![\"King_Asa_Of_Juda_Destroying_The_Idols.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/King_Asa_Of_Juda_Destroying_The_Idols.jpg\")
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Explosion in a Church.<\/em><\/p>\n “Enigma” or “mystery” are the words usually associated with “Desiderio” (or even “Mons\u00f9 Desiderio”), due to years of misattribution that made two obscure painters of the same period with similar styles appear to be a single artist.<\/p>\n Until some fifty years ago, the identity of Fran\u00e7ois de Nom\u00e9 (ca. 1593\u2013after 1634) was hidden by confusion with another contemporary painter from the Lorraine, Didier Barra (called “Mons\u00f9 Desiderio”), whose work was at times disturbingly similar. In the 1930s, when the Surrealists were searching for forerunners, there was a revival of interest in Nom\u00e9, a painter most noted for fantastic architectures, eerily lit night scenes of the ruins of cities, and of catastrophic visions. He has continued to fascinate the modern mind for fifty years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fran\u00e7ois de Nom\u00e9 has fascinated me since I found his wonderfully-titled (and painted) Explosion in a Church<\/em> in an art anthology, where the picture is credited to “Francesco Desiderio”. (Typically the painting also has another title, King Asa of Juda Destroying the Idols<\/em>.) Much of de Nom\u00e9’s work is unsigned and undated which doesn’t help matters, but stylistically it fits into the 17th century tradition of the capriccio<\/em>, deliberately grotesque or fantastical works that give an artist’s imagination free reign.<\/p>\n Fantastic Ruins with St. Augustine and the Child.<\/em><\/p>\n A Fantastic Architectural View.<\/em><\/p>\n Martyrdom of a Saint.<\/em><\/p>\n Landscape with Roman Ruins.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Explosion in a Church. “Enigma” or “mystery” are the words usually associated with “Desiderio” (or even “Mons\u00f9 Desiderio”), due to years of misattribution that made two obscure painters of the same period with similar styles appear to be a single artist. Until some fifty years ago, the identity of Fran\u00e7ois de Nom\u00e9 (ca. 1593\u2013after 1634) … Continue reading “The enigma of Desiderio”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,2,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-art","category-painting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fantastic_Ruins_with_Saint_Augustine_and_the_Child.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/Fantastic_Ruins_with_Saint_Augustine_and_the_Child.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A_Fantastic_Architectural_View.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/A_Fantastic_Architectural_View.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Martyrdom_of_a_Saint.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/Martyrdom_of_a_Saint.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Landscape_with_Roman_Ruins.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/Landscape_with_Roman_Ruins.jpg\")
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