Description
Book SynopsisFrench painting of Louis XV’s reign (1715–74), generally categorized by the term rococo, has typically been understood as an artistic style aimed at furnishing courtly society with delightful images of its own frivolous pursuits. Instead, this book shows the significance and seriousness underpinning the notion of pleasure embedded in eighteenth-century history painting. During this time, pleasure became a moral ideal grounded not only in domestic life but also defining a range of social, political, and cultural transactions oriented toward transforming and improving society at large.
History, painting, and the seriousness of pleasure in the age of Louis XV reconsiders the role of history painting in creating a new visual language that presented peace and happiness as an individual’s natural rights in the aftermath of Louis XIV’s bellicose reign (1643-1715). In this new study, Susanna Caviglia reinvestigates the artistic practices of an entire generation of painters born around 1700 (e.g. Francois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Vanloo) in order to highlight the cultural forces at work within their now iconic images.
Table of ContentsList of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Historical perspective: the peaceable kingdom of Louis XV
The painters
Toward a new artistic idiom
I. Historia in stasis
Chapter 1: The action de repos
Prolegomena to the theory and practice
Meditation, contemplation
The dynamic body suspended
Narrative disrupted
Moments in the present and the future
Chapter 2: Corporeality and repose
Fontenelle’s ideal
Corporeal conversations
Figures of seduction
The expression of repose
From narrative representation to figural presentation
II. The figure in artistic practice
Chapter 3: Figure/study/artwork
Copying the figure
The whole and the part
The emergence of corporeal repose
The new body language
Chapter 4: The story beyond the figure
From study to subject
Autonomous figures in painting
Repertoires of models
Life study and historical subject
III. The fabrication of a new grand genre
Chapter 5: Before the painting
The figure: from the idea to the painting
The emergence of new creative practices
The single body and the multiplication of bodies
The figure: from reuse to quotation
Chapter 6: Epilogue: on novelty in painting
Brand new beauties
The painting of the present
Bibliography
Index
