Truth Coming out of The Well 🇫🇷 😔 🇺🇸 La Vérité

La Vérité Sortant du Puits

Truth Coming Out of The Well

Jean-Léon Gérome, 1896

La Vérité sortant du puits est un tableau de Jean-Léon Gérôme 

🇺🇸 Truth coming from the well armed with her whip to chastise humanity is an 1896 painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

🇫🇷 Le titre complet de ce tableau est Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l'humanité   et provient de la phrase de Démocrite : « En réalité nous ne savons rien, car la vérité est au fond du puits. » Pour le peintre, c'est une représentation de la Vérité en peinture.

 The Truth Coming Out Of Her Well
Jean Leon Gerome
Truth, First Principles, Morals, Right and Wrong.

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La Vérité, fille de Saturne ou du Temps, est mère de la Justice et de la Vertu ; la Vérité est donc une divinité allégorique.

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Composition
Le puits est celui du musée de Cluny à Paris dont le peintre modifie la hauteur de la margelle par la suppression de la gargouille pour permettre au modèle de prendre appui ; la reproduction du puits est fidèle par ailleurs4, à un détail près : « Il a ajouté à la vigne vierge qui tapisse encore le mur, la végétation luxuriante des arums que l'on voyait déjà derrière la fontaine de Daphnis et Chloé et près du Circassien à l'abreuvoir. » 

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According to a 19th century legend, the Truth and the Lie meet one day. 

The Lie says to the Truth: “It’s a marvellous day today”! The Truth looks up to the skies and sighs, for the day was really beautiful.
They spend a lot of time together, ultimately arriving beside a well. The Lie tells the Truth: “The water is very nice, let’s take a bath together!” The Truth, once again suspicious, tests the water and discovers that it indeed is very nice. They undress and start bathing. Suddenly, the Lie comes out of the water, puts on the clothes of the Truth and runs away. The furious Truth comes out of the well and runs everywhere to find the Lie and to get her clothes back. The World, seeing the Truth naked, turns its gaze away, with contempt and rage.
The poor Truth returns to the well and disappears forever, hiding therein, its shame. Since then, the Lie travels around the world, dressed as the Truth, satisfying the needs of society, because, the World, in any case, harbors no wish at all to meet the naked Truth.
The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together, the well water is very nice. 
The Truth, still suspicious, tested the water and found out it really was nice. So they got naked and bathed.
But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth. 
The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well to get her clothes back.
But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away, with anger and contempt.
Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared forever, hiding her shame. 
Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy-because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth.

Jean-Léon Gérome, 1896
Painting: Truth Coming out of The Well / La Vérité Sortant du Puits

This story beautifully illustrates the discomfort people often feel when confronted with the stark, unadorned truth. It’s a powerful reminder of how easily lies can masquerade as truth and how society sometimes prefers comforting illusions over difficult realities. It’s essential to remain vigilant and discerning, seeking the genuine truth even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Fresque représentant le tableau. 

Réalisée dans une ruelle à Vesoul en juillet 2021

Si la vérité blesse, le mensonge tue.
Mieux vaut une vérité qui fait mal
qu’un mensonge qui fait du bien
La vérité n’est jamais aussi douloureuse
que la découverte d’un mensonge.
La vérité blesse une seule fois..
Le mensonge, à chaque fois que tu y penses.

Beginning in the mid-1890s, in the last decade of his life, Gérôme made at least four paintings personifying Truth as a nude woman, either thrown into, at the bottom of, or emerging from a well. The imagery arises from a translation of an aphorism of the philosopher Democritus, "Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well".(Greek ἐτεῇ δὲ οὐδὲν ἴδμεν: ἐν βυθῷ γὰρ ἡ ἀλήθεια, eteêi dè oudèn ídmen: en buthô gàr hē alḗtheia, [literally] "in reality we know nothing; for the truth is in an abyss".) The nudity of the model may arise from the expression la vérité nue, "the naked truth".

At the Champs Elysées Salon of 1895, Gérôme showed a painting entitled Mendacibus et histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma Veritas (English: The nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors), in which he depicted "naked Truth killed by Falsehood, her body flung into a well and the mirror after her, from which flashes of light are cast as it lightens the dark abyss". At the next Salon in 1896, Gérôme showed Truth Coming Out of Her Well.

It has been assumed that both paintings (like a similar, later work by Édouard Debat-Ponsan) were comments on the Dreyfus affair, but art historian Bernard Tillier argues that Gérôme's images of Truth and the well were part of his ongoing diatribe against Impressionism.

n a preface for Émile Bayard's Le Nu Esthétique published in 1902, Gérôme uses the metaphor of Truth and the well to characterize the profound and irreversible influence of photography:

La photographie est un art. La photographie force les artistes à se dépouiller de la vieille routine et à oublier les vieilles formules. Elle nous a ouvert les yeux et forcé à regarder ce qu'auparavant nous n'avions jamais vu, service considérable et inappréciable qu'elle a rendu à l'Art. C'est grâce à elle que la vérité est enfin sortie de son puits. Elle n'y rentrera plus.

Photography is an art. It forces artists to discard their old routine and forget their old formulas. It has opened our eyes and forced us to see that which previously we have not seen; a great and inexpressible service for Art. It is thanks to photography that Truth has finally come out of her well. She will never go back.

Gérôme kept at least one of the paintings. When he died in 1904, "the maid found him dead in the little room next to his atelier, slumped in front of a portrait of Rembrandt and at the foot of his own painting, Truth"—but the source for this anecdote, the biographer Charles Moreau-Vauthier, does not specify which painting of Truth.

Since 1978, Truth Coming Out of Her Well has been part of the permanent exhibition at the Musée Anne de Beaujeu in Moulins, France. In 2012, after the painting traveled to Los Angeles, Paris and Madrid, the museum featured the exhibition La vérité est au musée ("Truth is at the Museum"), which collected numerous drawings, sketches, and variants made by Gérôme, and by other artists, relating to the painting and its theme. The multiple interpretations of the painting's enigmatic meaning prompted one of the museum's curators to say, "C'est notre Joconde à nous." ("This is our Mona Lisa.")

Truth at the Bottom of a Well (study for a painting of 1895) by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Musée Georges-Garret, Vesoul.

Mendacibus et histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma Veritas (The nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors, 1895) by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Truth is at the Bottom of the Well (1895) at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, another work by Gérôme using the metaphors of Truth, her mirror, and the well.

Nec Mergitur (Nor is she submerged) or La Vérité sortant du puits (1898) by Édouard Debat-Ponsan, Musée de l'Hôtel de Ville [fr], Amboise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Coming_Out_of_Her_Well