Giuseppe Cesari's 17th-century painting of Diana and Actaeon. © Wikimedia creative commons
Dec 12,
2023. Posted by Balkan
Periscope - Hellas
Teachers at a school outside Paris refused to work on Monday as the establishment grappled with a crisis sparked by the showing in class of a painting by a Renaissance master containing several nude women.
Education Minister Gabriel Attal visited the Jacques-Cartier middle school in Issou, west of Paris, in person on Monday and later said the pupils concerned would be disciplined.
On
Thursday, "during a French class, a colleague showed a 17th-century
painting that showed naked women", said Sophie Venetitay, secretary
general of the Snes-FSU secondary school teachers' union.
The
painting, "Diana and Actaeon" by the Italian painter Giuseppe Cesari,
portrays a Greek mythology story in which the hunter Actaeon bursts in at a
site where the goddess Diana and her nymphs are bathing.
The work,
which shows a naked Diana and four female companions, is held at the Louvre museum
in Paris.
A pupil's parent sent an email to the school director saying that his son
was prevented from speaking during that discussion and that he would file a
complaint, she said.
She said it was the "final straw" for teachers at the school, who
had complained of a "very degraded climate" as well as a "lack
of support" from management despite "several alerts".
In an email sent to parents on Friday, and seen by AFP, teachers said they
were exercising their right to stay away from classrooms over the
"particularly difficult situation" at the high school.
They described "palpable discomfort" and "an increase in
cases of violence" as their daily reality.
High tensions
Attal said that a disciplinary procedure would be launched "against
the students who are responsible for this situation and who have also admitted
the facts".
A team would also be deployed to the school to ensure it adhered to the
"values of the republic", he said.
The tensions come after a series of attacks against teachers in recent
years.
A French court on Friday convicted six teenagers for their role in the 2020
killing of Samuel Paty outside his secondary school near Paris by a
radicalised Islamist.
His murder
came after messages spread on social media that Paty had shown his class
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
In October,
another radicalised Islamist stabbed his former teacher Dominique Bernard to
death in the northern town of Arras.
(AFP)