Sculpture and Enlightenment

This is a unique volume that explores the ways in which the aesthetics of public art were affected by the social, political, and cultural changes of the Enlightenment. This pioneering book chronicles the transformation of public art in eighteenth-century France. As royal and ecclesiastical authority waned under the rule of Louis XV, there emerged nascent democratic institutions, a new metaphysics, and a radical political consciousness - a paradigm shift that profoundly affected the forms that commemorative sculpture and architecture took. Analysing an extraordinary range of artistic projects - from unrealized plans for a Bourbon memorial to the sculptural program for the Pantheon - "Sculpture and Enlightenment" appraises how public art intersected with the historical forces, social movements, and continental philosophies that brought Western Europe to the cusp of modernity.