JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE, ANTOINE ! Some arts and one question

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Today is the 241th anniversary since Antoine Saint-Just's birth. All the best to my most beloved Citoyen :x !
It's a perfect day to dedicate to him some drawings. I made them with traditional items (pencils, ink, felter-pens) so they are full of mistakes. But I am lazy and I don't have the suppport of an appropriate pc software, so I leave them just as they are. Here the portraits:

Louis Antoine Saint-Just after me + Prudhon

This is my favourite Antoine's portrait ever.
I am sorry because the sentence at the bottom is written badly. But I decided to leave it as it was. Too lazy to change it. 





Louis Antoine Saint-Just after me & Greuze 1

My second favourite Antoine's portrait ever.
Someone say it's not him in the picture (it would be Talleyrand instead) but I don't believe it. The features of this cinically smart, cooly outrageous feline predator are typically Antoine's. More, I love it to be him 


Ps.: I added those golden earrings and stole over the verses on a yellow background from Rimbaud - thank you, Arthur !






Louis Antoine Saint-Just after me & Greuze 2

Other (and beloved) portrait. I have seen it only on a b/w version so the colour (included that kitsch one of his clothes) is mine too.

(If you want to see the portraits in an enlarged and higher definition version then check my DeviantArt: http://www.fatimahcrossin.deviantart.com)



Saint-Just's portraits raise a question - the well-known one of his physical appearence: how did he really look like ?
We know many portraits, prints, engravings etc. all featuring him but each one of them shows a man who looks completely different from the others (I am sure you know all his portraits - if there is anyone who doesn't here it is a good link with a rather complete list of his iconography: http://www.saint-just.net/arts.html).
 Plus, written accounts aren't of much more help. His contemporaries' witnesses vary one from another and they are often in an open contradiction. So again: how did Antoine really look like ?
Despite what it is often commonly said, I believe physical appearence is (at least in a certain way) "the mirror of personality" - an old Sicilian proverb tells - and physiognomy has its reasons to be, I guess.
Antoine was handsome, yes, this appears to be the most common opinion about its physical appearence - how was he handsome ?

Comments

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Hi, Fatimah!:

I've also written an entry about Saint-Just birthday in my diary. I'm happy and melancholic at the same time.

I've been thinking about the question "Saint-Just physical appareance" long ago my enetring here...and I couldn't solve it! We all know how Robespierre must have been. Danton was quite well shown in all portraits I know about him. Even Hanriot was "very similar to himself" if we can said it this way , if we compare his portraits among them. But there is some cases in which EACH portrait is different to the nex one. Wich ones? Saint-Just's of course...but also Desmoulins, and Barère, and Hébert, and Collot-d'Herbois and Couthon, and Théroigne de Méricourt...For pity sake! How these people really looked like? Desmoulins is the most weird of all the cases: in some portraits he looks gorgeous, in others, a real monster! And Antoine de Saint-Just is always a handsome young man..but in some portraits he appears as having deep black eyes, in others, his eyes are blue; the "hair question" is pretty similar: in some portraits he has black or brown hair, in others, he is a "blondin". Without mentioning other physical features as his nose and mouth. There is paintings in which we may see a big, long nose; in others he has a pretty, tiny one. Some artist depicts him as having tick lips; others shows him with THIN ones...GRRRRR!!!!

Yes; Fatimah. How did he REALLY looked like our Antoine?

Well; Happy Birthday, Louis Antoine!

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

I'd imagine some of the discrepencies in accounts of Saint-Just's appearance are dependant on the sympathies of their authors insofar as how creepy/cold he looked. And paintings, of course, often glossed over physical imperfections (which I wonder about in the case of Danton) or accentuated them (as in the case of some of the later images of Robespierre), but that still doesn't explain the inconsistancies in hair color and eye color, I guess.

The strange thing is that Saint-Just retains such a physical prsence in history that one is inclined to forget these discrepencies until reminded of them. In most accounts of him, he seems so present, his gestures and facial expressions recorded, that it is easy to forget we don't actually know what he looked like.

[citoyenneclark.livejournal.com]

These are amazing! You've got quite a talent.

[citoyennemiyuki.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that, there are no same portraits about him. Of course I always see when the portrait was painted. I don't know why they painted him with blond hair in the 19th century XD (I know, we have already speak about this).....
I'm glad you posted your arts to here....^^

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I came across a story that the 19thc artist David d'Angers borrowed a pastel drawing of Saint-Just from Élisabeth Le Bas to make a portrait from (maybe the bronze medallion, the one on the cover of Bernard Vinot's book?), and when she saw the finished sculpture she became very emotional because it was so like him. I can't remember where I found the story - it might have been in an online book about David d'Angers.

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Hi, Fatimah!

I've forgotten to say that your art is amazing. I'm a perfect idiot drawing and painting...I'm very pleased to discover , here, what a great quantity of people IS an artist! Congrats to all of you, people!

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

Saint-Just...Virgo?

[chip-squidley.livejournal.com]

I assume he was a Virgo...but very close to being a Leo.

The woman in my life was born on the 26th...so that's very very close to being an amusing coincidence. My own birthday is very close to Billaud-Varenne's, but not quite that close. (In the day and the month, not the year!)

As far as the differing versions of how he looked...that reminds me of the old story that George Washington (first President of the USA) was portrayed in differing ways. Some even claimed that it wasn't the same man. I think it was Robert Anton Wilson who suggested (probably at least partly joking) that Washington had been replaced by Adam Weishaupt of the Bavarian Illuminati.

Also...the idea of taking portraits from the past and recasting them into the present is cool.

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. Our president is not a "good think" neither. I share completely your appreciations: "if enough people in a democracy voted ITELLIGENTLY, it would have an effect. But that's the problem..."

HanriotFRan (Vanesa)