Epilogue

The epilogue presents a reassessment of La Tour’s reception and pictorial impact in light of his unique and inexplicable disappearance from the annals of art history. His pictorial legacies to both the seventeenth century and to the twenty-first century are considered insofar as they provide a platform for engaging in broader reflections on the nature of vision, the visible, and viewer response. The importance and endurance of La Tour’s artistic legacy is summed up in terms of his conceptual approach which calls the very nature of painting into question.

Flea Catching and the Vanity of Painting

This chapter is devoted to an exploration of the role of painting as an instrument of intercession for attaining spiritual insight. Is the supposed “flea” catcher really holding a flea or a rosary bead in her enclosed hands? No one can really tell. But her ordinary appearance, engaged in the trivial even abject task of catching fleas, takes on spiritual connotations when considered in light of the possibility of her holding a rosary. Her familiar appearance acts as a visual gateway that opens onto the spiritual and the sacred. La Tour’s depictions of “blowers of light” help illuminate how painting may ignite and sustain spiritual passions. Imbued with light and the heat of color, the flea catcher’s humble representation is interpreted as a pivotal turning point that alternatively figures both painting’s material limitations and its spiritual aspirations.

Introduction

The first part of the “Introduction” lays out key questions regarding the representation of light, vision and the visible, as well as outlines the interdisciplinary artistic, critical, theological and philosophical methodologies at work. In the second part, a rapid survey of key biographical and professional details is provided to foreground the extensive critical problems posed by La Tour’s pictorial corpus which include: problems of identifying paintings (reconstructed only after La Tour’s “rediscovery” in 1915), lack of dates, titles and the presence of multiple paintings in parallel versions.

Painting as Portal: “Birth” and “Death” of the Sacred Image

Images of birth, death, and mourning are considered in terms of their theological and pictorial implications. Naturalistic depictions of birth and infancy lend themselves to a theological meditation on the Incarnation, as well as reflections on painting as a medium of incarnation. Taking into account the destruction of sacred images in the wake of Post-Reformation iconoclasm, the second part focuses on paintings of St. Sebastian depicting his supposed “death,” mourning, and miraculous recovery. It shows how the martyrdom of painting, figured through the lens of St. Sebastian’s “death,” and the Catholic Reform’s subsequent response in attempting to redefine the sacred image, lead to a new understanding of painting. La Tour’s works address this seminal problem, by showing how painting may redeem its spiritual authority by sacrificing its visual manifestations as an image when redefined as a portal to the sacred.

The Visible and the Legible

This chapter is focused on recurrent representations of books and acts of reading as pictorial subject matter in La Tour’s works. Several scenes of reading are examined starting with St. Jerome reading a letter, the Virgin Mary learning how to read, St. Joseph’s falling asleep while reading, and St. Alexis identified after his death on basis of a letter he holds in his hands. It presents an analysis of the ways words determine how we see and the role of reading as a figure for spiritual illumination understood as a way of seeing that challenges the realm of painterly expression. La Tour’s appeal to the word and the legible casts doubt on knowledge attained through vision in its reliance on visual signs. Indeed, reading as a figure for spiritual illumination challenges and opens up a conceptual redefinition of the visual realm of painterly expression.

Spiritual Passion and the Betrayal of Painting

An exploration of La Tour’s portrayals of St. Peter shows how La Tour gives visual form to Peter’s verbal denials. The placement of Peter’s betrayal in the margin of a gambling scene invites inquiry into other gambling works that present instances of moral and spiritual lapse when human passions become subject to worldly speculation and negotiation. Peter’s inadvertent repudiation of Christ is also analysed as a figure for the betrayal of painting, since its visual appearance breaks faith with its mission to promote spiritual vision. It concludes with a discussion of the question whether painting can be redeemed as an instrument of penance in amending and suspending the lure of sight in the attainment of spiritual insight.

The Enigma of the Visible

This chapter begins with an analysis of La Tour’s allegorical paintings of blind hurdy-gurdy musicians in order to explore the deceptive, even blinding, character of ordinary vision. These renderings of music making and audition (whose invisibility defies vision and challenges the representational purview of painting) are examined in reference to his portrayals of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalene. Figuring the attainment of spiritual insight rather than sight, these devotional works attest to a contemplative mode of seeing illuminated by the biblical Word. They challenge the viewer by attempting to depict what painting cannot ultimately show: namely, spoken words, audition, the passage of time, and spiritual passions reflecting changes of heart.