Inventing the Louvre : art, politics, and the origins of the modern museum in eighteenth-century Paris

Bibliographic Information

Inventing the Louvre : art, politics, and the origins of the modern museum in eighteenth-century Paris

Andrew McClellan

Cambridge University Press, 1994

Available at  / 27 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Bibliography: p. 270-277

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Containing the greatest collection of Old Master paintings and antique sculptures ever assembled under one roof, the Louvre, founded in the final years of the Enlightenment, became the model for all state art museums subsequently established. This book chronicles the formation of this great museum, from its origins in the French royal picture collections to its apotheosis during the Revolution and Napoleonic Empire. More than a narrative history, Andrew McClellan's account explores the ideological underpinnings, pedagogic aims, and aesthetic criteria of the Louvre, as well as its contemporary, the Museum of French Monuments, which in complementary ways laid the foundation for the modern museum age. Here, the central and abiding questions of museum practice-arrangement of art works, lightning, restoration and conservation, public education and service to the state - were first defined and given visual expression. Drawing on much new and archival material, this book also casts new light on the art world of eighteenth- century Paris and its most colourful characters, from Roger de Piles and La Font de Saint-Yonne, to Jacques-Louis David and Alexandre Lenoir.

Table of Contents

  • List of illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Luxembourg gallery, 1750-1779
  • 2. D'Angiviller's Louvre project
  • 3. The revolutionary Louvre
  • 4. The Musee Central des Arts
  • 5. Alexandre Lenoir and the Museum of French Monuments
  • Conclusion
  • Appendices.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top