Book launch: Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV

Presented by the School of Art Centre for Art History and Art Theory and the ANU French Research Cluster

You are invited to celebrate the launch of Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past by Dr Robert Wellington, with introductory remarks by Dr Lisa Beaven.

This monograph provides a new interpretation of objects and images commissioned by Louis XIV (1638-1715) to document his reign for posterity. The Sun King’s image-makers based their prediction of how future historians would interpret the material remains of their culture on contemporary antiquarian methods, creating new works of art as artifacts for a future time. Coin-like in form but not currency, the medal was the consummate antiquarian object, made in imitation of ancient coins used to study the past. This study uncovers a numismatic sensibility throughout the iconography of Louis XIV, and in the defining monuments of his age. It looks beyond the standard political reading of the works of art made to document Louis XIV’s history, to argue that they are the results of a creative process wedded to antiquarianism, an intellectual culture that provided a model for the production of history in the grand siècle.