The Restoration of Paintings in Paris, 1750-1815: Practice, Discourse, Materiality

Drawing on extensive previously unpublished primary material from archives in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Venice, Noémie Étienne combines art history with anthropology and sociology to survey the waning decades of the ancien régime and early post-Revolution France. Working along lines first articulated by Jürgen Habermas on the emergence of the public sphere in France in the eighteenth century, Etienne explores the increasing public debate surrounding the restoration of artworks. Initial chapters present the professionalization of restoration, encompassing not only royal institutions and the Louvre museum but also private art dealers, artists, and craftsmen, while following chapters address the influence of restoration and exhibition on the aesthetic understanding of paintings as material objects. The book closes with a discussion of the institutional and political uses of restoration, examining the influence of restoration practice on the major debates about cultural heritage and rational identity that occurred after the French Revolution. There is also a directory of the main restorers active in France between 1750 and 1815.