« Maintes belles ymages de grandz & petis personnages » : quels portraits pour quels cabinets ?

Résumé 0

Reading Brantôme, André Thevet or other French authors from the end of the 16th century, the portraits in the current sense of the term, and not that still in use during the period of image, project or representation – only had their place in Cabinets, rather than in the gallery meant for walking. And this, even if the authors were fully conscious of the meaning collection that the term cabinet was beginning to have and the fact that cabinet was used to name any room in a dwelling that was rarely or not at all to be walked through and that had no bed. It remains to be seen whether this literary topos corresponded to some custom of decorating the cabinets especially with portraits or to placing portraits in one’s possession in the cabinets rather than in the other rooms. The difficulty comes from the fact that the two terms are mainly polysemous and encompass a multitude of realities, rendering any generalization impossible. There are no portraits in the preserved rooms, like the Cabinet des Grelots in the Chateau de Beauregard, no precise description or exact representation of a cabinet decorated with portraits. Several iconographical and above all documentary sources, must thus be reunited in order to reconstitute the decoration of the cabinets of Anna d’Este or of Catherine de’ Medici and to highlight the notion of private life that best characterizes the narrow relation between cabinet and portrait in 16th century texts. A place for memory, love, contemplation, work, and sometimes prayer, of ceremony more and more often at the end of the century, the cabinet offered the ideal framework for portraits whatever their size or their media, but also gave these works of art a particular signification in the eyes of the owner of the site and his visitors.