Fronde scene, Mazarin and Condé

In 1829, the Romantic youth publisher Henri Gaugain published Chroniques de France, an album of ten lithographs by Achille and Eugène Devéria and Camille Roqueplan, in which the Fronde plays an unprecedented role. The 17th century was being rediscovered, attracting the new school of painting and literature with its costumes and intrigues. The success of these sheets led Eugène Devéria to paint at least two more subjects, including Condé and Mazarin, painted around 1835, while he was working on several large-scale canvases for the French History galleries in Versailles.

The genesis of this composition lies in the context of the Coadjuteur arrivant au Palais Royal (Coadjutor arriving at the Palais Royal), commissioned in 1829 for the Palais Royal and destroyed in 1848. It was precisely from the memoirs of the Coadjuteur, now Cardinal de Retz, that Devéria drew his episode: while Longueville was unable to obtain the government of Pont-de-l'Arche from Mazarin, the Prince de Condé agreed to intercede with the Cardinal, whose refusal appeared to be an offense. As he left the Queen's chambers one evening, determined to quench his bruised pride, Condé facetiously exclaimed "Adieu, Mars" ("Farewell, Mars"). Devéria reinforces the anecdotal nature of this moment, when history is turned on its head with Condé's involvement in the Fronde, by accentuating the prince's gesture of literally pulling Mazarin's beard. The prelate's humiliation is redoubled by the Court's interest in the event.

To underpin the dramatic tension of this episode, which ushers in the Fronde Condéenne period, Devéria uses the same springs as La Naissance d'Henri IV (The Birth of Henry IV), a huge success at the Salon of 1827 that propelled him to become the young leader of the New School. The theatrical device, with its succession of shots and crowds of extras, focuses attention on the front of the stage and shapes the local color, a key notion in Romantic painting, on which the painting's historical truth rests.