Five Fabulous Centuries of French Painting Quiz

Answer: miniature

Though not exactly a household name, Jean Fouquet (ca. 1420-1481) was one of the first major French artists, bridging the gap between the Late Gothic period and the Early Renaissance. In the 1440s, when he was still in his twenties, he traveled to Italy, where the Renaissance was already in full bloom. The combination of influences from Florentine and Early Netherlandish painting (in particular Fra Angelico and the Van Eyck family) is a unique trait of Fouquet's work, displayed to great advantage both in his panel paintings and his miniatures - the latter especially remarkable for the precision with which every detail is rendered. Fouquet had a successful career as a painter for the French court; however, the majority of his surviving output consists of illuminated books and manuscripts. He is also believed to have invented the portrait miniature, which became very popular in the 16th century.

Probably the best-known of Fouquet's paintings is the so-called "Melun Diptych" (c. 1450), created for the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun, a town on the outskirts of Paris. The two wings of the painting are held by different museums: the left wing, depicting Étienne Chevalier (treasurer to King Charles VII) with his patron saint, St Stephen, is in Berlin's Gemäldegalerie, while the right wing (shown in the photo), depicting a "Virgo lactans" (breast-feeding Madonna), is in Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts. Painted in shades of red, white and blue (a possible reference to the heraldic colours of France), the diptych's right wing has often been called one of the world's weirdest paintings due to its otherworldly atmosphere and the Virgin's rather peculiar anatomy.

The Virgin is believed to be a portrait of Agnès Sorel, the mistress of Charles VII, who had died two years earlier, renowned for her beauty and elegance. Fouquet's attention to detail can be admired in the painstaking rendering of the Virgin's jeweled crown and her elaborately ornate throne.

Answer: Mary, Queen of Scots

François Clouet (c. 1510-1572) was the son of Jean, a miniaturist and skilled portrait painter originally from the Low Countries (present-day Belgium), who achieved the prestigious position of court painter to King Francis I. Following in his father's footsteps, François also became court painter to Francis I and his successors - Henry II, Francis II, and Charles IX. His portraits of the French royal family earned him fame and fortune; interestingly, many of his best works are drawings, executed with remarkable skill.

Among the members of the French royal family portrayed by Clouet during his tenure as a court painter, there was Mary Stuart - later known as Mary, Queen of Scots - who as a child had been betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin (heir to the throne) of France, eldest son of Henry II. Mary and Francis grew up together, and got married in 1558; Mary's tenure as Queen Consort lasted barely over a year (July 1559 - December 1560). When Clouet painted the portrait shown in the photo (now part of the Royal Collection of the British royal family), Mary was about 17 years old. The painting showcases Clouet's close attention to detail and his insight into his sitter's character. Clouet also created several paintings and drawings of Mary in mourning attire after her husband's untimely death.

All the ladies listed as wrong answers were also painted by Clouet: Catherine de' Medici was Henry II's Queen Consort, and Diane de Poitiers the king's powerful mistress, while Elisabeth of Austria was married to Charles IX.

Answer: Mary Magdalen

Born in the Duchy of Lorraine, Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) may have become acquainted with Caravaggio's groundbreaking work through some of the Italian master's Dutch followers - such as Henrik Terbrugghen, to whom he is often compared. Unlike those painters (and Caravaggio himself), however, La Tour concentrated almost exclusively on religious subjects, especially in the mature stage of his career. La Tour was briefly court painter to King Louis XIII, but his successful career was cut short by an epidemic in which he and his wife died. Soon after his death, his work was almost completely forgotten, and his paintings attributed to other artists - until he was rediscovered in 1915 by a German art historian, Hermann Voss.

The most distinctive feature of La Tour's work is his unique use of chiaroscuro: in his paintings, the source of light is almost always a candle or a small oil lamp. The painting in the photo - titled "Mary Magdalen With the Night Light" (1638-1640) - illustrates La Tour's approach to the style pioneered by Caravaggio a few decades earlier. Though the word "Baroque" is often synonymous with complexity and ornamentation, La Tour's carefully geometric compositions are characterized by an almost stark simplicity, evoking silence and contemplation. The skull held by the penitent Mary Magdalen symbolizes the transience of human life.

La Tour often produced several variations on the same theme. There are four surviving paintings of the penitent Magdalen, two of them - the one in the photo, part of the collection of the Louvre Museum, and "Mary Magdalen with the Smoking Flame", held by the County Museum of Los Angeles - nearly identical.

Answer: Madame de Pompadour

The work of François Boucher (1703-1770) embodies the essence of the Rococo style, with its soft colours, graceful curves, and elegant eroticism. The son of a minor painter, as a young man he won the coveted Grand Prix de Rome, which enabled him to study in Italy for almost four years. When he returned to France, his career took off, leading him to become one of France's most fashionable painters, whose work was sought after by Parisian high society. In 1745, he acquired the favour of the Marquise de Pompadour, the powerful chief mistress of Louis XV, who is often referred to as the "godmother" of Rococo for her keen patronage of the arts. Boucher - who later became court painter to Louis XV - also introduced the fashion for "chinoiseries", rare and valuable artifacts from the Far East that often appear in his paintings.

Boucher's fame rests with his idyllic pastoral scenes, often inspired by classical mythology and set in an idealized natural setting - as well as with his "voluptuous" depictions of the female body. He also created some stunning portraits of Madame de Pompadour, who charged him with decorating some of her private residences. Unlike her carefully staged "official" portraits, in which her prestigious role was clearly on display, the painting in the photo - titled "Madame de Pompadour at Her Toilette" (1758, part of the art collection of Harvard University) - provides a more intimate portrayal of the sitter, allowing the artist to focus his attention on decorative details such as the tiny blusher compact and brush.

Of the three ladies listed as wrong answers, Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Staël are both known for their writings, while Madame de Montespan was one of the many mistresses of Louis XIV, the Sun King.

Answer: he was stabbed in his bath

The last few decades of the 18th century saw a marked shift from the decorative, frivolous Rococo style towards the austere elegance of Neoclassicism. This shift in aesthetics coincided with the tumultuous events that led to the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. In those years, Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) became the undisputed leader of French art. The scion of a prosperous family, David attended the Royal Academy of Arts, and after a few failed attempts managed to win the Grand Prix de Rome - which allowed him to spend five years in Italy (1775-1780), where he studied classical and Italian art in depth. Many of the paintings he executed before the Revolution are based on episodes of Greek and Roman history.

David wholly embraced the ideals of the Revolution, and was a fervent republican. Among his close friends were revolutionary leaders Maximilien Robespierre and Jean-Paul Marat. A few months after the execution of King Louis XVI (in favour of which David had voted), on 13 July 1793, Marat was assassinated by a young aristocrat, Charlotte Corday, while taking a medicinal bath for the skin condition he suffered from. David's painting of the dead revolutionary leader - portrayed starkly on a dark background, almost like a Christian martyr - is quite different from his large historical canvases, and is widely held to be the artist's masterpiece.

Just a few years later, David met Napoleon Bonaparte, and instantly became his fervent admirer. Among his best-known works there are a large-scale depiction of the Emperor's coronation (1806), and a portrait of Napoleon in his study (1812). After Napoleon's fall, David moved to Brussels in self-exile, where he eventually died after being struck by a carriage.

Answer: it was not anatomically realistic

Though Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) is generally labeled a Neoclassical painter, who took up Jacques-Louis David's mantle, some aspects of his work bring him in closer contact to Romanticism. His life and career were impacted by his conflicted relationship with French art critics, in particular the prestigious Paris Salon, the official exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Like other great French painters, Ingres won the Prix de Rome in his youth, and spent many years in Italy, all the while trying to achieve critical acceptance in his native country. He settled back in France for good when he was already in his early sixties; his well-known rivalry with the younger Eugène Delacroix, standard-bearer of Romanticism, dates from those years.

Ingres was a very prolific painter, and one of his era's most distinguished portraitists. Like David, he also specialized in large canvases inspired by episodes of Roman and Greek history. However, a number of his smaller-scale paintings became influential in the development of Orientalism, a trend that acquired a primary role in Romantic art and literature. "La Grande Odalisque" (1814) had been originally commissioned to Ingres by Caroline Murat, Napoleon's sister and Queen of Naples. The woman's small head, elongated body, and cool color scheme are clearly influenced by Italian Mannerist painters of the 16th century such as Parmigianino and Pontormo. When it was first shown, the painting attracted widespread criticism for the lack of realism in the depiction of the woman's body and pose: one particular critic noted that the figure of the odalisque had "two or three vertebrae too many".

Now considered one of Ingres's masterpieces, "La Grande Odalisque" was admired by later artists such as Degas and Manet. It can be viewed at the Louvre Museum, together with many of the artist's other works.

Answer: North Africa

There is much more to the work of Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) than his iconic "Liberty Leading the People" - a massive canvas commemorating the July Revolution of 1830. The artist's passionate temperament is reflected in his use of colour and motion, in contrast with Neoclassicism's search for formal perfection. Delacroix's first great source of inspiration was the intensely dramatic "The Raft of the Medusa" (1818-19) by Théodore Géricault, one of the earliest French Romantic artists. Another major influence was Lord Byron, both as a literary figure and as a fighter for Greek independence: two of Delacroix's early paintings, "Massacre at Chios" (1824) and "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi" (1826) are based on events of the war fought by Greece against the Ottoman Empire. Other famous works by Delacroix were inspired by Dante and Shakespeare.

A major turning point in Delacroix's career, however, came in 1832, when he traveled to Spain and North Africa - which provided him with the opportunity to escape Paris and experience a more "primitive" culture. The best-known of the over 100 works inspired by this trip is "Women of Algiers in Their Apartment" (1834, shown in the photo), which can be viewed at the Louvre Museum. Though the painting received mixed reviews when it was first exhibited, it is now considered one of Delacroix's masterpieces, and influenced later artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Picasso.

The artist's masterful sense of colour is on full display here, with the women's rich clothing and the room's furniture rendered in loving detail. While avoiding the overt eroticism of other Orientalist works, the painting is subtly suggestive: rather than nudity, we have the women's loose clothes, bare feet, and relaxed poses - with viewers feeling as if they were intruding on the ladies' privacy. In 1847-1849, Delacroix painted a second version of the same scene, now held by the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.

Answer: the scene depicted real people in a real-life situation

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was to French painting what the brothers Goncourt and Émile Zola were to literature. Like those highly influential writers, Courbet was committed to painting what he could see and experience in real life, rather than following academic conventions or depicting grandiose, idealized scenes. Courbet started out his career with paintings inspired by literary works, as well as a number of portraits and self-portraits. However, a trip to Belgium and the Netherlands in the late 1840s and his embrace of Socialism led him to focus primarily on the depiction of the life of the lower classes.

Sadly, his first major work in this key, "The Stone Breakers" (1849), was destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in 1945. The painting was exhibited at the 1850-1851 Paris Salon, together with "Peasants from Flagey Back from the Fair" and the artist's most celebrated work, "A Burial at Ornans" (now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris). This large canvas (though not as large as those painted by the likes of David, Ingres, and Delacroix) depicts the funeral of Courbet's grand-uncle in the artist's home town of Ornans. All the people that appear in the painting were present at the funeral, which Courbet also attended. Courbet's fiercely unconventional approach drew both praise and criticism: some hailed him as a genius, others excoriated his somber, starkly realistic depiction of a group of badly dressed, ordinary people, devoid of any truly religious content.

Undaunted, Courbet kept producing paintings whose politically-charged social realism upset purists. He also courted scandal with works of increasingly erotic content - such as the infamous "The Origin of the World" (1866). In 1871, he became involved with the Paris Commune - which led to his imprisonment for six months, and then to exile in Switzerland, where he died in 1877.

Answer: Symbolism

One of the most significant cultural movements of the late 19th century, Symbolism had its beginnings in France with the publication of Charles Baudelaire's seminal poetry collection "The Flowers of Evil" ("Les fleurs du mal", 1857). Often seen as a reaction against Realism, Symbolism emphasized elements already present in Romanticism - such as spirituality, imagination, and dreams - that ran counter to the gritty depictions of everyday life favoured by Realism. The work of Gustave Moreau (1828-1898) encapsulates the most distinctive features of Symbolism; his idiosyncratic style paved the way for Surrealism, as that movement's founder, André Breton, himself stated in 1924.

Moreau was an extremely prolific artist, producing over 15,000 paintings, watercolours, and drawings over his lifetime. Like other great French artists, he spent some time in Italy, where he studied the Venetian masters. His work was initially well received, but when his style turned more visionary and experimental, severe criticism eventually led him to withdraw from society. Most of his paintings are based on Biblical and classical subjects, though interpreted in a unique manner. "The Apparition" (1876, in the photo), probably his most famous work, is a haunting, somewhat morbid take on the episode of Salome dancing before Herod - in which John the Baptist's bleeding, severed head hovers before the dancer as a materialization of her desire. The scene's elaborately decorated background, inspired by Moorish architecture, reflects the artist's fascination with the exotic, while the bare-breasted, bejeweled Salome embodies the ideal of the "femme fatale".

Moreau created a large number of works based on this particular Biblical episode. Such was the impression "The Apparition" made on Oscar Wilde, who viewed in that the Louvre in 19884, that it inspired his famously scandalous play "Salome" (1893). The painting now resides at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Expressionism was a mainly Northern European movement of the early 20th century, while Constructivism flourished in Russia between the two World Wars. Divisionism, on the other hand, is a Neo-Impressionist style also known as Pointillism.

Answer: Henri Rousseau

Like the three painters listed as incorrect answers, Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was part of the crowded contingent of artists often labeled as "Post-Impressionists", active between the mid-1880s and the earliest years of the 20th century. Though keenly interested in art from a young age, he did not receive any formal training, and worked as a toll and tax collector for over 20 years. When he retired at the age of 49, he started painting full time. His large, vivid canvases depicting exotic scenes in a style often referred to as "Naïf" or "primitive" were initially disparaged and ridiculed by critics, who were also contemptuous of his lack of formal artistic education.

However, in the final years of Rousseau's life appreciation for his work grew: in 1908, the young Pablo Picasso, who was an admirer of his art, organized a banquet in Rousseau's honour, to which a number of notable intellectuals participated. Two years after his death, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire wrote his epitaph, which was carved on his tombstone by Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi. Rousseau's highly individual approach to painting and his unbridled imagination were also a major influence on Surrealism. Although he never visited any of the exotic locales to which he owes his fame, he recreated them with a kind of childlike enthusiasm that makes his work uniquely fascinating.

The painting in the photo, titled "Surprised! (Tiger in a Tropical Storm")", and executed in 1891, was the first of his "Jungle" scenes, which he continued to paint until the end of his life. In the work, a tiger, half-hidden by the lush, windswept vegetation, prepares to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. Neither the tiger nor the jungle are depicted realistically: however, the vegetation is rendered by a sophisticated use of different shades of green, and the wild movement of leaves and branches evokes the violence of a tropical storm - an effect augmented by the diagonal silver threads of rain trailing across the canvas. "Surprised!" now resides in London's National Gallery.