Antoine Gallay
2022 Panofsky postdoctoral fellow (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich)
2021-2022 Postdoctoral fellow (Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, University of Tel Aviv)
2021 Phd in Art History / Phd in Epistemology and History of Science
(University of Geneva / University Paris Nanterre)
2013 MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science
(University of Cambridge)
2012 MA in Renaissance to Enlightenment
(University of Edinburgh)
2021-2022 Postdoctoral fellow (Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, University of Tel Aviv)
2021 Phd in Art History / Phd in Epistemology and History of Science
(University of Geneva / University Paris Nanterre)
2013 MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science
(University of Cambridge)
2012 MA in Renaissance to Enlightenment
(University of Edinburgh)
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That is the story Vasari tells us. None of the other contemporary sources – Lomazzo, Paolo Giovo, or Francesco Melzi – mentions such a romanesque death. However, the story meets with an extraordinary success in Enlightenment France. Still considered by Félibien (1666-1685) as hearsay, the event becomes a genuine historical fact in subsequent biographies : all of them describe Leonardo’s death in the arms of Francis I.
It then becomes a subject for painting. Leonardo’s death is now considered as a historic event, worthy of memory. Through the paintings of François-Guillaume Ménageot (1781), Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1818) and Jean-François Gigoux (1831), it becomes the symbol of France as the rightful heir of Italian Renaissance. The mythical impact of the story grows during the nineteenth century through the numerous engravings and illustrated histories.
However, since the very end of the eighteenth century, some historians have begun to doubt the truth of the event – notably thanks to the rediscovery of some documents by Venturi (1796) and Amerotti (1804). Francis I could not have witnessed the last breath of the painter. A debate of experts rages through the first half of the century, until the falsity of Vasari’s story seems to be unanimously recognised.
From a comparative analysis of textual and pictural objects, we would like to propose a global reflection on the stakes of history, between the problem of historical truth and that of the symbolic richness of fiction.
Master dissertation by Antoine Gallay
That is the story Vasari tells us. None of the other contemporary sources – Lomazzo, Paolo Giovo, or Francesco Melzi – mentions such a romanesque death. However, the story meets with an extraordinary success in Enlightenment France. Still considered by Félibien (1666-1685) as hearsay, the event becomes a genuine historical fact in subsequent biographies : all of them describe Leonardo’s death in the arms of Francis I.
It then becomes a subject for painting. Leonardo’s death is now considered as a historic event, worthy of memory. Through the paintings of François-Guillaume Ménageot (1781), Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1818) and Jean-François Gigoux (1831), it becomes the symbol of France as the rightful heir of Italian Renaissance. The mythical impact of the story grows during the nineteenth century through the numerous engravings and illustrated histories.
However, since the very end of the eighteenth century, some historians have begun to doubt the truth of the event – notably thanks to the rediscovery of some documents by Venturi (1796) and Amerotti (1804). Francis I could not have witnessed the last breath of the painter. A debate of experts rages through the first half of the century, until the falsity of Vasari’s story seems to be unanimously recognised.
From a comparative analysis of textual and pictural objects, we would like to propose a global reflection on the stakes of history, between the problem of historical truth and that of the symbolic richness of fiction.