#17 Chrysler Treasures - Honorius Traditional Cache
Episcodad: Tired of replacing missing containers. Lots of muggle activity here I guess. Besides "Honorius" has been off-exhibit for some time now. No telling when it might emerge from the Chrysler's attic again.
#17 Chrysler Treasures - Honorius
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Seventeenth in a series of caches highlighting the art of Norfolk's Chrysler Museum, One Memorial Place, Norfolk, VA 23510. The Chrysler Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, Sunday from Noon to 5 pm. Admission is Free. Website: www.chrysler.org. This painting may be seen in Gallery 216 at the museum.
Many 19th-century artists depicted the decline and fall of ancient Rome as a parable of moral and political decay. Such is the case with Jean-Paul Laurens’ vivid portrayal of the boy-emperor Honorius Flavius. Crowned as leader of the crumbling empire at age 11, he appears here as a helpless innocent—as overwhelmed by his throne and regalia as by the forces of history. A mere child, his feet don’t even reach the floor.
Jean-Paul Laurens was one of the last great practitioners of the 19th-century French academic style. Born near Toulouse, he arrived in Paris around 1860 and completed his artistic studies there. Though he exhibited regularly at the Salon from the mid-1860s, his career languished until 1872, when two of his Salon entries were widely acclaimed and earned him a first-class medal. The two paintings revealed his growing interest in obscure and often macabre themes drawn from ancient Roman, Byzantine and medieval history. In the decades that followed, Laurens made a specialty of such subjects, producing darkly satiric visions of the Inquisition and imperial Rome. Reflecting the enduring Romantic fascination with the shadowy underside of history, Laurens' paintings were quite popular in his day and brought him considerable success.
The subject of the Chrysler painting, Flavius Honorius (A.D. 384-423), was the son of the Roman emperor Theodosius I. At his father's death, Honorius - barely 11 years old - inherited the imperial throne together with his brother Arcadius. The two divided the crumbling empire between them, with Honorius becoming Emperor of the West. During his inept and chaotic reign, the western empire was repeatedly besieged by barbarian invaders, culminating in the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. In Laurens' vivid portrayal of Honorius at the time of his coronation, the young emperor is characterized as a helpless, dimwitted child overwhelmed by the forces of history. When the painting was exhibited at the 1880 Salon, it was unanimously praised for its brilliant colorism and sharply moralizing tone. Among the painting’s many admirers was the American artist Edwin Blashfield, who applauded Laurens' satiric depiction of "the vacant-faced boy-emperor of the west, the very symbol of decadence and of a shrunken empire, a child muffled and lost in the imperial mantle, sitting stupid with inert dangling legs upon his throne, and unable to hold up the heavy glove and scepter."
Other caches in this series include:
Chrysler Treasures #1 - The Norfolk Mace (GC7C965) Located in Gallery 209
Chrysler Treasures #2 - Man (GC7EAZX) Located in Gallery 221
Chrysler Treasures # 3 - Angel Appearing to Shepherds (GC7EC96) Located in Gallery 211
Chrysler Treasures # 4 - The Neophyte (GC7ECR7) Located in Gallery 214
Chrysler Treasures # 5 - The Wounded Indian (GC7EMPZ) Located in Gallery 212
Chrysler Treasures # 6 - Picasso (GC3B4KQ) Located in Gallery 219
Chrysler Treasures # 9 - Veronese (GC7EYA3) Located in Gallery 204
Chrysler Treasures #10 - The Last Judgement (GC7EYE5) Located in Gallery 202
Chrysler Treasures #11 - The Vegetable Vendor (GC7EZM5) Located in Gallery 207
Chrysler Treasures #12 - James Baldwin (GC7F3HN) Located in Gallery 222
Chrysler Treasures #13 - Ganymede and the Eagle (GC7F4BK) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures #14 - Renoir (GC7F3PJ) Located in Gallery 217
Chrysler Treasures #15 - Samurai Armor (GC7F6M8) Located in Gallery 106
Chrysler Treasures #16 - Tiffany Glass (GC7F5WY) Located in Gallery 116
Chrysler Treasures #17 - Honorius (GC7FR71) off display
Chrysler Treasures #18 - Naga Buddha (redux) (GC8A8PE) Located in Gallery 107
Chrysler Treasures #19 - Sarcophagus (redux) (GC8A8X8) Located in Gallery 109
Chrysler Treasures # 21 - Libenksy and Brychtova (GC7QFM0) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 22 - Abstract Expressionism (GC7QG86) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 23 - Hamlet Robot (GC7QG8E) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 24 - Here Kitty, kitty (GC89AWG)
#Chryslercache
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Haqre cvarfgenj