ABSTRACT
In the period between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, France rediscovered the image of the father who lifts his child into the air.1 A century earlier, that image would have been blasphemous: the only child to be raised toward the skies was Christ, concealed in the elevation of the host. Such images, however, indicate no return toward the authority of the Roman pater familias. It’s true that the Revolution, in the name of progress, of the triumph of will over nature, rediscovered the Roman notion of adoption. And if every true fatherhood is an adoption-a choice-that active, voluntary choice is summed up in the gesture of the father who lifts his child into the air. But trust in the father was no longer the same as in Roman times, and these images make this clear. They are often rhetorical and sentimental: at times, they were commissioned by the political powers in the attempt to lend fresh vigor to the family, which little by little was growing weaker as the state assumed functions which once had been domestic. Others are caricatures of the family’s condition. Others again are propaganda posters or even commercial advertisements.
