LA HYRE, Laurent de

Laurent de La Hyre (also spelled La Hire), French Baroque classical painter whose best work is marked by gravity, simplicity, and dignity.

The importance of the intellect was often celebrated in representations of the Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. They could be personified as poised young women in a setting and clothing suggestive of ancient Greece, the homeland of Western abstract thought. On the book held by Arithmetic is the name of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, while on the worksheet are the primary mathematical functions: addition, subtraction, and multiplication. La Hyre produced at least two such series–including the “Allegory of Grammar” (Walters 37.862)–as decoration for the homes of the wealthy. He conveys this classical theme with the cool, rounded, carefully balanced forms of the new idealized style inspired by Raphael and Greco-Roman sculpture.

Although the Parisian painter La Hyre seems never to have travelled to Italy, he was well aware - through study at Fontainebleau and through the work of contemporary artists like Vouet, Poussin and Claude - of the achievements of the Italian Renaissance. He became a major exponent of a restrained and refined classical manner fashionable in the French capital. The sculptural clarity and weight of the figure in this allegorical painting, the measured regularity of the composition with its emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines, the even lighting and discrete local colour can all be contrasted with the sweeping movement, dramatic play of light, shade, textures and reflections in Baroque works by contemporaries like Rembrandt.

The Allegory of Geometry is from a series of paintings of the Seven Liberal Arts, which was one of La Hyre’s most important commissions and a paradigm of classical subject matter and refinement. He painted the group between 1649 and 1650 to decorate the Paris residence of G�d�on Tallemant, a member of the Council of State under Louis XIV. La Hyre also painted at least one other series of the Liberal Arts.

The series was dispersed sometime between 1760 and 1793. At present we know of nine paintings that belonged to the original group, seven representations of the liberal arts, all shown as large half-length figures of women surrounded by their attributes, and two, smaller, full-length figures of putti. They include: Grammar (London, National Gallery); Rhetoric and Logic (Swiss private collection); Arithmetic (Heino, The Netherlands, Hannema-de Stuers Fundatie); Music (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art); Geometry (the present work); Astronomy (Orleans, Mus�e des Beaux-Arts); A Putto Playing a Bass Viol and A Putto Singing (Dijon, Mus�e Magnin).

As in the companion “Allegory of Arithmetic”, this personification of the liberal art of Grammar is engaged in an activity to show how ideas impact real life. To demonstrate how important grammar and clear writing are in making ideas “bloom,” the artist metaphorically represents Grammar watering two pots of flowers. Over her arm is a scroll bearing an ancient definition of grammar in Latin: “A literate tongue, spoken in the required manner.”

This is one of a series of half-length female figures of the seven Liberal Arts which once belonged to G�d�on Tallemant (1613-1668), one of the counsellors of King Louis XIII, apparently painted for his house in the Rue d’Angoumois, Paris. The pictures vary in size, and all are dated 1649 or 1650.

Although the Parisian painter La Hyre seems never to have travelled to Italy, he was well aware - through study at Fontainebleau and through the work of contemporary artists like Vouet, Poussin and Claude - of the achievements of the Italian Renaissance. He became a major exponent of a restrained and refined classical manner fashionable in the French capital. The sculptural clarity and weight of the figure in this allegorical painting, the measured regularity of the composition with its emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines, the even lighting and discrete local colour can all be contrasted with the sweeping movement, dramatic play of light, shade, textures and reflections in Baroque works by contemporaries like Rembrandt.

This unlikely gardener represents Grammar. It is one of a series of personifications of the Seven Liberal Arts. The Liberal Arts were the literary trio, Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic, and the mathematical quartet of Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy. It had long been traditional to decorate private studios and libraries with their images. They were always shown as women, in keeping with the feminine gender of the Latin nouns grammatica, rhetorica etc., which retain their femininity in all the Romance languages. The other paintings of these high-minded ladies by La Hyre survive, dispersed in various collections. We do not know precisely how they were arranged in the room, but the pictures, of different sizes, were probably set into carved panelling and hung above head height.

The Latin legend on Grammar’s winding ribbon can be translated as ‘A learned and articulate voice spoken in a correct manner’. The function of Grammar among the Liberal Arts was not to parse sentences or teach conjugations but to ensure that ideas could be communicated clearly and effectively. In Cesare Ripa’s illustrated dictionary of personifications of concepts, the Iconologia, first published in 1593, a book much used by painters, the author comments, ‘Like young plants, young brains need watering and it is the duty of Grammar to undertake this.’ La Hyre shows Grammar, with a homely jug, watering primulas and anemones in terracotta pots as lovingly studied from the object as any kitchenware by Chardin. The overflow runs off through the drainage hole onto a fragment of antique Roman wall or pillar ornamented with an egg-and-dart frieze. Behind her, grand fluted Roman columns and a Roman urn close off our view into the garden beyond the wall, but the mood is as friendly and serene as if she were nursing her plants on a balcony in a quiet Paris backwater away from the traffic, airing the ravishing harmonies of her shot-silk gown and mild blue cloak.

This personification of the liberal art of Grammar is engaged in an activity to show how ideas impact real life. To demonstrate how important grammar and clear writing are in making ideas “bloom,” the artist metaphorically represents Grammar watering two pots of flowers. Over her arm is a scroll bearing an ancient definition of grammar in Latin: “A literate tongue, spoken in the required manner.”

This is one of a series of half-length female figures of the seven Liberal Arts which once belonged to G�d�on Tallemant (1613-1668), one of the counselors of King Louis XIII, apparently painted for his house in the Rue d’Angoumois, Paris. The pictures vary in size, and all are dated 1649 or 1650. The Liberal Arts were the literary trio, Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic, and the mathematical quartet of Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy.

The allegorical figure of Music tunes a theorbo. At her shoulder is a songbird, symbol of natural music, whereas by contrast she may be a representation of modern music theory and practice. To the right are various contemporary instruments and scores: a lute, a violin, two recorders, a vocal exercise, and a song in two parts. This canvas was originally flanked by two music-making putti (now in the Mus�e Magnin, Dijon).

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 14 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Concerto for harp, lute and theorbo in B flat major

This painting was commissioned by Anne of Austria. It is an imposing composition in a fluid, ordered style, featuring four noble, fleshy figures.

Angelica is the daughter of a king of Cathay in Orlando Furioso, by the Italian poet Ariosto (1474-1533), a romantic epic poem about the conflict between Christians and Saracens at the time of Charlemagne. Angelica was loved by several knights, Christian and pagan, among them the Christian hero Orlando (Roland). He was maddened (furioso) with grief and jealousy because she became the lover of, and eventually married, the Moor Medoro. The scene depicted here (Canto 19:36) shows the two lovers carving their intertwined names on trees and rocks throughout the forest.

The scene depicted here (Canto 19:36) shows the two lovers carving their intertwined names on trees and rocks throughout the forest.

In 1648 for the refectory of the convent of the Miinims on the Place Royale in Paris, Laurent de La Hyre painted a series of grisailles representing the prophet Elijah, Christ, St John the Baptist, and effigies of saintly founders of orders or doctors of the Church. That decoration disappeared when the convent was demolished in 1926, it is known only by the series of seventeen small-format grisaille studies painted on canvas. The figures are all full-length and wear a draped white robe that some historians describe as antique.

This picture is one of the seventeen studies.

The painting depicts the scene when Cornelia - the daughter of Scipio Africanus, the widow of consul Tiberius Gracchus and mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus - refuses the crown of the King of Egypt and his marriage proposal. The style of La Hyre is the equivalent in painting that of Corneille and Racine in literature.

The painting depicts a theatrical scene from the tragedy Panthea by Tristan L’Hermite. This explains why the figures are dressed in superb plumed hats.

La Hyre was able to shift from one style to another. He demonstrated by this painting that he could paint in the style of Poussin.

The biblical story represented in this painting is the following.

Jacob, the son of Isaac and the twin brother of Esau, fled from his brother’s wrath, taking refuge with his uncle Laban in Mesopotamia. Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel. Leah the elder, was rheumy eyed, but Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob undertook to serve Laban as a herdsman for seven years in return for Rachel whom he wished to marry. At the wedding feast Laban substituted Leah by a trick, and then demanded another seven years labour from Jacob before he should obtain Rachel.

At the end Jacob set off secretly to return to Canaan with both wives and his children and possessions. In parting, Rachel stole her father’s teraphim, the small sacred figurines which were his ‘household gods’. When he discovered the theft Laban set off in pursuit, overtook the party and searched their tents and belongings. Rachel promptly hid the teraphim in a camel’s saddle and sat on it, saying to her father, ‘do not take it amiss, sir, that I cannot rise in your presence, the common lot of women is upon me.’ Jacob and Laban had a reconciliation before they parted.

Inscribed in the centre: Iustitia et Pax/osculatae sunt. It is unusual for the subject of a picture to be inscribed so clearly on the painting.

Although most of La Hyre’s work is of many-figured compositions executed in bright, solid colours, he is best remembered for his contribution to the development of landscape painting. His few surviving landscapes seems to amalgamate the limpid light of Claude Lorraine with the antiquarian interests of Nicolas Poussin. As there was so little landscape painting in Paris in the middle years of the seventeenth century, the works of La Hyre form an illuminating example of the way that taste was turning towards the dry and formal.

About 1638 La Hyre appears to have come under the influence of Poussin’s earlier style, of which he produced a personal variant. The present painting is typical of this phase. The romantic treatment of the ruins is close, for instance, to Poussin’s Adoration of the Magi in Dresden, but La Hyre adds to the architecture broken fragments of sculptured heads and bas-reliefs, a device which he frequently uses at this time.

La Hyre’s main training consisted of studying the works at Fontainebleau, particularly those of Primaticcio, but also those of Dubois and the other painters of Henry IV’s time. The effect of this training can be seen in his earliest surviving work, for example in the present altarpiece painted for the Capuchins in the Marais. In this altarpiece the architectural setting, seen in sharp perspective, is used very much as it had been in the ceiling panels of the Galerie d’Ulysse.

In 1648 for the refectory of the convent of the Miinims on the Place Royale in Paris, Laurent de La Hyre painted a series of grisailles representing the prophet Elijah, Christ, St John the Baptist, and effigies of saintly founders of orders or doctors of the Church. That decoration disappeared when the convent was demolished in 1926, it is known only by the series of seventeen small-format grisaille studies painted on canvas. The figures are all full-length and wear a draped white robe that some historians describe as antique.

This picture is one of the seventeen studies.

La Hyre never went to Italy, and his style was formed in Paris under the Mannerist Georges Lallemant. All La Hyre’s leanings towards classical antiquity were therefore learned at second hand, particularly from the work of Nicolas Poussin. As early as 1630, however, a certain coldness was detectable in his art, probably derived from Vouet, who had recently returned from Rome.

Almost all of La Hyre’s best pictures are of figures in classical landscapes. The Children of Bethel Mourned by their Mothers corresponds to a type already perfected by Poussin, namely a strong moral content with figures carefully arranged in an equally carefully balanced landscape or architectural setting. Even though La Hyre’s result was totally different from that of Poussin and it would never be possible to confuse the two, they fall into the same general category and would have appealed to the same type of patrons.

This is a representation of Plutarch’s story in which, in the presence of his mother, the young Greek hero Theseus finds the swords and sandals his father Aegeus has buried under a heavy stone. Seventeenth century French masters often chose to depict some fairly recondite theme from the Graeco-Roman history or legend, and La Hyre, a popular artist of the period, excelled in paintings of this kind.

The painting was commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Jean-Baptiste Lully: Theseus, overture

The detail shows the figure of Theseus. It is assumed that the face of Theseus is a self-portrait of the artist.