Quand les artistes dessinaient les cartes. Vues et figures de l’espace français Moyen Âge et Renaissance

When Artists Drew Maps. Views and Figures of France in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

In celebration and commemoration of 50WomenAtYale150 join YaleWomen France for a distinctive event that shines a light on women. Join us at the National Archives for a tour of When Artists Drew Maps. Views and Figures of France in the Middle Ages and Renaissance with Camille Serchuk (MA ’86,MPhil ’88, PhD ‘97), who collaborated with Juliette Dumasy-Rabineau and Nadine Gastaldi to create this exhibition.

When:

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Schedule:

11:00 am            Meet in the lobby of the National Archives for the Tour

12:30 noon         Optional lunch gathering nearby

Register no later than Sunday, December 15

RSVP to Victoria Bridges Moussaron at [email protected] 

Soar over or explore the cities and countryside of medieval and Renaissance France. Discover another kind of cartography, one at the confluence of surveying, observation and art that appears at the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of the Early Modern period (14th - 16th century).. This is what the exhibition When Artists Drew Maps. Views and Figures of France in the Middle Ages and Renaissance invites us to do.

Archives and libraries conserve a large number of maps, plans, and views of territories from all over France, produced between 1300 and 1600. They reveal, quite literally, the landscapes of France at that time. The exhibition will present some the most beautiful examples of these images.

Many of these so-called “figures” were made by painters, including some of the most famous artists of their day (Jean Cousin, Bernard Palissy, Nicolas Dipre...). The images are thus at the intersection of art and cartography. Most of them are exhibited to the general public for the first time, providing exceptional insight into the landscapes and contexts of daily life at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance.

In the age of GPS, Google View and Google Earth, which have renewed our ability to comprehend a large space with the help of an image, these visual maps should not surprise us; instead, they should make us think about our relationship to space and our confidence in its representation. With this exhibition, the Archives nationales aims to bring to light these little-known documents, most of which are on public display for the first time.