Quatremère de Quincy

Abstract Antoine-Chrysosthôme Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849) was the most distinguished writer on art and architecture at the end of the Enlightenment. However, this study argues that he was also a zealous functionary and skilled publicist whose writings on the arts often intertwined with his politics. The book first demonstrates how Quatremère’s early reflections on art informed his abhorrence of destructive experimentation and his conviction that society, as much as art, needed faith, authority, and hierarchy. The next chapters then trace how Quatremère set aside his scholarly inquiries in 1789 and became a royalist politician who feared that the Revolution would destroy the cosmopolitan republic of letters that flourished when European states supported the papacy. Yet Quatremère’s disingenuous use of his opponents’ arguments means that his interventions must be understood in their political contexts and with reference to his biography, sources, and milieux. The concluding sketch of the second half of his life underlines his commitment to Crown and altar and his fight against godless materialism and the spirit of calculation. The resulting book is an exhaustively researched study of the most remarkable period in Quatremère’s biography that brings to light previously unknown writings and transforms our understanding of his famous reflections on the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, the Panthéon, art plunder, and museums. The book also offers an unfamiliar history of the French Revolution that integrates the study of political power with the history of ideas and art history.