| From Mount Vesuvius to
the Atlas Mountains |
Jean-Xavier de Combeloup Du Vésuve à l’Atlas. Sur les traces de von Gloeden. Portraits et Nus Full color. Edition limited to 500 numbered copies. (pp 104), large format, paper, € 47,50 |
Jean-Xavier de Combeloup, the youngest son of a ruined provincial aristocratic family, was born in the province of Limousin (France). He started writing poems and drawing when he was still a child. Encouraged by his mother, who herself had an artistic temperament, he conceived at the age of twelve a booklet of illustrated poetry which was never published. Resident in a boys school, he studied Greek and Latin. At seventeen, having just graduated, he travelled to Italy and attended Academy lessons in the art schools of Florence and Rome, earning his living as a waiter and collecting all sorts of eccentric objects. As a teenager, he had already turned a section of the family castle’s attic into a “curiosity cabinet.” |
|
| This was filled with stuffed birds, shells and
minerals as well as ancient engravings and photographs, including 42 albumine
prints of Baron von Gloeden, inherited from his greatuncle the Marquis of
Yzumes, who had made a trip to Taormina (his wedding trip!). |
|
He was stunned by these photographs of young boys set naked in ancient ruins
glowing in the sun, and they motivated his quest for an ideal pagan beauty
in this still unspoilt Southern paradise. For his entire life he was to be
influenced by this iconography, using a great number of vintage pictures
by the baron or other photographers as models for his drawings, paintings
and sculptures. De Combeloup often visited the Mediterranean countries on
the trail of the writer Roger Peyrefitte and others longing for the lost
Arcadiae. He wrote down his feelings in thirty booklets in which a mix of
drawings, aphorisms, collages and restaurant bills can be found. [Text adapted from the Introduction] |