N° 982 Gaspard de la nuit., 2016

R. Cavalié  

Notes by Aloysius Bertrand in 1836 on the illustration of Gaspard de la nuit - Fantasies in the style of Rembrandt and Callot. : "The general character of the drawing will be medieval and fantastic (...) The artist will place in his drawing, in the middle or in a corner of the top band the Jacquemart of Dijon ..."
The proposal here does not really meet the wishes of the one who loved Dijon like the child his nurse because it is a polychrome painting that is delivered and not a drawing or an engraving in black and white.
The artist simply wanted to testify to the emotion felt upon reading this text so overwhelming that even Ravel set it to music.
Are thus thrown into the water in the composition: the often present stained glass window, "the moon sticking its tongue out like a hanged man", amethyst earrings "cut in the shape of drops of blood", "a tarantula in the elephant's trunk ", the affectionate wallflower," the deciduous and bearded willow which fishes with the line ", the viola da gamba," the ear of Turkey and the ordinary branch of the boxwood ", the annotation" circa 1363 , when a Jew was hanged for his misdeeds, it was always between two dogs "with, as a climax, the unforgettable fear:
"But it is Scarbo [the golden bell in motion in his pointed cap] who bites my neck, and who, to cauterize my bloody wound, plunges his iron finger red in the furnace!"