Madame, Marie-Félice Orsini, Duchess of Montmorency The Musée de la Visitation invites you to discover the life of Marie-Félice Orsini, Duchess of Montmorency. A character, a woman, who marked the city of Moulins in the mid-17th century. A princess, Duchess of France This Roman princess, goddaughter of Queen Marie de Medici . Opening May 13, 2023, in Moulins, France.
Book
The New Artémise
Marie-Félice Orsini, Duchess of Montmorency
We are dedicating the year 2023 to the Duchess of Montmorency through the exhibition Madame that we warmly invite you to visit, and by publishing a beautiful art book, richly illustrated, at once historical, artistic and scientific, entitled La Nouvelle Artémise.
A whole program
Among the Seven Wonders of the World was the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, erected by Queen Artemis II for Mausolus, her late husband. When Marie-Félice Orsini had a sumptuous tomb sculpted in Moulins for her husband Henri II, Duke of Montmorency, her contemporaries, steeped in ancient culture, saw in her a New Artemisia.
She wanted to restore her glory to the Duke and ensure his salvation. For this, she called on renowned artists. The dazzling mausoleum was sculpted by the Anguier brothers and installed in a custom-built church, inspired by the designs of Rev. Étienne Martellange. Every day the visitandines, whom she helped greatly, prayed in a choir with a magnificent ceiling painted by Rémy Vuibert. They were the guardians of a Catholic temple housing one of the richest French treasures of relics.
The Duchess’s fortune and princely origins helped her in this prodigious program, but she could not have achieved her goals without the intelligence, conviction, and political acumen that animated her.
Admittedly, several books and numerous articles have been devoted to certain aspects of her life or his patronage, but none, to our knowledge, had synthesized both her biography and her artistic commissions that enriched Moulins and marked the history of French art of the first half of the seventeenth century.
You will discover, in this book, the magnitude of her project which she summarized as follows: “to lodge under one roof my God and the bridegroom he had given me“.
Rich content
In addition to the text based on a careful analysis of the public and visitandine archives, the 300 illustrations will allow you to immerse yourself in this extraordinary life, from the splendour of the Court between 1613 and 1632, his influential life in Bourbonnais until 1657, until his complete withdrawal at the Visitation de Moulins nine years before his death in 1666. The visitandines have indeed entrusted us with many unpublished objects that they have kept preciously since the seventeenth century, such as her incredible umbrella or the precious miniature portrait of her husband that the Duchess kept under a table of diamonds.
We are also proud to give you access to many unsuspected details of the marble mausoleum that are not usually noticed.
Whether you intend it for your library or one of your loved ones, there is no doubt that this 17th publication of the Museum of the Visitation will enchant you.
The New Artémise – Museum of the Visitation (musee-visitation.eu)