The Visual Histories of Louis XIV

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the key issue of history making in early-modern Europe, exploring the relationship between the image, object and history through a close investigation of visual culture at Louis XIV’s court. The revised account of the central role of numismatics and print culture provided here reveals the influence of these often-neglected media on the defining monuments of the age. This reappraisal of the King’s commissions in the arts reveals a sophisticated process of history making that reflects a ‘material turn’ in historical method in the period, away from the authority of text and towards object-based evidence. Motivated by this, they created new images and objects as artifacts for a future time, drawing inspiration from ancient coins and medals that had proved their worth in the communication of historical data. However, the project for recording the King’s history visually also led to the production of a distinctly modern category of images. The ‘eyewitness’ mode of imaging events from the reign of Louis XIV without the veil of allegory ran simultaneous to more overtly antiquarian images. These two interchangeable pictorial systems, seemingly allied to opposing sides of the debate over the precedence of modern arts and sciences over the ancient, were nevertheless aligned to the goal of providing material evidence of the King’s history for posterity. Presented in two parts, the first section of this study reveals the influence of antiquarianism, ancient coins and medals in the production of new visual histories of the King. The second considers the concept of eyewitness testimony and traditions of mapping in the work of Louis XIV’s court artist Adam Franz van der Meulen.