COVER N. 395 - FRANCE

Postmark: 67 - Strasbourg Marseillaise . Bureau Philatélique 15.01.2024

Posted on 15th January; received on the 18th January 2024 

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It has been a while since I last received a cover featuring mostly art related stamps, and although I would always prefer seeing the works therein depicted "in the flesh", and even if sometimes the stamps themselves do not do justice to the masterworks that illustrate them (what is clearly not the case here), they are, at the very least, a way of disseminating culture, making it possible for singular works of art to reach an audience who might never have the opportunity to get to know them any other way, or, in the first place, did not even know such or such work even existed. And for that, I, who know and have seen an absolute infinitesimal number of the works my species has produced, am also grateful! 

Mon grand Merci, Olivier.

- "Un Combat de Coqs” (a cockfight), is the name of the painting by Jean-Leon Gérôme (1824-1904), depicted in the 1,11 € stamp, issued on 19APR2004.

This particular painting earned Gérôme a third place in the Paris Salon of 1947, having been  considered by Téophile Gautiter, who, further to being a well known poet and novelist was also an art critic, as the quintessential master work of the Neo-Grec movement, a neoclassical revival style, popular during the reign of Napoleon III.

The painting nowadays integrates the collection of the Musée D'Orsay.

- The 0,85 € stamp illustrated with an angel blowing some a horn, was issued on 07FEV2009, as part of the Religious Art series.

The image is a detail of the paintings on the absolutely dazzling blue and gold ceiling of the Cathédrale de Sainte-Cécile (the patroness of music and musicians), in the city of Albi, in Southern France, a monument built between 1282 and 1480, which has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site due to its singular architecture which resembles a fortress on the outside, what would not go amiss, given the absolute treasure hidden in its interior.

To the very neat Postmark of the Buireau Philatélique of Stratsbourg, the French Postal Service chose to add, as usual, a rather unnecessary mechanical postmark, although it has been carefully applied upside down, on the base of the envelope, so as not to  maculate the postmark on the stamps.... why not just let the letter go with the original postmark and forego all the additional trouble?...