A Radical deputy - Thyrus de Pautrizel

Here are a few biographical notes concerning one of the lesser known of David's prison companions, the deputy Jean-Baptiste Gabriel-Louis Thyrus de Pautrizel (1754-1836) who came from Guadeloupe.  It feels a bit random to write about one Revolutionary among so many, but David's portrait brings this man suddenly closer.  Like most of the radicals, his record proves deeply ambivalent.

What follows is mostly taken from a well-researched article by Pierre Bardin posted on the website Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe.  The colonial background adds an extra dimension to Pautrizel's story.   

David's fellow prisoners

Here, collected from different websites, are images of David's medallion portraits depicting the former Montagnard deputies who were imprisoned with him in the Collège des Quatre-Nations after the insurrection of Prairial  (28th May 1795.) 

According to Louis-Antoine Prat there are now nine known portraits, five in public galleries, four in private collections.  Clearly they are intended as part of a series: they are uniform in format: circular, of similar size (c.18-19 cm) and executed in  pen and ink with wash. 

At one level these are very immediate works.   In his first period of imprisonment David had felt himself isolated but this time he was thrown together with his companions. At Quatre-Nations the deputies were segregated from other prisoner and detained in makeshift cells around the third, innermost courtyard of the building. They shared a kitchen, and were allowed to gather and talk in the courtyard, also to receive visitors. Much of their time was spent in writing personal defences for publication. The inscription on the portrait of Jeanbon Saint-André notes that it was "a gift of friendship", drawn "in chains", implying that  David sketched it there and then in prison .The Jeanbon Saint-André, the Bernard de Saintes, and the "Zurich" portrait have exact dates, 8th 24th and 16th July respectively (David was released on 3rd August).   Other portraits have have a background of bricks which suggest a prison wall.

David's gaoler

? David, Portrait of an unknown man, presumed to be his gaoler, c.1794

1794 Oil on canvas. 

55.5cm x 46cm 

This striking portrait attributed to David is to be found in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen.

A modern label on the back states that it was painted by David in prison and that the subject was "his gaoler". According to this note, the picture was the possession of  the gaoler's son, a retired military officer living in Compiègne, who gave it as a token to gratitude to his doctor, a certain Josset (sometime given as Gosset).  The  museum acquired the painting  in 1931 when it was sold by one of the doctor's descendants.

David - the final portrait

Jérôme-Martin Langlois, Portrait of David, 88cm x 74.5cm Louvre

https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/joconde/000PE001674

This reproduction: https://www.pubhist.com/w41041

I am posting this portrait of David by Langlois for no better reason than that it is the last image from life of one of the world's great artists -  but also simply because it is such a beautiful painting.   I have known old people whose skin becomes perfect and fragile-looking in just this way; and whose shrunken bodies seem too small for their enveloping clothes as does David's in his favourite frockcoat.

Early portraits of David

Antoine Gros, portrait of David, c.1790, Oil on canvas 63cm x 52cm, Pushkin Museum Moscow.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacques-Louis_David_by_Antoine-Jean_Gros_(1790,_Pushkin_museum).jpg

This portrait in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow represents one of the earliest images of David.  It has been reproduced on the internet for quite a while, but was only uploaded to Wikimedia in this bright high-quality version in 2014.  I love the wig and the dusty coat with its dishevelled collar. It seems that, even by 1790, the Revolution had not yet blown away conventional habits of dress in the artist's studio. 

 

The "hideous wen" of Jacques-Louis David

Here is another famous medical affliction, the growth which disfigured the face of the painter Jacques-Louis David. 

Maquette of a posthumous bust of David by François Rude, 22.5 cm.
 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchased in 2013
https://frenchsculpture.org/fr/sculpture/6208-jacques-louis-david-le-peintre-1748-1825

As a student, probably in 1773-4, David was involved in a fencing accident.  His opponent's foil pieced his left cheek which began gradually to swell:  as a result his face became asymmetrical, his mouth was pulled out of shape and  his speech, which was already affected by a speech impediment, became embarrassingly distorted. 

The blood of Marat

 

I can't believe I managed to miss this story!!! 

Here is yet another quest in historical anthropology from "France's most famous forensic sleuth", Philippe Charlier. This time the object of his attention was the blood-soaked pages of the journal annotated by Marat on 17th July 1793 at the moment when Charlotte Corday plunged her fatal knife into his heart.  The aim was to isolate Marat's DNA from the stains and, potentially, to throw light on his medical condition

As with the gourd containing the blood of Louis XVI, the work was carried out in conjunction with the Spanish paleo-geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox in Barcelona.  The final report was published in January this year. The investigation claimed a couple of firsts: "the oldest successful retrieval of genetic material from cellulose paper.", and, more portentiously, "the first retrospective medical diagnosis to include the genetic analysis of a historical figure".

The head of Charlotte Corday

The skull of Charlotte Corday is among the most resonant relics of the French Revolution.  In recent times it has inspired both the creative writer Leslie Dick ["The Skull of Charlotte Corday,1997]  and the artist Marlene Dumas [The Skull, 2005]. Its authenticity however, remains one of those irreducible - if ultimately trivial - historical mysteries.


The skull revealed

The  supposed skull of Charlotte Corday first surfaced  at  the Universal Exhibition of 1889.  Lenotre describes how he was at the pavilion of Liberal Arts, in the anthropology section, when he found himself confronted by a curious glass display case. It contained bones found during the construction of the Eiffel Tower, plus several skulls, one of which bore the label "the skull of Charlotte Corday.  Belonging to the prince Roland Bonaparte" (See Lenotre, p.182)

"The skull of French Revolutionist Charlotte Corday, murderess of revolutionary leader Marat, exhibited in the Geographical Society, Paris." (Photo by Henry Guttmann Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)."

6 photos of the skull of Charlotte Corday from the collection of prince Roland Bonaparte
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84700927

Prince Roland Bonaparte, great-nephew of Napoleon, President of the Geographical Society in Paris, was a great enthusiast for  the fashionable pseudo-science of "craniology"; he had photographed and measured both Norwegian Sami and Australian aboriginals.  Various experts - Topinard, Lombroso, Benedikt -  pronounced sententiously on the supposed "skull of Charlotte Corday" in his possession  and published their conclusions in learned journals.  Predictably, the results proved contentious.  Bonaparte himself later remarked that he had shown the skull to five eminent specialists, two of whom  declared that it could not possibly have belonged to a criminal whilst the other three declared the opposite. (Lombroso claimed to have found no less than thirty-three "criminal anomalies" in the skull's dimensions!)

The problems of the Picpus Cemetery

Strange how it is possible to normalise the most extreme and macabre situations!  Here is a translation of two forgotten documents from a 19th-century collection edited by Louis Lazare, which give a glimpse into the world of minor officials and gravediggers at the height of the Terror.  They concern the little Picpus Cemetery which, in the short time between 14th June and 18th July 1794, received the bodies of over 1,300 individuals guillotined on the nearby place du Trône-Renversé (place de la Nation).

The Cimetière des Errancis

To replace the Madeleine Cemetery the Commune of Paris chose a more discreet location, at the far end of the district of Petite-Pologne.  The site selected was near the Wall of the Farmers-General at  Monceau, where the rue des Errancis met the  rue de Valois.  The large rectangular space had originally belonged to the chapel serving a miraculous Calvary which stood nearby (demolished at the beginning of 1794). It was now used as a market garden.  Down one side ran the parc de Monceaux.

The trees on the site were removed and, in order to provide an convenient entrance, a section of the Wall was demolished opposite the Customs House. At some point a sign was erected over the gateway: « Dormir, enfin ».

Plaque at 97 rue de Monceau, all that now marks the location
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errancis_Cemetery#/media/File:Cimetiere_des_Errancis.JPG

The cemetery was to be known as the Cimetière des Errancis or Cimetière de Monceau (more familiarly "Mousseaux".)  The gates opened on 5th March 1794.  At first it received ordinary burials, but on 25th March the order was given to transfer the bodies of those executed and the Madeleine cemetery was closed definitively.  For a time, there was some mystification over the new location and bodies were first taken to the Madeleine, then discreetly removed to Monceau several days later.