 ca.)
• The Christ washing the feet of Simon Peter (1580 ca.)

Sculptures (of 1580 approx.)

• Light-bearer of a young man bust.
• Door-shaped light chimera

Bernard Palissy, a man of science

Throughout this persecution, he survives thanks to his activity as a land surveyor. It makes such a statement of the salt marshes of Saintonge in 1543.

Works

• Architecture and order of the rustic cave the Duc de Montmorency, 1562. It is probable that this cave, drafted, was never completed.
• Admirable discourse on the nature of water and fountains both natural and man, Paris, 1580. This memory will be recognized as relevant as the cycle of water and feed sources by rainfall.
• The Art of land, he set his long struggle for the manufacture of a French enamel (the Italians beating previously perfect know-how) yet does not reveal anything about his technique ...
• It also works on the role of minerals in plant life and study fossil shells (several books on fossils).

Bernard Palissy and posterity

Statue by Louis-Ernest Barrias to the National Museum of Ceramics in Sevres.

His tumultuous life and great is the source of a genuine myth palissen. The Enlightenment and the revolutionary will in him the very type of "engineering persecuted by the Church."

If Palissy is mentioned in many documents of the sixteenth ^century, none of his colleagues, scientists and artisans, has expressed any opinion on his work. Yet his legend was born almost from its demise. This is dramatized by contemporary chroniclers such eminent that Agrippa d'Aubign.

In the seventeenth ^century Palissy is known as the "peasant Saintonge" and his knowledge of hydrology or agriculture appear to surpass those of the scientists of the time. His writings are censored, however. It was not until the ^eighteenth century to see them reissued. Far from weakening, this craze is growing. Thus, in 1777 , Saint-Barthlemy Faujas Fund , a geologist and volcanologist, published the works of Bernard Palissy, reviews on all copies of the Library of King.

In the nineteenth ^century, it inspires Balzac figure of Balthazar Claes in The Search for the Absolute. The nineteenth ^century Palissy gives dimension and begins imposing even the birth of a cult. His art is experiencing a tremendous resurgence of interest throughout his imitators (Charles Augustus Chauvign Avisseau and Tours, George Sweater Paris, Alfred Renoleau in Angouleme) and by the interest of discerning collectors. In 2009, the figure of Palissy evoked with precision and fascination with the characters from the novel by British novelist AS Byatt , The Children's Book.

The smallest fragment of glazed pottery found somewhere in France it is immediately assigned. These allocations are unfair challenged by contemporary critics. Also all objects belonging to the Parisian workshop of Palissy Were filed in 1987 in the National Museum of the Renaissance , the castle couen so that a complete inventory has been established before their public presentation in a room the castle.

In the twentieth ^century, "Palissy style" fits well, from 1920, trends: Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Museums

Flat fish by Auguste Chauvign, Tours. Glazed earthenware, Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.

• Charente : Angouleme : Museum of Fine Arts
• Charente-Maritime :
  • Saintes : museums Dupuy-Mestreau and Fine Arts The Prsidial
  • La Rochelle : Museum of Protestantism
• Deux-Sevres :
  • Parthenay : Museum George Turpin
  • Thouars : Muse Henri Barre
• Paris : Louvre, Petit Palais
• Sevres : National Museum of Ceramics
• Val-d'Oise : 95440, Castle couen
• Bernard Palissy Museum of St. Avitus, a hamlet between Gavaudun and Lacapelle-Biron in the valley of the Lede , north of the department of Lot-et-Garonne. Oral tradition says the place as the birthplace of Bernard Palissy.
• Haute-Vienne : Limoges : Muse National Adrien Dubouch porcelain (pieces of cave tile, rustic dishes figulines dishes, school Palissy)

Notes

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