“Antoine Caron’s Paintings and the Exceptional Valois Tapestries at Château d’Écouen Exhibit”

The excellent retrospective that the Château d’Écouen is devoting to the painter Antoine Caron, in addition to its many qualities, can be proud of an extraordinary feat that should encourage any art lover to rush all the stops to the Renaissance Museum: the exceptional meeting of all the tapestries of the Valois tapestry (ill. 1 to 3) of which we had already been able to see three pieces in Fontainebleau during the exhibition “The Art of the Party at the Court of the Valois” (see the article).

1. Brussels workshops, 1581-1584 on a drawing by Antoine Caron (1521-1599)

The Battle at the Barrier

Wool, silk, gold and gilded silver – 386 x 328 cm

Florence, Uffizi Museum

Photo : Didier Rykner

See the image in his page

2. Brussels workshops, 1581-1584 on a drawing by Antoine Caron (1521-1599)

The Quintaine Ring

Wool, silk, gold and gilded silver – 387 x 400 cm

Florence, Uffizi Museum

Photo : Didier Rykner

See the image in his page

Exceptional is not an overused term here. Not only had all the pieces never been returned to France since the 16th century, but above all they had never been presented in their entirety to the Offices, for lack of space and for conservation reasons. However, it is one of the masterpieces of this technique, commissioned by Catherine de Medici (or someone around her, it is still uncertain) at the beginning of the reign of Henri III, woven in workshops in Brussels and bequeathed to his granddaughter Christine de Lorraine wife of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

These tapestries are present in the exhibition because they are reputed to have been made from drawings by Antoine Caron. As we can read in the catalog however, many questions remain unanswered: “ the identity of the characters represented the location of the places of the festivities represented, the hand of the painter or painters who painted the cartoons, the conditions of the execution of the tapestries remain widely debated questions “. And it must be recognized that even the place of Caron in their conception is not really clear: the few preparatory drawings exhibited here are quite far from the final work (ill. 3 and 4). How did we go from these projects to tapestries, it still remains very mysterious.

3. Brussels workshops, 1581-1584 on a drawing by Antoine Caron (1521-1599)

The Bayonne Tournament

Wool, silk, gold and gilded silver – 385 x 604.5 cm

Florence, Uffizi Museum

Photo : Didier Rykner

See the image in his page

4. Antoine Caron (1521-1599)

The Bayonne Tournamentcirca 1573-74

Black chalk, pen, brown ink, brown wash – 33.3 x 48.2 cm

Londres, Courtauld Gallery

Photo : Didier Rykner

See the image in his page

These are not the only enigmas concerning Antoine Caron who remains, despite a catalog raisonné published in 2019 [1] and this exhibition, still poorly known. It is believed that he was trained in the workshop of…

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