Preparations for the Procession by Jean-Georges Vibert

Preparations for the Procession by Jean-Georges Vibert

Dressing the Virgin

In the corner of a stone cloister, two men are getting a statue ready to be carried. The statue stands on a high pedestal at the centre: the Virgin, crowned with a tall gold crown, holds the Christ Child on her left arm, and he wears a matching crown. She is dressed like a real person rather than carved in her clothes, in a robe of black cloth worked all over with gold scrolls and flowers, with a mantle of gold and white falling from her shoulders. A tall white lily stands up beside her, taller than her crown.

On the right, an old friar in a cream-white habit, with a hood at his back and a knotted cord hanging from his belt, bends close to the statue and settles the edge of her mantle with both hands. He is bald, with a long white beard, and he is smiling.

The gardener

On the left the gardener sits on a small stool with turned legs. He wears a broad straw hat, loose pale clothes with the sleeves pushed up, and he has a bundle of long green stems across his knees. He leans forward with a pair of shears to trim the flowers packed around the foot of the statue: a thick bank of white blossoms and blue cornflowers covering the top of the pedestal, whose sides are painted in blue, gold and green. Cut flowers and fallen petals lie scattered on the pavement in front of him. Behind him stands a terracotta pot of white lilies waiting to be used, with more white flowers in a basket beside it.

The cloister

Vibert gives the setting as much care as the figures. Clustered columns with carved capitals carry heavy arches, and deep round-headed niches open in the back wall. The stone is pale and worn, with faint marks of old decoration on the wall at the left. The whole picture is kept in a narrow range of creams and ochres, so the black and gold of the Virgin's robe and the blue of the cornflowers stand out.

Nothing in the picture tells us which feast the procession is for, or where the cloister is. The title says only that the statue is being prepared; the procession itself is still to come.

Vibert's churchmen

Jehan Georges Vibert was born on 30 September 1840 at Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs in the Isère. He learned first from his maternal grandfather, the engraver Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet, then studied under Félix-Joseph Barrias and spent six years at the École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of François-Édouard Picot. He first showed at the Paris Salon in 1863. He died on 28 July 1902 and is buried in Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Vibert made his name with humorous, often satirical scenes of church life, above all of cardinals, and later churchmen were not always comfortable with them. This picture is gentler. Its friar is shown at work, and the joke, if there is one, is only in the care two grown men are taking over the Virgin's hem and the exact placing of the cornflowers.

The painting

The Wikimedia Commons record gives no date for the picture, lists it as oil on canvas in a private collection, and notes a signature at the lower right; the image there came from the Art Renewal Center. The English Wikipedia article on Vibert reproduces it in its gallery under the title Preparations for the Procession, also without a date. We have not found a museum or catalogue record that gives its size or its history.

About this print

Made from the available photograph of the whole painting, in its upright format, from the tip of the lily to the cut flowers on the floor.

Sources: Wikimedia Commons, File:Jehan_Georges_Vibert_Preparations_for_the_procession.jpg · Wikipedia, "Jehan Georges Vibert"