Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) : Preliminary drawing for Nadar's Pantheon (N° 208 in the Pantheon )

Charcoal drawing on brown paper with white-gouache highlights, 21.7 x 14.5 cm.The poet’s rather lowly spot toward the back of the procession may seem surprising. But although Baudelaire was already known to the young, literary Bohemians, and was a friend of Nadar’s, his masterpiece, Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) would not be published until 1857, the same year as Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary . Both of those monuments of the century’s literature became preludes to famous and far-reaching trials. Two years before his Pantheon , this is how Nadar introduced Baudelaire in the “Lanterne magique” column of the Journal pour rire (Humorous Newspaper) : “a nervous, bilious, irritable and irritating young poet who is often entirely unpleasant in his private life […] amongst those rare minds currently walking in the solitude of the self, he is, I believe, both the best and the one who is most sure of where he’s headed.”téléchargeabl