Summary Of St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Dubois’s work which will be considered here is his painting of the St. Bartholomew’s day massacre of 1572. While he may not have been present, Dubois was a Calvinist, and his close relative Antoine died in the massacre. Fearing continued persecution, or at least a reigniting of the wars of religion which had temporarily abated, Dubois fled to Lausanne, then Geneva to escape. It was in Calvin’s capital where a Lyonnais banker, fellow Huguenot, and friend of Dubois’s commissioned the painting in order to commemorate the slaughter.
Considering its provenance, the alarming and emotive nature of the painting is unsurprising. 2000 Huguenots were killed in Paris alone, many more died as the religious fervour spread to the outlying towns. Massacre
Unlike his paintings of the Triumvirate, Dubois’s massacre does not particularly recur as a theme in French art past initial portrayals; Dubois’s is a rare representation. Art historians such as Kunzle have suggested that for Catholics and Protestants alike, it was too real as a subject, too close and hence too painful. Dubois’s work aligns itself with many representations of massacres in focussing on the barbarism and bestial nature of the perpetrators, enhanced by the juxtaposition of the instigators of the massacre with the dogs roaming through the scene and the image of the Seine choked with corpses. Featured prominently are the bodies of children, but all victims, including the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny are represented as ascetically dressed, unarmed and helpless in order to exaggerate the role of the Huguenot casualties , including Dubois’s relatives, as the unequivocal victims, and certain aristocratic, Catholic figures as the reprehensible aggressors. These are common topos among representations of the massacre and are added to by depictions of two famous events. These, too occur in Dubois’ work. The first is the death of Gaspard de Coligny who hangs from a window