Abstract
Cézanne’s painting of Mont Sainte-Victoire (c.1904–6) in Philadelphia, stands as a “summa” of the painter’s twenty-year obsession with what he called “le motif” (Figure 1). Perhaps the last painting to come from the painter’s brush, it is nevertheless typical of the numerous other versions Cézanne painted of his beloved mountain during the final years of his life. Seen from the high vantage point of Cézanne’s studio just north of Aix-en-Provence in southern France, the mountain rests atop an expansive horizon. Never had the mountain seemed so majestic and immobile, yet alive and organic; at once rooted firmly to the countryside of Aix while seeming at the same time to disappear into the ethereal blueness of the heavens above.
I would like to thank Profs. Mary Louise Krumrine, George Mauner, Eldon Van Liere, and my wife Amy Yerkes for their support and helpful suggestions in the writing of this article.
Throughout this article I mention and describe works that are not accompanied by illustrations in the present text. In such cases, I either direct the reader to the appropriate source of said illustrations via a footnote or, in the case of Cézanne’s works, I will direct the reader to the standard Catalogue Raisonné reference number(s) found in Lionello Venturi, Cézanne, son art, son oeuvre, 2 volumes (Paris, 1936). Such works mentioned in the text will be followed, in parentheses, by the designation V. and the appropriate number.
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Notes
Max Raphael, The Demands of Art (Princeton, 1968), p. 11.
Bernard Dorival, Cézanne,trans. H.H.A. Thackthwaite (New York, 1948), pp. 94–95. In an undated questionnaire Cézanne responded that the writer he most admired was Racine. This document is reproduced in Adrien Chappuis, The Drawings of Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné (Greenwich, 1978), pp. 25–28.
Emile Zola, The Masterpiece, trans. Thomas Walton (Ann Arbor, 1983 ), p. 52.
Paul Cézanne, Correspondance, ed. John Rewald (Paris, 1978), p. 249. See letter to Gasquet of 30 April 1896. Cézanne stated, “Certes, un artiste désire s’élever intellectuellement le plus possible, mais l’homme doit rester obscur.”
Meyer Schapiro, Cézanne (New York, 1952), p. 11. Schapiro was the first to recognize Cézanne’s sublimation of the themes of his early “literal” paintings into the less obvious genres of landscape and still life. See especially his article, “The Apples of Cézanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still Life”, reprinted in his Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (New York, 1982), pp. 1–38.
Cézanne, Correspondance,p. 165. Letter to Zola of 14 April 1878.
Rewald, p. 269.
Cézanne, Correspondance, pp. 226–227. Letter of May 1886.
John Watenhall, “Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves”, Pantheon,I, 1982, p. 48.
Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives,Vol. 9, trans. Berandotte Perrin (Cambridge, 1959), p. 511.
Carol Solomon Kiefer, “Paul Cézanne, François-Marius Granet and the Provençal Landscape Tradition”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1987, p. 11. See also Michel Hoog, “Le Motif de la Sainte Victoire”, in Cézanne ou la peinture en jeu,ed. Denis Coutagne (Aix, 1982), pp. 93–105. Hoog acknowledges the confusion surrounding the etymology of Sainte-Victoire but claims that, in any case, the name evokes both the sacred and the victorious, p. 101. He also mentions that it has been suggested that Sainte-Victoire may refer to one Saint Victurien — a proposal that, in my mind, is as unlikely as the association of the mountain with Saint Victor. Since the completion of my dissertation an important exhibition has been held, and its catalogue published, on Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire pictures. Much of the information I offer here concerning the history of the mountain and origin of its name was independently presented in this catalogue. See: Paul-Albert Février, “Histoire de Victoires”, and Nicole Martin-Vignes, “Pèlerinage”, in Denis Coutagne and Bruno Ely (eds.), Sainte-Victoire Cézanne 1990 (Aix-en-Provence, 1990), pp. 63–72.
Archibald Marshall, A Spring Walk in Provence,2nd ed. (New York, 1920), p. 94.
See Amédée Thierry, Histoire de Gaulois depuis les temps les plus reculés jusq’à l’entière soumission de la gaule à la domination romaine,Vol. 2, 18th ed. (Paris, 1870), pp. 29–30. See also M. Fauris de Saint-Vincens, “Topographie”, Le Magasin encyclopédique, ou journal de sciences, des lettres et des arts, Vol. 4, 1814, pp. 320–321. Fauris de Saint-Vincens claims that the dedication of the temple erected by Marius was at some point rededicated and that “Sainte-Victoire fut nommée la patronne de ce temple”. The identity of this “patronne” is unclear. As there exists no Saint Victoire in the lexicon of saints, the only certainty is that this “patronne” is indeed female. I assert that the patroness of the new “temple” was the Virgin herself.
Fauris de Saint-Vincens, pp. 321–322.
Thierry, p. 30.
Claude Alleau, Les Guides Noirs: Guide de la Provence mysterieuse (Paris, 1965), p. 350. The Carmelites were especially devoted to the Virgin.
Quoted in Gerstle Mack, Paul Cézanne (New York, 1935), pp. 328–329.
Sir Walter Scott, Anne of Geierstein (London and New York, 1880), pp. 354–357. In Scott’s historical novel, which was most popular in France in the nineteenth century, the character Thiebault explains the origins of the name Sainte-Victoire. According to him (Scott), the mountain derived its name “from a great victory which was gained by a Roman general, named Caio Mariochwr(133) in gratitude to Heaven for which victory Caio Mario vowed to build a monastery on the mountain, for the service of the Virgin Mary, in honour of whom he had been baptized”, p. 354. Despite the obvious anachronism (one which Scott himself acknowledges) it is clear that, in the nineteenth century, Mont Sainte-Victoire was associated with the Virgin. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate Scott’s source of information.
See Charles Sterling, Le Couronnement de la Vierge (Paris, 1939), pp. 17–18 and the corresponding illustrations.
Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française,abrégé par A. Beaujean (Vernoy, 1981), p. 1267.
Thomas Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (New Brunswick, N.J., 1983), pp. 89, 102, and 166–168. Emphasis mine.
See Bram Dijkstra, The Idols of Perversity (Oxford, 1986), pp. 15–24, especially p. 19.
Émile Zola, The Sin of Father Mouret, trans. Sandey Petrey (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1969 ), p. 79.
The Stella Maris was one of the most enduring epithets of the Virgin. According to Albert Boime, Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision (New Haven, 1988), p. 249, the image of Mary as Star of the Sea was a prominent image among the Romantics and probably, in part, inspired Couture’s mural Stella Maris in the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. See Boime, fig. VIII.2, p. 234. I am indebted to George Mauner for leading me to this source.
Fauris de Saint-Vincens, p. 321.
Alleau, p. 568.
Sidney Geist, Interpreting Cézanne (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 69–73.
Zola, The Sin of Father Mouret,p. 91.
Geist, p. 73.
Michelet’s La Montagne was a huge popular success and went through several editions in its first year. See Edward K. Kaplan, Michelet’s Poetic Vision: A Romantic Philosophy of Nature, Man, and Woman (Amherst, MA, 1977), p. 94.
Apparently, while reading Michelet’s L’Oiseau, L’Insecte,and La Montagne,Zola underwent a near mystical experience. See Philip Walker, Zola (London, 1985), p. 79.
Jules Michelet, Oeuvres complètes,ed. Paul Viallaneix (Paris), p. 108.
Quoted in Kaplan, p. 137.
Gary Neil Wells, “Metaphorical Relevance and Thematic Continuity in the Early Paintings of Paul Cézanne”, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1987, p. 214.
J.W. Goethe, Faust,trans. Walter Kaufman (Garden City and New York, 1963), p. 502. All quotations are from this edition.
Goethe, J. W., Faust, trans. Bayard Taylor. Marshall Montgomery and Douglas Yates (London, 1963 ), p. 446.
Hans Eichner, “The Eternal Feminine: An Aspect of Goethe’s Ethics”, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, ser. 4, no. 9, 1971, pp. 234–244. Reprinted in Faust, trans. Walter Arndt, ed. Cyrus Hamlin (New York, 1976 ), p. 624.
Schapiro, “The Apples of Cézanne”, p. 38, 91 n. Schapiro likens Cézanne’s picture to J. A. Van Dyck’s Hommage to Venus in Karlsruhe. Both compositional and thematic similarities between the two works suggest familiarity and an influence must be assumed. However, I have not been able to uncover direct evidence that Cézanne had actually seen this work. Moreover, Wells has discovered that Cézanne’s painting conforms fairly closely to an episode in Faust where Helen is described before a canopied throne surrounded by admirers. See: Wells, pp. 214–218. If this is indeed the case, then it would be highly probable that Cézanne would see Helen as a Venus type and conflate the symbolic meanings of the two.
Rewald, p. 123. According to Rewald’s research, Marie was apparently a “devout spinster”.
Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Y.-G. Le Dantec, rev. by Claude Pichot (Paris, 1961 ), p. 1223.
Émile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart,ed. Henri Mitterand, Vol. 4 (Paris, 1966), p. 201.
Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser, cond. Erick Leinsdorf, The Metropolitan Opera, Decca, 1971. English translation by Peggie Cochrane.
Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes,p. 1219.
That Cézanne in this picture has associated the earth with death via the stark tonal juxtaposition of the quarry and the mountain may be, in part, explained by a local Aixois tradition. Mary Tompkins Lewis has discovered that there was a long-standing fascination in Aix with death imagery. In the nineteenth century several archeological excavations of the environs of Aix uncovered evidence of a primitive “Celtic Ligurian culture in which the tête de mort was venerated and thought to protect its worshipers.” Lewis goes on to say that pillars hewn from the Bibemus quarry (the very quarry depicted by Cézanne) were decorated with death’s heads. These artifacts were exhibited at the Musée Granet during the artist’s lieftime. See Mary Tompkins Lewis, Cézanne’s Early Imagery (Berkeley, 1989 ), pp. 40–43.
Quoted in Roald Nasgaard, The Mystic North: Symbolist Landscape Painting in Northern Europe and North America, 1890–1940 (Toronto, 1984), pp. 138–139.
The early letters between Cézanne and Zola contain numerous references to Dante. See, for example, Zola, Correspondance,pp. 130 and 140.
According to Ciardi, “Venus represents love [and] leads the way and that Divine illumination follows it.” See Dante, The Purgatorio,trans. John Ciardi (New York, 1961), p. 37. See Canto I, 19–21. Moreover, later in the Purgatorio,Virgil and Dante encounter two trees (one in Canto XXII and the other in Canto XXIII). According to Francis Fergusson, Dante’s Drama of the Mind (Princeton, 1953), p. 141, these trees are an obvious allusion to both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Death which “symbolize, both in their natural and historic aspects, the paradoxes of human nourishment: nourishment for the flesh and for the spirit; delight and renunciation, feast and sacrifice in one.”
See Figure 8, p. 246, in Robert Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France: Joséphin Peladan and the Salons de la Rose-Croix (New York, 1976), p. 102. The rose was also, not surprisingly, a traditional attribute of Venus as well. See, for example, J.C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols (London, 1987).
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Losch, M. (1995). A Vicarious Victory: Cézanne’s Paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Dual Nature of Love. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Elemental Passion for Place in the Ontopoiesis of Life. Analecta Husserliana, vol 44. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3298-7_21
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