page_title: Armand Point
section_title: Move towards Idealism
hierarchical_section_title: Armand Point / Move towards Idealism
context_page_description: Armand Point was a French painter, engraver and designer who was associated with the Symbolist movement and was one of the founders of the Salon de la Rose + Croix. Later he formed his own atelier. Sources differ over the details of his birth and death.
context_section_description: Point was influenced by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and was a member of the first Nabis group. In 1894 he made a trip to Italy with Hélène Linder (1867-1955) (later Mme Berthelot) where he saw Sandro Botticelli's Primavera for the first time outside of an engraving. The experience made a deep impression on him and he wrote that his eyes "first opened up" on seeing it, leading soon after to attempts to establish a movement in France to resurrect the art of the 15th and 16th centuries. The influence of Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci became evident in his work, for instance in the c. 1895 Eternal Chimera. Hélène Linder became an ideal female model for Point who often painted her in a Leonardesque style but dressed like a muse from Botticelli. Leonardo da Vinci's Study for the head of Leda (study for an original painting now lost) seems to have influenced the hair styles that he gave Hélène. Hélène married French diplomat Philippe Berthelot just before the start of the First World War. Philippe Jullian described Point as moving, at this time, from a "dreamy realism to a detailed idealism".
caption: Primavera, Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482. Tempera on panel. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
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