Troubadour style

also: Style troubadour

style c. 1802-1848 France Europe

The troubadour style - le style troubadour, named after the medieval poets of southern France - is the early nineteenth-century French fashion for idealised scenes from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A whimsical reaction against Neoclassicism and an offshoot of Romanticism, it flourished from the Salon of 1802, where Fleury-Richard's Valentine of Milan weeping for the death of her husband is often called the first troubadour painting, until the Revolution of 1848 and the arrival of Realism closed the fashion. Favourites of Empress Joséphine and the duchesse de Berry, its painters - Pierre-Henri Révoil, Fleury-Richard, Ingres, Delacroix, Paul Delaroche - produced small cabinet pictures packed with anecdote and meticulously rendered fabrics, tombs, and armour, showing quiet moments from the lives of kings, knights, and famous artists such as Leonardo and Dante.

Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Troubadour style".
Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Troubadour style".Public domain (credit: Pierre Révoil) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Small cabinet paintings of quiet, anecdotal moments rather than high drama
  • Idealised medieval and Renaissance settings rendered with archaeological care
  • Backlit compositions, the foreground falling into semi-darkness - a trademark of the early style
  • Minute, illusionistic detail in fabrics, interiors, armour, and tomb sculpture
  • Warm, intimate sentiment: love, loyalty, parting, and deathbed scenes
  • Smooth, polished finish borrowed from Dutch Golden Age cabinet painting

Key figures

  • Pierre-Henri Révoil (1776-1842) — Lyon painter, David's pupil, who specialised in intimate medieval historical scenes
  • Fleury François Richard (1777-1852) — Révoil's friend and fellow David pupil; his 1802 Salon picture launched the style
  • Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) — Painted several troubadour subjects, including The Death of Leonardo da Vinci (1818)
  • Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) — Carried the style toward later nineteenth-century academic history painting

Example works

  • Valentine of Milan Weeping for the Death of Her Husband — Fleury François Richard (1802)
  • The Death of Leonardo da Vinci — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1818)
  • Francis I Knighted by Bayard — Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (1819)

Sources

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