PARIS — The Musée Jacquemart-André’s exhibition From Shadow to Light on the French Baroque painter Georges de la Tour, the first major retrospective in France since 1997, is the latest in its sequence exploring masters influenced by Caravaggio. How on earth, I wonder, did they fit the monumental works by Caravaggio (2019) and Artemisia Gentileschi (2025) in its teeny exhibition galleries? Like the Wallace Collection in London, the Jacquemart-André is a private residence opened in 1913 as a museum to display banker Édouard André and his wife Nélie Jacquemart’s extensive collection of applied and fine arts, with temporary exhibitions confined to an irregularly shaped appendix deep in the center of this grand Haussmann mansion. This small space feels somewhat fitting for de la Tour, though: The paintings’ physical proximity echoes the closeness of his subjects to the picture plane, particularly during peak hours, when visitors jostle like cattle for a spot.
The exhibition’s focus is on how de la Tour incorporated the trend of Caravaggesque chiaroscuro that swept Europe into his relatively austere genre compositions, lending them a uniquely intimate and spiritual quality. So many tonally dark scenes of isolated figures doing things far from grandiose — see titles like “A Woman Catching a Flea” (c. 1632–25) or “Boy Blowing on a Firebrand” (1646) — would have benefited from the hushed reverence of the isolated, near-total darkness in which the Louvre displayed Marat in its David show a few blocks away. Persistent middling light and crammed displays not only inevitably result in dilution of effect, but also draw attention to the inconsistent condition of the pieces, making visible the irregular weave and other flaws. This is not to criticize curators Gail Feigenbaum and Pierre Curie — spatial or budgetary constraints are out of their control. The setting only somewhat detracts from the ambition of the show, notably the sheer geographical breadth from which these loans have come: not only regional French collections but also those ranging from Tokyo to Washington. The assembly itself is remarkable.
Georges de La Tour, “Job Mocked by his Wife” (c. 1630), oil on canvas
Caravaggio’s dramatic chiaroscuro lights expansive scenes populated with wildly gesturing figures. De la Tour makes his scenes smaller, trapping their subjects around a single light source, intensifying these factors. They are often jammed up close, almost to the proverbial fourth wall; there is less negative space, less space to breathe. While a Caravaggesque painterly style is rounded and soft, despite dramatic content, de la Tour employs a harsher linearity and much flatter modeling — put simply, there is much less tonal fade, and the pictorial space overall feels a lot shallower. In “Job Mocked by his Wife” (c. 1620–50), for example, the wife towers over Job and right up to the picture’s spatial limit; combined with relatively flat modeling and a singular light source in the form of a low candle — a favored composition for de la Tour — it feels terribly close and claustrophobic. The effect is of imbuing an oftentimes distant Bible story with immediacy and relatability for viewers.
It is no matter that the captions for the exhibits are only in French; as one tutor told me at uni, “with good pictures, you don’t need the explanatory words.” Though I still find this assertion problematic, this exhibition makes a compelling case. It is very much significant due to its choice of subject — de la Tour has indeed been long neglected — and because the curators have cleverly selected a line of inquiry which the paintings sufficiently demonstrate without the support of language. Well done.
Georges de La Tour, “Woman Catching a Flea” (c. 1632–35), oil on canvas
Georges de La Tour, “Saint Peter Repentant” (1645), oil on canvas
Georges de la Tour, “Job Mocked by his Wife” (c. 1620–50), oil on canvas
Georges de La Tour, “The Hurdy-Gurdy Player with a Dog” (c. 1622), oil on canvas
Georges de la Tour: From Shadow to Light continues at the Musée Jacquemart-André (158 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris) through January 25, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Gail Feigenbaum and Pierre Curie.
