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By the sword and the plow: Theodore Chasseriau's Cour des Comptes murals and Algeria
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 2004 by Peter Benson Miller
It is with this panel that we can trace to a common source the themes enshrined in Chasseriau's murals and the language he used to represent them. As we have seen, political debate and archaeology were firmly intertwined. The Roman paradigm burnished by excavated monuments in Algeria charted a course for future action. It is this temporal reflexiveness that underwrites the visual effect of Chasseriau's ensemble. Incorporating formal references to objects uncovered in Algeria opened his images to readings that drew on the African debate. To be sure, force as a concept had been embedded in political discourse for centuries, but it had an immediate currency in the Algerian visual arena and in the terminology of Bugeaud's rhetoric. An allegory of Force also appears in one of the medallions painted by Eloi Firmin Feron in the decorative frieze commissioned by Louis Philippe in 1844 for the Salle de Constantine at Versailles. It appears that the model for Chasseriau's conjoined figures, too, was drawn from the Algerian sphere. The pair, Male (Order) and Female (Force), reminded Gautier of the pose of Neptune and Amphitrite by Giulio Romano. (190) Chasseriau's attenuation of his figures certainly borrows a Mannerist aesthetic. (191) But Gautier's reference to the mythological couple is equally revealing. Although Chasserian may have looked to Romano for lithe bodies and elegance of gesture, he probably sought elsewhere for their conjoined pose. Apart from the outer arms, the composition of Force and Order corresponds to that of Neptune and Amphitrite in the late Roman mosaic of Coudiat-Aty found at Constantine and brought back to the Louvre by Delamare (Fig. 6). Their interlaced inner arms and contiguous bodies offered a fluid linchpin for Chasseriau's program. His recourse to this work for the monumental seminude figures explains the unprecedented coupling of these two allegorical figures even as it underlines the debt of the Cour des Comptes murals to archaeological excavations in Algeria. (192) Gautier suggested that the artist wanted his robust personification of Force to express moral rectitude rather than physical strength. (193) Invoking the mythological narrative linking Neptune's queen to North Africa offered a solution. Amphitrite, called Salacia by the Romans, wanted to remain a virgin and took refuge in the Atlas Mountains before agreeing to marry the god of the sea. Gautier compares the strength of conviction embodied by Chasseriau's figure to the fortitude possessed by Prometheus in his standoff with Jupiter. (194) This determination to defend a principle whatever the cost was exactly the perseverance Bugeaud demanded of his government when he requested continued sacrifice.
[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]
Moral force was backed by concrete action. Just as the model for Chasseriau's mural came to light as a result of a military intervention, the painting seems animated by Bugeaud's strategy. In a diary entry dated to between 1835 and 1840, Victor Hugo remarked apropos of Algeria, "Military colonization should cover and envelop civilian colonization like a wall covers and envelops the city." (195) In 1847, Bugeaud was unambiguous on this issue: "we can perpetuate ourselves in Africa only by force." (196) Later in the same exhortation, Bugeaud made a point that may explain Chasseriau's choice of the extended arms linking Force and Order to the rest of the program. The duc d'Isly claimed that no progress was possible in Algeria "without the support of the government and ... the numerous and intelligent arms of its army...." (197) In this light, Chasseriau's images appear to endorse Bugeaud's claim that the realization of results justifying the sacrifice already made in Algeria required the continued investment of forces to maintain order and security.
