Gabrielle and her Sister after Fontainebleau (big)

Tomoko Nagao - Gabrielle and her Sister after Fontainebleau

The painting Tomoko pays her attention to depicts Gabrielle d'Estréès and her presumed sister - who's probably the brunette Duchess of Villars - noble women, in an erotic behavior which is enough weird for that time, in an artwork located in the second part of the artistic movement it belongs to - begun in the France of the Sixteenth century thanks to Francesco I and called Fontainebleau School. New-Patronage is nowadays characterized by brands and mass marketing - french brands but also worldwide famous others. The desire of the King who sponsored the movement was to create in the court a cultural environment in a refined atmosphere - which could recreate the golden age of Renaissance - while today in Tomoko's work the aim is to reach a seriality and make art affordable for everyone, with a critic to the decline of valors and customs in the Occidental world above all. Luxury marketing is the protagonist and it suddenly emerges: this is a market which knows no crisis but which also lives together with mass consumption products were the new King is allegorically speaking, consumption which plains everything. In this Pop Icon of Occidental art history - exposed at second floor in the Louvre Museum in Paris - the two sisters (or the presumed because we don't have any official document which can confirm this) are submerged in a sort of bathtub. The "pinch" on Gabrielle's nipple, notoriously the official lover (but not the only one) of King Henry IV: according to the critics he was married to a sterile Margherita and couldn't give a heir to himself and to the nation. He could have the much younger Gabrielle, so the act of the sister of touching her breast, symbol of maternity, could also has this meaning: soon the young woman will be a mother and generate the heir to the throne which, in the work by Tomoko, is represented by a hypothetical nurse in the background who is dressing the future heir with Petit Bateau, the famous french brand for kids while having an engagement ring (which would obviously be a Tiffany today) means the role of Gabrielle as a substitute of queen Margherita. The recall to the "noble dowry" goes today to a "Visa Oro" credit card, with Tomoko's Salomè iconic head. In the detailed vectorial work by Tomoko the historical theme is put aside to better show up the idea many people would have: two women who are in love and flirting with a "pinching" act which could also mean a homosexual love or seduction. This thing is valorized by the fact that official critic doesn't give confirmation of the two figures being sisters but above all the choice of the painter of the original piece to remain anonymous because he may have revealed some secrets or told something unspeakable for that time.