The Unknown Masterpiece

The Unknown Masterpiece (Le Chef-d’Œuvre Inconnu), published in 1837 as part of his Etudes Philosophiques by Honore de Balzac, represents the story of the artist close to the divine as seeker of Ideal Beauty and creator of ‘life’ through art, in a way comparable to the myth of Pygmalion. Behind the story’s artistic discourse are the Romantic struggles to attain the absolute, the infinite perfection. Yet the other side of the tale suggests the passions of the artist, Frenhofer, as obstacles against the attainment of divine perfection, as well as the paradoxical nature of this endeavor as potentially self-destructive for art and the artist.

For Frenhofer, the mission of the true artist is to achieve the illusion of life, not to be a mere copist. In his critical analysis of Pourbus’s Saint Mary of Egypt, he fundamentally stresses that painting “peut et doit être un équivalent de la vie” (Massol-Bédoin 46). That is, Ideal Beauty in painting should be as approachable as a figure in life, by excelling in tri-dimensionality and the detachment of the figure from the background, in that seemingly alluding to the creative powers of sculptors who can better understand the spirit of nature by ignoring lines:

C’est une silhouette qui n’a qu’une seule face, c’est une apparence découpée, une image qui ne saurait se retourner, ni changer de position. Je ne sens pas d’air entre ce bras et le champ du tableau […] je ne saurais croire que ce beau corps soit animé par le tiède souffle de la vie (Balzac 12).

The secret knowledge that he displays and that hierarchically separates true artists from false, copist ones, has an arcane, almost Gospel-like space in the story. The sole disciple of the great Mabuse, Frenhofer learnt the secrets of giving poetry to paintings. The process of initiation to the art world is thus depicted as a divine rite. According to Arthur R. Evans Jr., “The studio of the old master is a sanctuary in which the young neophyte [Nicolas Poussin] is introduced to the rites and mysteries of the Art-God” (Evans 189). This mythological genius, the artist, learns and follows the divine pursuit of depicting figures with which one may interact, “d’établir entre la nature et la peinture un rapport d’égalité” (Massol-Bedoin 46); that is, to make figures endowed with life and truth. 

In an innovative recreation of the myth of Pygmalion, Balzac’s main artist, Frenhofer, moves beyond the illusion of life to the Romantic delirium of life in an illusion, in the process of completing his Belle Noiseuse. “His search for life becomes so intense that he deludes himself with the possibility of creating life itself” (Evans 188). Frenhofer resembles Pygmalion and embodies the creator with divine powers, to the point of negating his status as painter and his work as painting:

Ma peinture n’est pas une peinture, c’est un sentiment, une passion! […] Ce n’est pas une toile, c’est une femme! […] Cette femme n’est pas une créature, c’est une création (Balzac 44-45).

It is not only the delusion of life that has taken over Frenhofer’s mind, but he has also fallen in love with the painting and made it his mistress, showing possessive aggression against the idea of showing it to Poussin and Pourbus, even when the former has brought him the model he needs to complete it:

Voilà dix ans que je vis avec cette femme, elle est à moi, à moi seul, elle m’aime. Ne m’a-t-elle pas souri à chaque coup de pinceau que je lui ai donné? […] une femme avec laquelle je pleure, je ris, je cause et pense (Balzac 44-45).

Believing his work to be finally complete, and showing it to both young Poussin and Pourbus, he rejoices in his dream of having achieved divine perfection at last:

Ah! ah! s’écria-t-il, vous ne vous attendiez pas à tant de perfection! Vous êtes devant une femme et vous cherchez un tableau. Il y a tant de profondeur sur cette toile, l’air y est si vrai, que vous ne pouvez plus le distinguer de l’air qui nous environne. Où est l’art? perdu, disparu! Voila les formes mêmes d’une jeune fille (Balzac 53).

He seems drunk in his delusion, believing himself a sort of successful Pygmalion, proud of his creation for having fooled the two artists. Yet, in believing in that painting’s being ‘really’ a woman and not a painting, he is nevertheless making a statement about his artistry: “this relationship never ceases to be mediated by the fact that she is a picture, and that he has brought her alive with paint” (Knight 89). That passion, love, of his creation indicates that he regards his creative powers as superhuman, even divine.

However, in that search for the absolute, there is the devil. In the figure of the artist of the story, “The demonic urge towards transcendent powers,” as framed by Arthur R. Evans Jr., entails the question of excesses and obsessions that fundamentally frustrate the divine pursuit (Evans 187). When Frenhofer retouches Pourbus’s masterpiece, the narrative focuses on his convulsive rhythm of work while adding the breath of life the picture lacks (Knight 87). His agitation and immersive engagement with the picture are reminiscent of a sexual excitement with the idea of reproducing life through art:

Il travaillait avec une ardeur si passionnée que la sueur se perla sur son front dépouillé; il allait si rapidement par de petits mouvements si impatients, si saccades, que pour le jeune Poussin il semblait qu’il y eut dans le corps de ce bizarre personnage un démon qui agissait par ses mains en les prenant fantastiquement contre le gré de l’homme (Balzac 23).

These traits of character, seemingly demonic, should not be underestimated, for it is the absolute embrace of art that leads to the progressive destruction of the self and, as it will be explained later, of the art. Not only in Frenhofer, but in the young Poussin, there are demonic impulses derived from the love of art. Poussin’s disposition of ‘selling’ his mistress, Gillette, to look at the Belle Noiseuse, is regarded as cynical: “il est donné indirectement comme ‘vil’ par Frenhofer (‘Quel est le mari, l’amant assez vil pour conduire sa femme au deshonneur?’) et méprisable, par sa maitresse, qu’il perdra d’ailleurs dans l’échange” (Massol-Bédoin 50). However, it is also Frenhofer who ends up yielding to this malicious exchange of ‘women.’ Both the initiation into the art and the pursuit of the superhuman require the detachment from one’s beloved ones. To some extent, Frenhofer is also part of this treason to his ‘mistress,’ who becomes merchandise. The result of this moral decadence will indirectly contribute to the failure of his pursuit, for it will make him yield to his obsessions and progressively destroy his own work.

The stubborn pursuit of life in art, of the Romantic impossible, leads Frenhofer to the dissolution of his masterpiece. Diana Knight observes that in the course of the ten years he has been working on the Belle Noiseuse, Frenhofer “has vacillated between euphoric certainty and depressed doubt” (Knight 88). Each step towards the completion of his work convinces him that it is acquiring the essence of life, but his doubts and insatiable ambitions make him stop his joy and frustrate at the impossibility of achieving his Ideal Beauty:

Hier, vers le soir, dit-il, j’ai cru avoir fini. Ses yeux me semblaient humides, sa chair était agitée. Les tresses de ses cheveux remuaient. Elle respirait! Quoique j’aie trouvé le moyen de réaliser sur une toile plate le relief et la rondeur de la nature, ce matin, au jour, j’ai reconnu mon erreur (Balzac 27-28).

[…] j’ai cru pendant un moment que mon œuvre était accomplie; mais je me suis, certes, trompé dans quelques détails, et je ne serai tranquille qu’après avoir éclairci mes doutes (Balzac 43).

This becomes a pattern of hesitation motivated by his obsessions that “refuels and endlessly prolongs the fantasy” (Knight 88), finally delving into excess. When the moment finally comes, after having studied the undressed Gillette, his image is a pictorial monster of crowded colors and unclear forms, except for a charming and vivid foot. This event can be read as a chronicle of the progressive destruction of the piece, originally meant to confer divine attributes to its creator, like the myth of Pygmalion. The search for the absolute in painting is in the end like a storm, a massive destruction after which little of charm can survive. The secret passed to Frenhofer from his master, Mabuse, is essentially this destructive obsession and excess (Knight 92).

Creativity can generate its own failures. “Balzac speaks of ‘la trop grande abondance du principe createur’ as ultimately destructive of the work of art” (Evans 193). This is probably because of the irreconcilability of this demonic passion with the divine pursuit of perfection. In its excesses and obsessions, unrestrained passion makes a sort of transgression of art, destroying more than what the artist wanted to create, destroying oneself. 

That nothingness that Poussin and Pourbus perceive in the Belle Noiseuse is produced by the desire to unveil the mystery of art, that special attribute ardently sought by Frenhofer. In The Unknown Masterpiece, the mystery of art is the impossible, a fantasy to dream about the ideal painting that stays in the air, despite the futile attempts to catch it once in the air forever. Massol Bédoin refers to it as merely “des actes métalinguistiques…qui signalant ‘il y a le mystère’ ou ‘énigme’ dessinent les contours de cette absence…auxquelles se substitue encore, précisément, le mot ‘rien”’ (Massol-Bédoin 53). The sublime mystery is a false limit, always evoked believing that there can be something beyond and attainable, but this je ne sais quoi turns into a lie, demonstrating and anticipating the limits of the Romantic pursuit of the infinite.

In conclusion, The Unknown Masterpiece presents the artist as gifted with superhuman creative powers, in pursuit of the Ideal Beauty. However, the same passion and creativity that moves Frenhofer’s efforts to achieve the mystery of art become the devilish forces that destroy art and the artist. In the end, an artist who plays to be God only encounters demons in the path. This story, not only the aesthetic discourse it formulates, is significant to the future generations of artists since it anticipates the sins of modernity: the unrestrained aspirations towards the infinite and the unattainable. Balzac warns the Romantics against the cult of the infinite, reflecting in Frenhofer’s obsessions, excesses, and tragic death the artistic mortality of the modern artist.