ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the preoccupation with the origin of the arts was prompted by the growing convergence of art and nationalistic identity in an era of Enlightenment and revolutionary change, when France was reconsidering and redefining its own origins as an inheritor of the classical tradition of antiquity. The narrative of history was relayed in such a way that France’s triumphs over each of its challenges, from the ancien regime to the fall of Napoleon, correlated to the rise and fall of its arts, and to their ability to rescue the French people from certain barbarism. The arts were called upon to prove that France was the new rightful inheritor of “civilization,” and, as the most revered ancient civilization was Greece, the origins of the arts in France needed to be traced back to the mythic beginnings of artistic production.
