Histoire nationale, histoire universelle : propositions sur l’iconographie monumentale de la monarchie de Juillet

Abstract

How were artists supposed to represent the history of France in the context of the July Monarchy, when the nation state was being built? The painters chosen by the public authorities seemed to have a great deal of freedom but the ideological currents running through society imposed their constraints. This study highlights the covert conflicts between the supporters of national history as exalted by the Romantic generation and those of liberal cosmopolitism, who attached great importance to trade and industry and, in the name of the Enlightenment and Philosophy, mistrusted Roman Catholicism. Whatever the sympathies of the royal family and senior officials, choosing one camp or the other was out of the question: the July Monarchy aimed to bring together the entire body politic in the name of history, considered the laboratory of politics. The conciliation of diverse, sometimes contradictory tendencies, was at the heart of the eclecticism that the government had set as an objective. At Versailles, Louis-Philippe, the museographer-king par excellence, hoped to find the opportunity to attempt an iconographic consensus.

Keywords

• beau idéal
• eclecticism
• national history
• universal history
• monumental iconography
• national identity