Each year, in addition to his classes, Denis Lavalle offers a thematic lecture series on a major topic in art history.

Denis Lavalle is an honorary chief heritage curator. Among other roles, he served as a project officer at the Direction de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine for the national palaces and the oversight of major patronage projects. After studying art history at Université Paris IV, he was a resident at the Académie de France in Rome. He specializes in 16th- and 17th-century painting as well as grand decorative schemes, which he teaches at IESA arts&culture to our art history students.

Denis Lavalle's art history class

2019/2020 Program

Titian’s influence from the 17th to the 19th century, from Caravaggio to Delacroix

  • November 4, 2019 - The return to Titian in the Rome of the Barberini
  • November 25, 2019 - Vouet, Blanchard, and Le Brun listening to Titian
  • December 2, 2019 - From Watteau to David, the lingering shadow of Titian
  • December 9, 2019 - Meditation on Titian in French Romantic painting

In search of a unity of conception: the work of the Le Nain brothers

  • December 16, 2019 - The Le Nain brothers' attachment to their native soil
  • January 8, 2020 - The unity of the Le Nain brothers in the Paris of Louis XIII and Richelieu
  • January 15, 2020 - The Le Nain brothers, painters of inner life
  • January 29, 2020 - A disturbing painting: the Le Nain work offered to the Royal Academy
  • February 4, 2020 - How to see the work of the Le Nain brothers: the example of Jacques Thuillier

A time of great and genuine creation in the 20th century: The School of Paris 1945-1965

  • February 12, 2020 - Paris, capital of painting after the ordeal of World War II
  • March 11, 2020 - Choosing a side: figuration and non-figuration in the School of Paris
  • March 18, 2020 - The sense of the monumental among the masters of the School of Paris
  • April 8, 2020 - The "Young Painting" group
  • May 6, 2020 - The circle of "Poetic Reality": Marcel Brianchon and André Planson
  • May 13, 2020 - The lessons of the School of Paris for today’s painting

Lecture from 16h00 to 17h30
IESA Auditorium, 1 Cité Griset, Paris 11th
€15 per lecture - €180 for the cycle

More information: 01 42 86 57 20

For 2018-2019, Denis Lavalle offered us Painting Around Caravaggio:

  • November 7: "Caravaggio and His Close Circle"
  • November 21: "Caravaggesque Still Life, from the Master of the Acquavella Still Life to the Tommaso Salini Problem"
  • December 5: "Cecco del Caravaggio and Bartolomeo Cavarozzi"
  • December 12: "Ribera in Rome"
  • January 16: "The Considered Caravaggesque Lesson: Spadarino and Vermiglio"
  • January 23: "In the Silence of Caravaggio: the Master of the Candle at Santa Maria in via Lata, Rome"
  • February 6: "Valentin and Tournier, Followers of Caravaggio?"
  • February 13: "Caravaggio Loved and Hated, the Baglione Case"
  • March 20: "The Best of the Caravaggesques? Giovanni Battista Caracciolo"
  • March 27: "Saraceni’s Painting Influenced by Caravaggio, Strengths and Limits"
  • April 3: "Manfredi and His Circle: True and False Caravaggesques"
  • April 10: "The Nordic Painters and Caravaggio"
  • May 7: "The Gentileschi Case, Understanding or Rejection of Caravaggio?"
  • May 15: "Some French Painters Attuned to Caravaggio: Guy François, Philippe Quantin and Jean Lhomme"
  • June 5: "Did Caravaggio Organize His Own Legend?"

For 2017-2018, Denis Lavalle offered us The Body in Sculpture:

  • November 15: "Sculpting the body, a desire from the dawn of time"
  • November 29: "The deified body: in the time of the Greek and Roman gods"
  • December 6: "The deified body: the time of the incarnate god"
  • December 13: "Michelangelo and the body"
  • January 17: "The truth of the body, from Ligier Richier to Houdon"
  • January 24: "The body in space, from Bernini to Bouchardon"
  • January 31: "The heroic body: Romanticism and major public commissions"
  • February 7: "The body for Rodin"
  • March 7: "Sculpting the body in the 20th century: optimism and the ideal of beauty"
  • March 14: "Sculpting the body in the 20th century: the tears of the soul"
  • April 04: "Murdered bodies: monuments to the victims of wars"
  • April 11: "20th-century Italian sculpture and the body"
  • May 16: "The Giacometti case"
  • May 23: "Brancusi and the idea of the body"
  • June 13: "Sculpting the body in the 21st century, what solutions?"

For 2016-2017, Denis Lavalle invited us to rediscover Botticelli:

  • November 9, 2016: The Rediscovery of Botticelli Over the Past Ten Years
  • November 23, 2016: Botticelli and the Astonishing Refusal of the Global Unity of Beauty
  • December 7, 2016: Botticelli in the Shadow of Filippo Lippi
  • December 14, 2016: Botticelli’s Place in the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent
  • January 11, 2017: Botticelli and Neoplatonic Theories
  • January 18, 2017: New Hypotheses on the Spring Cycle
  • January 25, 2017: Botticelli and the Grand Decor
  • February 1, 2017: Botticelli and the Portrait
  • February 22, 2017: Botticelli and Religious Painting
  • March 1, 2017: Botticelli and the Devotio Moderna
  • March 8, 2017: Botticelli and the Sense of Drama
  • March 22, 2017: Botticelli versus Perugino
  • April 19, 2017: Botticelli versus Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael
  • April 26, 2017: Botticelli and the Choice of Unreal Bodies
  • May 10, 2017: The Problem of the Mystic Nativity Painting
  • May 17, 2017: The Eternity of Botticelli