While studying abroad in Paris last fall, I spent hours walking through museums alone admiring the paintings of the greats. Strolling through the halls, headphones hanging from my ears, I would try to imagine songs that I thought mirrored the essence of each painting. I’ve created playlists for five different paintings that I feel are emblematic of either the message, the atmosphere, or the style of each painting. Whether it be the yearning nature of Jeff Buckley paired with a haunting Scheffer painting, or piano- driven melodies that evoke the tranquility of Monet’s Water Lilies, each painting can be correlated with songs that echo timeless feelings and stories, retold across different mediums. These are some of the paintings that left a special impression on me, and I will forever chase the feeling that I first felt as a witness to such mastery before me.
Les Ombres de Francesca da Rimini et de Paolo Malatesta Apparaissent à Dante et à Virgile (Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta appraised by Dante and Virgil) by Ary Scheffer
This painting depicts the murdered lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta who remain eternally trapped in the second ring of hell, the place saved for lustful sinners. Francesca’s husband, who she was forced into marriage with, and Paolo’s brother Giovanni Malatesta stabbed the two, damning them to eternal reckoning upon discovering their love affair. The two share a wound, slashed into them by Giovanni upon their murder. For Paolo, the wounds forever scars his chest, for Francesca, forever on her back. A vicious storm consumes those sent to the second ring of hell, causing the two to cling to each other as they are sucked into an eternal loss of stillness. Brothers Dante and Virgil bear witness as shadows in the background to the dramatic tragedy depicted before them. Feelings of love and loss felt by one morph and reproduce themselves in the body of another time and time again as we witness an eternal longing, and subjugation to infinite sorrow within this painting from the 19th century. I’ve tried to select songs for this playlist that emulate these same feelings of loss, yearning, and holy tragedy.
Les Nymphéas (Water Lilies) by Claude Monet
Upon seeing Claude Monet’s famous Water lilies for the first time, I couldn’t help but sit on the bench in front of them and cry. The eight panels stretched across the walls circular room, arranged beside each other displaying a change in light and color from one to another. Their arrangement reflected “the illusion of an endless whole, a wave with no horizon,” as written in the Musée de l’Orangerie where the paintings are hung. The variation of light and tones, with some panels adopting a softer hue and others a deeper, darker tone, reflect Monet’s intention to capture the ways in which the landscape is impacted by shifts from day to night, the weather, and the position from which one would be looking at the water lilies. I wished to be alone in that room, sitting in silence, simply staring at them for hours. For the playlist paired with these paintings I wanted to include songs that mirrored Monet’s “love of the infinite, the passage of time,” and the serenity induced by taking in the paintings’ beauty.
Madame de Loynes by Amaury-Duval
I was fascinated with the numbers of portraits of women that I saw, though I found this one to be particularly alluring. The woman’s enticing gaze, her candle pale face illuminated against the darkness of the black dress and hair, the dark purple wall behind her, and the lushness of the cushions upon which she poses compose a bewitching painting. She pulls in the viewer like a siren calling to a wandering soul as she holds “a world and a half world between those eyes,” as said by critic Emile Cantrel noted in the Musée d’Orsay’s description of the piece. Amaury-Duval painted this portrait of the Comtess de Loynes, who was known for being a lover of Prince Napoleon and opening a revolutionary literary salon. For this playlist I assembled a collection of songs that I believe capture the same hypnotic mystique of the painting. With tracks from artists including Portishead, Massive Attack, and Cocteau Twins the allure of the woman painted is mirrored.
The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David
The painter Jacques-Louis David captures the death of his friend JeanPaul Marat in one of his greatest works of art. Marat was a radical politician and journalist during the French Revolution who was murdered in his bathtub by a woman named Charlotte Corday. This painting fossilizes him eternally in the tub where he would spend hours of his day soaking to relieve the pain of his skin condition. Through symbolism and masterful use of composition and light, the painting displays a solemn, bloody image of death. For this painting’s playlist I chose songs that would evoke the same sense of sorrow, tragedy, and finality pictured in the ending to Marat’s life.
Sommeil de Caliban by Odilon Redon
An artist who I discovered through my time spent at the Musée d’Orsay struck me as one who created works far different from others in his time. Odilon Redon created works like this piece titled Sommeil de Caliban that stuck out for their incorporation of vibrant colors, unusual composition, and abstractions. Sommeil de Caliban frames three small floating heads fronting strange mutations in a dreamlike fantasy landscape, while a goblin rests upon the base of a tree. The symbolist artist stretches the imagination in his work drawing the viewer into a fantastical wonderland full of oddities and seemingly out of place characters. For the songs in this playlist, I chose ones that evoked the same strangeness, eerie enchantment, and dreamlike distortion.
Written by Bailey Schroerlucke