The Unknown Masterpiece E-Book

Florence Meurée

• Herausgeber: BrightSummaries.com
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 27

Beschreibung

What should we learn from The Unknown Masterpiece, the philosophical short story about the powers of art? Find everything you need to know about this work in a complete and detailed reading sheet.
You will find in this booklet:
- A complete summary
- A presentation of the main characters such as Frenhofer, Nicolas Poussin, Gillette and Porbus
- An analysis of the specificities of the work: a two-faceted novel, a romantic conception of art, the question of mimesis and significant mythological references
A reference analysis to quickly understand the meaning of the work.

Leseprobe

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

FRENCH WRITER

•Born in 1799 in Tours (Indre-et-Loire)

•Died in 1850 in Paris

•Some of his works:

°Les Chouans (1829), novel

°Eugénie Grandet (1833), novel

°Le Père Goriot (1835), novel

Honoré de Balzac is one of the major French writers of the 19th century. As a young man, he opened the doors of aristocratic Parisian circles, which he never stopped frequenting. However, disastrous business ventures and an excessive lifestyle soon ruined him: literary writing, practised with passion and assiduity, became the only way for him to pay off his debts.

Ambitious, he set about writing a monumental work, La Comédie humaine, which includes more than 90 novels. His aim was to draw up an exhaustive portrait of the society of his time, in order to “compete with the État-Civil” (DE BALZAC H. Œuvres complètes, tome I, Paris, Alexandre Houssiaux, 1855, p. 22).

Balzac is considered one of the fathers of the modern realistic novel.

THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE

A REFLECTION ON THE POWERS OF ART

•Genre: short story

•Reference edition: Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu suivi de La Leçon de violon, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, coll. « Les classiques d'aujourd'hui », 2002.

•1st edition: 1831

•Themes : art, painting, mimesis, mythology, perfection, madness

The Unknown Masterpiece is a short story that first appeared in 1831 under the title Maître Frenhofer in the magazine L'Artiste, before being included in a subset of La Comédie humaine: the Études philosophiques.

The plot is set in the 17th century and focuses on the character of Frenhofer, a painter who has the ambition to paint a perfect portrait of a woman. The novella thus offers a reflection on the powers of art and on the condition of the painter.

This short story by Balzac had a certain posterity and was a source of inspiration for writers and painters alike.

SUMMARY

PART 1 – GILLETTE

The story takes place in Paris in 1612. A young man visits the home of François Porbus (Frans Pourbus the Younger, Flemish painter, 1569-1622), the former painter of Henri IV (King of France and Navarre, 1553-1610), who was dismissed by Marie de Medici (Queen of France, 1573-1642), who preferred Rubens (Flemish painter, 1577-1640) to him. The visitor, who also happens to be an artist, is impressed by the idea of this meeting and, out of shyness, does not dare to go up to Porbus' studio. Eventually an old man joins him on the stairs and knocks on the door, after which both are ushered by Porbus into a room cluttered with painting equipment.

The old man then launches into a long commentary on a painting by Porbus of St Mary the Egyptian (Christian penitent, c. 345-c. 422). Although the painting seemed to him to be perfectly executed from a technical point of view, he criticised it for not giving a strong enough impression of reality. For him, the woman Porbus painted does not seem sufficiently alive: “You have the appearance of life, but you do not express its overflowing fullness.” (p. 45).