Proliferation of the New Iconography in Nineteenth-Century France and America

Ricci lost the battle against the Sacred Heart and the larger economy of penitentialism. But the career of the devotion in the nineteenth century underwent important institutional and social changes that are registered in its visual representation. The Daughters of the Sacred Heart, founded and led by Sophie Barat (1779-1865), invested the devotion in an order committed to teaching children, largely the children of France’s aristocracy. The growth of convent schools in the order was dramatic. Founded in 1800, by 1829 the order numbered 24 houses. A decade later it boasted 40. By 1844 it had added 17 more. In the year of Barat’s death, the number had risen to 86 houses, stretching from France to the United States. ³⁷ As a result, a more pastoral and didactic temperament characterized the devotion. Although Barat remained committed to Alacoque’s ideal of the forgetting of self, the ascetic extreme was replaced by an ethic of service and selfsacrifice in the order’s mission of teaching. Barat’s dedication to the cause made one former student observe: “She was truly a mother in the midst of her children… Our Mother General seemed like the image of Jesus Christ Himself, and of His adorable Heart.” ³⁸ In light of the very practical mission of the order, it follows that Barat balanced a mystical self-transcendence with a deeply committed concern for the wellbeing of others. She urged her sisters to take Alacoque as a model, “not in the extraordinary manifestations but in her obedience, charity, union with Jesus Christ, to the degree that each one can reach.” ³⁹