Chernik L.A. François Flameng's Painting 'The Call of the Girondins, or The Conciergerie' as a Reflection of the Academist Artist's Innovative Views

Abstract: The subject of the research is the painting 'The Call of Girondins' by a French academist Francois Flameng. Being the first and the brightest painting in his series of paintings devoted to the French Revolution, The Call of Girondins demonstrates a scope of Flameng's artistic interests at the early stage of his creative work and proves the fact that as a result of his devotion to the aforesaid theme, Francois Flameng happened to be on the frontline of the historical genre in painting which in many ways predetermined his future success. Despite the fact that Flameng created that painting in his younger days, the painting already shows his skills and sets a direction for Flameng's future creative development as well as marks out the main artistic directions of the artist's creative life. In this reserch Chernik conducts his analysis from particulars to generals and tries to define not only the main trends of Flameng's future creative work and outline a scope of masters who influenced the development of Flameng as an artistic but also to analyze the painting from the point of view of the general cultural and historical environment of those times, thus underlying the contradictory nature of artistic processes of the second half of the XIXth century. The author of the article pays special attention to the problems of iconography of the painting and the influence of new artistic trends on Flameng's painting style. For this purpose the author has used historiographical, iconographical and comparative analysis. As a result of analyzing the painting 'The Call of Girondins', the author comes to the conclusion that despite the common opinion of modern researchers that Francois Flameng followed strict academic rules and ideals of salon painting, the artist was also open for brave iconographic solutions and new artistic trends. 

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