Mikhaïl Bakounine in Nadar’s workshop
huile sur toile, 80 x 65 cm. Coll personnelle
Nadar made a portrait of Mikhail Bakunin in his studio, where so many personalities from the Arts and Letters of the nineteenth century passed through. The author of the excellent text “God and the State,” a vagabond of the anarchist revolution, agitator, and activist, spent ten years in the dungeons of the Peter and Paul Fortress to escape and immediately return to the hotspots of Europe where there was some chance of seeing rebellion, the self-organization of the people, and freedom flourish, which, as he understood it, “begins where that of others begins.” This man feared neither life nor death. I like having his portrait at home.