The Florentine Revival of Late Nineteenth-Century French Sculpture
Perspectives from the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1861-81)
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to show how French sculpture briefly resumed the impasse in which it was stuck in the middle of the nineteenth century thanks to the reliance on fifteenth-century Florentine sculpture. An analysis of the commentaries made by the critics of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, which was the first journal to assess and promote neo-Florentine sculptors in the 1860s and 1870s, allows to better grasp the evolution and failure of the trend, as well as the various issues that were at stake, such as originality and naturalism in sculpture. This revival provided French art with a new generation of successful sculptors and inspiring works that eventually lead to the unprecedented – and short-lived – triumph of sculpture at the Exposition Universelle of 1878.
Submitted: Feb. 8, 2021 | Accepted: April 12, 2021 | Published July 26, 2021 | Language: en
Keywords Donatello • Revival • Neo-Florentine • Gazette des Beaux-Arts • Renaissance • Nineteenth-century sculpture • Antonin Mercié • Paul Dubois • Paul Mantz • Florence • Salon • Tradition • Quattrocento • Giambologna • Alexandre Falguière
Copyright © 2021 Federica Vermot. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/MDCCC/2280-8841/2021/10/009