Publication Date: Winter 2019
And it's Molière's 397th birthday today.
Find out what has been going on in Molière's world and what the committees have in store for his birthday celebration.
Find out what has been going on in Molière's world and what the committees have in store for his birthday celebration.
Two centuries after Molière’s death, there was a fad among painters to depict the legendary occasion when his sovereign, Louis XIV, invited him—a mere actor!—to sit at the royal table and share his food.
Louis XIV customarily sat alone at his table, surrounded by standing courtiers who were privileged to watch the king eat. Some of those aristocrats had looked unkindly upon Molière, so Louis XIV made a point of honoring the man of theatre in their presence as a way of teaching them civility.
This 1862 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, like others of the mid-19th-century mania for historical realism, drew upon scrupulous research in fashions, furniture, interior décor, and manners of the 1660s. In all such paintings, the king sits in an armchair while Molière enjoys the honor of sitting in the king’s presence—but in a chair without arms. The king’s table was actually quite small, as shown. This was before place settings were used, so the king took food with his hands from the platters that were presented to him.
Louis XIV had his déjeuner, the main meal of the day, which we would now call a dîner (dinner), around 1:00pm. Some historians have mistakenly referred to it as a breakfast. In the evening, the king would partake of a lighter souper(supper).
Gérôme’s visual recreation of the famous event has been the most popular and has been mass-marketed as an engraving. It can even be bought as a phone-case with a colorized version of that engraving. For comparative purposes, there are other paintings of the famous Déjeuner de Molière et Louis XIV to research: one by François-Jean Garnerey (1824), an 1837 surviving sketch by Jean-August Dominique Ingres for his larger painting that was destroyed in 1871, and Jean-Hégésippe Vetter’s Molière Reçu par Louis XIV (1864). The Chocolat Guérin-Boutron Chocolate Company had a series of historical depictions of Molière’s life on cards one could collect by buying the chocolates, and sure enough, one of them shows Molière at the king’s table.
Plays based on Molière’s life also featured the scene. It appears in George Sand’s Molière (1851) and in Mikhail Bulgakov’s Molière: A Cabal of Hypocrites (1929).
Like Molière on Facebook
or
Email him with questions or comments.
Be sure to subscribe to our newsletters so you can continue to receive information about the upcoming events involving Molière's 400th birthday.
If you have questions, you can email the publication committee, Felicia Londre, or Kip Niven.
Louis XIV customarily sat alone at his table, surrounded by standing courtiers who were privileged to watch the king eat. Some of those aristocrats had looked unkindly upon Molière, so Louis XIV made a point of honoring the man of theatre in their presence as a way of teaching them civility.
This 1862 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, like others of the mid-19th-century mania for historical realism, drew upon scrupulous research in fashions, furniture, interior décor, and manners of the 1660s. In all such paintings, the king sits in an armchair while Molière enjoys the honor of sitting in the king’s presence—but in a chair without arms. The king’s table was actually quite small, as shown. This was before place settings were used, so the king took food with his hands from the platters that were presented to him.
Louis XIV had his déjeuner, the main meal of the day, which we would now call a dîner (dinner), around 1:00pm. Some historians have mistakenly referred to it as a breakfast. In the evening, the king would partake of a lighter souper(supper).
Gérôme’s visual recreation of the famous event has been the most popular and has been mass-marketed as an engraving. It can even be bought as a phone-case with a colorized version of that engraving. For comparative purposes, there are other paintings of the famous Déjeuner de Molière et Louis XIV to research: one by François-Jean Garnerey (1824), an 1837 surviving sketch by Jean-August Dominique Ingres for his larger painting that was destroyed in 1871, and Jean-Hégésippe Vetter’s Molière Reçu par Louis XIV (1864). The Chocolat Guérin-Boutron Chocolate Company had a series of historical depictions of Molière’s life on cards one could collect by buying the chocolates, and sure enough, one of them shows Molière at the king’s table.
Plays based on Molière’s life also featured the scene. It appears in George Sand’s Molière (1851) and in Mikhail Bulgakov’s Molière: A Cabal of Hypocrites (1929).
Like Molière on Facebook
or
Email him with questions or comments.
Be sure to subscribe to our newsletters so you can continue to receive information about the upcoming events involving Molière's 400th birthday.
If you have questions, you can email the publication committee, Felicia Londre, or Kip Niven.