Georges de la Tour - and his World

George de La Tour (1593-1652)

La Tour's early career survive, making any account of his formative training conjectural. His apprenticeship likely began around 1605, perhaps in Vic with Alphonse de Rambervilliers (1560-1633), a writer and amateur engraver close to the bishop of Metz, and he very likely worked in Nancy with the painter, etcher, and draftsman Jacques Bellange (1575-1616). La Tour is recorded in Vic in 1610 and 1616, and there has been much unresolved discussion about a possible trip to Rome around or between those dates. The question arises because La Tour's low-life subjects and his bold tenebrist manner of painting seem to be heavily indebted to the work of Caravaggio (1571-1610) and his followers in Rome. But Caravaggio's influence was spreading throughout Europe in the second decade of the century, through followers as diverse as Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622) in Rome or Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656) and Dirck van Baburen (1595-1624), who transmitted their versions of his distinctive style to their native Utrecht. Artists in Lorraine, such as Bellange and Jean Leclerc (c. 1587-1633), also explored such dramatic effects of light and shade, so it was by no means necessary for La Tour to have made an Italian trip. However, La Tour departed significantly from Caravaggio and his progeny in the north while retaining elements of both. His paintings--largely austere genre and devotional scenes structured by dramatic effects of day and candlelight, such as the National Gallery of Art's The Repentant Magdalen --demonstrate powerful introspection and intense spirituality. These qualities may reflect the strong Catholic sentiments of Lorraine, which bordered northern Protestant states.