Predictions. Artists face the future

The Sibyl of Panzoust revealed to her visitors first their future and then her posterior. Panurge came to her to ask if he should marry. After examining the leaves on the trees, she wanted to retire to her lair, but when she arrived on the stoop, she rolled up her dress and showed off her hindquarters. ‘Here is the hole of the sibyl’ commented Pantagruel’s friend. The woman described by Rabelais in Le Tiers Livre was not the freshest. ‘The old woman was ill, poorly clothed, malnourished, toothless, sickly, bent, sore and languid’. Antoine Injalbert was hardly faithful to the story when he modelled a relatively cheerful sibyl in clay (ill. 1).

1. Jean Antoine Injalbert (1845-1933)
Sibyl of Panzoust, 1910
Terracotta - 28.5 x 19 x 22.2 cm.
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo: RMN-GP/A. Didierjean

See the image in its page

His sculpture can currently be seen at the Monastère Royal de Brou, which is devoting an exhibition to predictions and those who make them: prophets, pythias and fortune-tellers have inspired artists throughout the ages. The works on display range from the 14th to the 20th century, with a contemporary section at the H2M space in Bourg-en-Bresse. The exhibition will then be held at the Musée Thomas-Henry in Cherbourg, with a few variations.
At Brou, the exhibition is divided into two main sections: on the one hand, the messengers of the gods, and on the other, human beings practising the divinatory arts. The distinction between the pythias or prophets and the fortune-tellers is reflected in the way in which they are depicted: the former belong to the great historical paintings, while the latter are more often embodied by anonymous figures in genre scenes.

The tour begins with the end of time. The story of the Apocalypse inspired both Dürer and Foujita: Dürer depicted the vision of the seven candlesticks in an engraving from 1496, while Foujita painted a vast, chaotic triptych in 1960 in which the trumpets, the Four Horsemen and the heavenly Jerusalem are depicted. A painting of the Last Judgement attributed to Carlo Saraceni around 1610 is directly inspired by Michelangelo’s composition in the Sistine Chapel.
Rodin’s work entitled Avarice and Lust or The Last Judgement does not quite belong in this first room; it would have been more logical to present it in the last section devoted to literature, since the sculptor drew his subject from Dante’s Inferno. The fate reserved for Avarice and Lust could have been confronted with the one of the murderer Macbeth; Théodore Chassériau painted several passages from Shakespeare’s play, in particular the encounter between the Scottish nobleman and the three witches. Don Quixote’s credulity makes us smile, as he consults an enchanted head in Antonio Moreno’s house, in a painting by Charles Antoine Coypel. As for the Druidess Velléda, she was swept away by passion; this virgin Germanic prophetess known from Tacitus’s Histories was handing over to modern times by…