Wars of Religion

The Wars of Religion that divided Catholics and Protestants in France were also a struggle fought through images. Both sides circulated prints and satirical pamphlets featuring aggressive or coarse imagery intended to ridicule their opponents and rally their supporters. The distortion of facial features and bodily forms could serve, at best, as a means of mockery and, at worst, to humiliate or cause harm. Images were weapons like any other.

These two prints belong to a series of eighteen plates following the same format: a caricature in a medallion, surmounted by a title and accompanied by a quatrain. They target supporters of Louis XIV’s repression of the Protestants. Louis XIV is caricatured as leader of the Catholic League: the sun, which he adopted as his emblem, conceals his face, which emerges ominously from beneath his monastic hood. Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie (1625–1709), the first Lieutenant General of Police of Paris, is here accused of excessive zeal in enforcing royal decrees against the Protestants, symbolised by the fleur-de-lis on his monk’s robe.

Henri IV, by contrast, appears solemn and dressed as a warrior. On either side of the sovereign are freaks : on the left, a knot of snakes hanging from a rope, severed by Alexander the Great; and on the right, the Lernaean Hydra, beheaded by Hercules. Through these references to Antiquity, the king presents himself as a slayer of monsters and a conquering emperor. The verses at the bottom of the print help to interpret this imagery: having regained his rightful claim to the throne through the force of war, the king’s principal duty in peacetime is to put an end to disputes.

Dating from a later period, this panoramic wallpaper evokes a tragic episode of the Wars of Religion: the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. It was inspired by Les Huguenots, an opera composed in 1836 by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), with a libretto by Eugène Scribe (1791–1861). The wallpaper depicts the opera’s final scene, in which the protagonists are murdered by Catholics.

It was produced by the Pignet manufactory, based in Saint-Genis-Laval, near Lyon. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris holds another fragment of this design, testifying to the popularity of the opera at the time. Here, the comic effect arises from the clumsy relationship between the figures and their setting and from the awkward rendering of their silhouettes. The result calls to mind a poor comedy rather than a tragic opera!