ABSTRACT
In France, history and art history form two clearly distinct disciplines. The specialists of one subject are usually unaware of research developments in the other. Generalist historians are uninformed about private commissions and popular art, and happily use the categories of ‘baroque’ and ‘classical’, which art historians have tended to abandon.1 Conversely, most art historians have only an imperfect knowledge of the most recent advances in economic and social history. Almost the only meeting-point between the two disciplines is in the matter of state commissioning and the political iconography that flows from it.2 From this mutual ignorance can come, on both sides, some hasty judgments. There is a strong temptation to link the evolution of the arts to political transformations, and to conflate a style with a regime. Hence such ancient and inaccurate expressions as ‘Louis XIV style’, ‘Regency style’ and ‘Louis XV style’.3 It is a trap into which some of the most eminent authors have fallen: in England, for example, Anthony Blunt analysed the artistic tendencies of the final years of the reign of Louis XIV through the prism of the supposed influence of Madame de Maintenon.4 More attentive observation shows that political, intellectual and artistic evolutions do not follow identical patterns. The arts themselves do not always respond to the same circumstances: architecture, painting and sculpture do not always march at the same pace. This chapter will therefore endeavour to introduce a parallel between, on the one hand, the political moment that constitutes the third reign of Louis XIV and, on the other, the movement of the arts, but it will also show the disjunctions between these two separate evolutions.5
