Original heliogravure from "Contes de Boccace", as interpreted by Marc Chagall.
Le Philosophie Vindicatif - The Vindicative Philosopher
Regnier, a gentleman who was returning from Paris where he had studied, had resolved to do everything possible to obtain the favours of Helene, a pretty widow from Florence, who lived with a handsome young man acting as her husband. Helene noticed Regnier's budding passion and playfully encouraged it. Her lover also noticed it and became jealous, so Helene wanted to show him that she was only having fun with Regnier. To demonstrate this to her lover, she arranged to meet Regnier in a courtyard on Christmas Night. Regnier arrived at the appointed time, but of course, Helene did not. Regnier remained there until daylight in the freezing snow waiting for Helene, who had spent the night happily with her lover.
But a short time later, Helene's lover left her for another woman. Helene asked Regnier if he would help her find her lover and bring him back to her. Regnier saw his opportunity to take revenge on her for the incident at Christmas, so he agreeed to help. He told her to go at night naked to a room at the top of a tower and recite a prayer that Regnier had written for her. He then locked her in the tower room. During the heat of the following summer's day she endured a thousand pains from sunburn and insect bites. The lesson was a good one for Helene, who from that point renounced love, forgot about her lost lover and stopped playing practical jokes on people for "fun".
This original heliograph is from Marc Chagall's wonderful graphic interpretation of Boccacio's "Decameron", inspired by an original coloured medieval illustration taken from an original manuscript in the library of the Duke of Burgundy of the same scene.
Featured in Verve Magazine Number 24 and published in 1950.
Marc Chagall (1887- 1985) was born Moishe Shagal near the city of Vitebsk, Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family. Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society. Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and prayer. In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style where he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art. In 1914 he returned to Russia during which time he worked as a stage designer and art teacher, before returning to Paris in 1922.Marc Chagall’s dreamlike compositions depict aspects of the artist’s personal and family histories, and those of Eastern European folklore at large. Flying figures, elements of Jewish tradition, peasant life, and animals are frequent motifs. Chagall’s practice—which spanned painting, printmaking, books, ceramics, and stained glass—was immensely influential in the development of 20th-century art: His supernatural subjects and emotional gestures bridged the work of earlier avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism with later modernist styles such as Surrealism. Chagall’s career was disrupted by the World Wars, and while the artist moved between Russia, France, and the United States, he managed to exhibit widely during his lifetime both within the continent and in the U.S. His work belongs in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Chagall also produced stained-glass windows for Hadassah University Medical Center’s Abbell Synagogue in Jerusalem, the Saint-Étienne Cathedral in Metz, the United Nations building in New York City, and the St. Stephen church in Mainz, Germany.
