“Must the Arts Suffer from the Progress of Reason?” Four Slave Statues, the 1790 Place des Victoires Debate, and the Urban Monument in Early Revolutionary France
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Desmond Kraege
Abstract
In June 1790, the Assemblée nationale decided that the statues of slaves surrounding the monument to Louis XIV on the Place des Victoires were offensive to the inhabitants of some French provinces, and should be removed. This triggered a wide-ranging debate in the Parisian press, with calls for the conservation of the monument or for the use of the statues in a new setting. The discussion dealt with the monument’s iconography, but also with its aesthetic and historical significance, and reflected wider debates on slavery and on the (un)popularity of the monarchy. The article analyses these arguments, points out the importance of public monuments in Parisians’ relation to their city, and shows how the removal of these statues was part of a climate of construction, rather than destruction.
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Photo Credits: 1 Photograph by the author. – 2 Ernest Lavisse (ed.), Histoire de France illustrée depuis les origines jusqu’à la Révolution, t. VIII.1, Paris 1911, 16, pl. 2. – 3 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
© 2017 Desmond Kraege, published by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Andrea del Sarto’s Disputation on the Trinity and the “Sighs of Holy Desire”
- Giulio Romano und Andrea Palladio Die Landshuter Residenz Herzog Ludwigs X. und ihre Rezeption in den frühen Palastkonzepten Palladios
- “Framing and Fashioning of Images”: The Pictorial Invention of the Art Lover in Daniel Mytens’s Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (ca 1618)
- “Must the Arts Suffer from the Progress of Reason?” Four Slave Statues, the 1790 Place des Victoires Debate, and the Urban Monument in Early Revolutionary France
- Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit Richard Oelze (1900 – 1980) and Post-war Reflection
- Buchbesprechungen
- Politik der Evidenz. Öffentliche Bilder als Bilder der Öffentlichkeit im Trecento
- Parergon. Attribut, Material und Fragment in der Bildästhetik des Quattrocento
- I segni nel tempo. Dibujos españoles de los Uffizi
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Andrea del Sarto’s Disputation on the Trinity and the “Sighs of Holy Desire”
- Giulio Romano und Andrea Palladio Die Landshuter Residenz Herzog Ludwigs X. und ihre Rezeption in den frühen Palastkonzepten Palladios
- “Framing and Fashioning of Images”: The Pictorial Invention of the Art Lover in Daniel Mytens’s Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (ca 1618)
- “Must the Arts Suffer from the Progress of Reason?” Four Slave Statues, the 1790 Place des Victoires Debate, and the Urban Monument in Early Revolutionary France
- Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit Richard Oelze (1900 – 1980) and Post-war Reflection
- Buchbesprechungen
- Politik der Evidenz. Öffentliche Bilder als Bilder der Öffentlichkeit im Trecento
- Parergon. Attribut, Material und Fragment in der Bildästhetik des Quattrocento
- I segni nel tempo. Dibujos españoles de los Uffizi
