Jean-Georges Vibert

Two clergymen are seen with differing reactions to the morning edition of Le Figaro.  The news amuses the seated cardinal but the other with up-turned nose, closely wrapped robes, and clenched fist crumpling the paper appears to be less than pleased with the writings. As Eric Zafran explains, in this work "Vibert uses his ecclesiastical subjects to bring to task the power of the press" (Cavaliers and Cardinals: Nineteenth-Century French Anecdotal Paintings, exhibition catalogue, Taft Museum, Cincinnati, 1992, p. 132). The text accompanying an illustration of the painting in Vibert's Comédie en peinture (a careful detailed record of his life and production as an artist) is in the form of a rhetorical dialogue.  The first voice asks why the press should be above criticism when it now represents so many points of view. It is in fact both "a public calamity and a blessing from heaven…. one fears it, one adores it, one makes offerings to it, one curses it.  It is the idol of the day.  And every society raises an idol in its own image" (Vibert, vol. 1, p. 44).  Each figure reacts to the seductive power of the press with differing responses, and as such Vibert’s painting is less a specific parody of the church and more a humorous scene from the daily life of the clergy—who are not above a strenuous debate over the issues of the day.