New Book | Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture
Saltzman’s wide range of sources include Rousseau and Goya. From The University of Chicago Press:
Benjamin Saltzman, Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2026), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0226847214 (cloth), $115 / ISBN: 978-0226847221 (paper), $30.
A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world.
Why do we look away from the suffering of others? Why do we cover our faces in shame? Why do we lower our heads in grief? Few gestures are as universal as the averted gaze. Fewer still are as ambivalent and inscrutable. In this incisive study, Benjamin A. Saltzman reveals how the kaleidoscopic appearance of these gestures in art, poetry, and philosophy has turned them into an essential language for our uncomfortable engagements with the world, challenging us to reflect on the ways we fundamentally relate to others. Into the horizon of contemporary discourse, Turning Away sets out from five influential scenes in which figures avert their gaze: Timanthes’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s Confessions, Christ’s Crucifixion, and the Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve. The gestures of aversion in these scenes refract across visual media, through philosophy and politics, into modernity and the present day, having been reimagined along the way by thinkers like Hannah Arendt, artists like Marc Chagall and Salvador Dalí, poets like Langston Hughes, and many others. Saltzman offers a timely critique of the privilege of turning away and of the too-easy condemnation of our tendencies to do so.
Benjamin A. Saltzman is associate professor of English at the University of Chicago, where he coedits the journal Modern Philology. Saltzman is the author of Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England and the coeditor of Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages.
c o n t e n t s
Prologue
1 Parodos
2 Ambivalence
3 Sensation
4 Darkness
5 Retroversion
Exodos
Gratitude
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
New Book | Anne Vallayer-Coster
From Lund Humphries and The Getty:
Kelsey Brosnan, Anne Vallayer-Coster (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 2026), 152 pages, ISBN: 978-1848226852, £35 / $45.
Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744–1818) was one of just four female academicians admitted to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in the late 18th century. She made her debut at the Paris Salon only a year after joining the academy with her outstanding still-lifes. Later, she secured Queen Marie Antoinette as a patron. This book, the first English-language publication in over 20 years dedicated to this artist, provides a fresh, feminist re-evaluation of her biography and artistic context. Exploring the wide range of objects, materials and textures which the artist depicted—from food and flowers to guns and game—this study offers a new, synaesthetic framework for experiencing the visceral qualities of Vallayer-Coster’s still-life paintings as they were understood in her own time.
Kelsey Brosnan is a writer and art historian specialising in 18th- and 19th-century French paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts. She is Visiting Assistant Professor in the History of Art and Design Department at Pratt Institute, New York and also works as a writer and cataloguer for Christie’s, New York.
c o n t e n t s
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Vallayer-Coster, Académicienne / Citoyenne
2 Allegories
3 Food
4 The Hunt
5 Shells
6 Flowers
Conclusion
Appendix: Vallayer-Coster at the Salon, 1771–1817
Notes
Bibliography
Index
New Book | Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State
From: Rizzoli:
Virginia Hart, ed., Views of America: The Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State (New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0847876532, $65. With contributions by Bri Brophy, Laaren Brown, and Mark Alan Hewitt. Principal photography by Durston Saylor and Bruce White.
A book to honor the 250th anniversary of America, uncovering the history of the United States through works of art dating from America’s revolutionary period, from the collection of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the US Department of State.
Published as a follow-up to Rizzoli’s America’s Collection, with a new array of objects and original scholarship, this book celebrates the unparalleled collection of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, one of America’s most astonishing yet little-known treasures, located in the US Department of State’s Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, DC, now in a more accessible price and format. The collection is home to more than 5,000 fine and decorative art objects, mostly from 1740 to 1840, which tell stories from the nation’s founding era and formative decades.
This survey of 100 key works brims with historical provenances: porcelain from the personal collection of George Washington, silverwork by Paul Revere, side chairs that descended through the family of Francis Scott Key, and the tambour writing table upon which the Treaty of Paris was signed and is still used for signing of diplomatic papers today. The book showcases the important paintings by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Moran, Childe Hassam, and others, as well as examples of fine furniture and porcelain. The collection reflects the craftsmanship and spirit of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America and forms a vital link between the past and today’s endeavors to represent the American character through the art of diplomacy.
Virginia B. Hart is director and curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, and Bri Brophy is deputy chief curator. Laaren Brown is a writer and editor for art and natural history topics. Mark Alan Hewitt is an architect and architectural historian.
New Book | Arms and Armour from The Wallace Collection
From Bloomsbury:
Thom Richardson and Paula Turner, eds., with photographs by Cassandra Parsons, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Arms and Armour from Asia, Africa, and the Ottoman World (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2026), 560 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301203, $195.
Brimming with bejewelled and enamelled dagger hilts, swords, and scabbards, and with delicately gilded spears, helmets, shields, and breastplates, the Wallace Collection is home to one of the finest assemblages of arms and armour in the world. The pieces within the collection provide an expansive view of three key areas—Asia, Africa, and the Ottoman world—and span the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with star objects dating from as early as the 15th century. Being both functional weapons and prestigious luxury items, objects in this area of the collection are fascinating and awe-inspiring both for their technical achievements and artistic virtuosity.
This richly illustrated catalogue, compiled by leading specialists in the field, is a landmark achievement and shines a light on a previously overlooked part of the Wallace Collection. It provides detailed photographs of almost every object, each accompanied by a description of its provenance, materials, inscriptions, and construction. Also included is an introduction to the subject and a history of the collecting of non-European arms and armour by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace.
Exhibition | Canaletto & Bellotto
Bernardo Bellotto, Vienna Viewed from the Belvedere Palace, 1759/60, oil on canvas, 135 × 213 cm
(Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the press release for the exhibition:
Canaletto & Bellotto
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 24 March 2026 – 6 September 2026
Curated by Mateusz Mayer
In the 18th century, painted cityscapes (in Italian, vedute: ‘views’) became much sought-after souvenirs. Particularly so among young British aristocrats who bought these paintings on their so-called ‘Grand Tour’, an educational journey across Europe, as a sign of their newly acquired worldly finesse and as a keepsake of their travel experiences. Two of the most eminent exponents of veduta painting are in the center of the new exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The Venetian painters Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto (1697–1768), and his nephew and pupil Bernardo Bellotto (1721–1780) have continued to inform our imagination of several European cities to this day. With their delicate feel for light, atmosphere, and architectural precision, Canaletto and Bellotto transformed these places into stages on which everyday life played out—and in the views of them, into places of longing.
“Canaletto’s and Bellotto’s works show Europe as a space of cultural encounter, long before the concept of a European public ever gained currency. Their vedute connect cities such as Venice, Dresden, London, and Vienna through the perspective of 18th- century travelers and collectors. The exhibition illustrates how art became the visual language of a shared European experiential environment—an empowering culture of exchange, inspiration, and curiosity about other cities and societies,” says Jonathan Fine, Director General of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
In the 1730s, Canaletto’s vedute fetched record prices in Venice. With the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), however, the market slumped: international travel came to a halt, and deep-pocketed patrons stayed away. Uncle and nephew first responded by turning to new subject matter in their work, but soon realized that prospects for their careers were better outside Italy. The exhibition starts out in Venice and then moves on to Canaletto’s time in England as well as to Bellotto’s places of work in Vienna and Dresden, with the main focus on exploring the veduta as a painterly genre.
“City views from the 18th century, which are often perceived as immediate, almost photographic depictions of reality, are in fact carefully constructed pictorial creations that afford telltale insights into the social and political contexts of the time they were created,” adds Mateusz Mayer, curator of the exhibition.
Canaletto’s and Bellotto’s paintings unfold a multifaceted panorama of the Europe of their time. By showing a selection of particularly significant works and placing them within the scientific currents of the period, the exhibition demonstrates that the veduta is not an objective documentation. Rather, it is a deliberately designed image of a city—informed by artistic choices, socio-political conditions, and the expectations of the patrons commissioning them— manifesting a concept that is particularly relevant in light of present-day debates about visual media, urban development, and the cultural memory.
Canaletto—One Name, Two Artists
The name ‘Canaletto’ has come to be almost synonymous with the ‘veduta’ genre, and not infrequently has caused some confusion, as Bernardo Bellotto also added ‘called Canaletto’ to his signature in some works. He did this not only to underscore his artistic connection with his famous relative and teacher, but also to bolster up his own market value. In this exhibition, though, only the uncle is referred to as ‘Canaletto’. While the latter, throughout his lifetime, led the precarious existence of a freelance veduta painter, dependent on a changing clientele of patrons, Bellotto was eventually granted the honor of a permanent position at the court of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland.
High-Caliber Loans
The exhibition features 32 outstanding paintings—comprising works from the Kunsthistorisches Museum as well as high-caliber loans. One of the highlights is Canaletto’s spectacular view Venice: The Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore (1735/44) from the holdings of the Wallace Collection. The son of a stage painter, Canaletto was familiar with perspective construction and geometry as they were employed in the theater. That theatrical quality becomes particularly evident in this painting in his subtle handling of spatial illusion.
Also of unique quality are Canaletto’s London paintings, such as London: The Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day (c. 1748) from the Lobkowicz Collection and Westminster Abbey with a Procession of the Knights of the Order of the Bath (1749) from the collection of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. On view for the general public in Austria for the first time here, they afford rare insights into Canaletto’s artistic engagement with the English capital city.
Another main emphasis is on Bellotto’s two-year stay in Vienna, an extremely productive creative period. His large-size views of Vienna’s inner city, such as View of Vienna from the Belvedere (1759/60), and of palaces around the city from the holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum have been cleaned especially for the exhibition. Complemented by prominent loans from the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein, such as The Liechtenstein Garden Palace in Vienna, Seen from the Belvedere (1759/60), these vedute can now be presented together, almost in their entirety, for the first time in more than 20 years.
In order to further elucidate the intellectual and artistic context of the epoch, the show is supplemented with additional paintings, art prints, and scientific instruments on loan from numerous European museums. Lenders include: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Albertina, Vienna; Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation supported by Tate; Compton Verney; Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Museo Correr, Venice; Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice; Royal Castle in Warsaw – Museum; Leica Microsystems GmbH; Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna; Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Troyes; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Museu National d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Austrian National Library, Vienna; Saxon State Archives, Central State Archives Dresden; Schottenstift, Vienna; Vienna Museum of Science and Technology; The British Museum, London; The Dean and Chapter of Westminster, London; The Lobkowicz Collections, Lobkowicz Palace, Prague Castle, Czech Republic; The Wallace Collection, London; Wien Museum, Vienna.
The exhibition was curated by Mateusz Mayer, curator of the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Serenella Zoppolat (architettura21) and Tilo Perkmann (Artvis) did the exhibition design.
The catalogue is distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
Mateusz Mayer, Canaletto & Bellotto: Observation and Invention in Venice, London, and Vienna (Munich: Hirmer, 2026), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-3777447551, $50 / Canaletto & Bellotto: Beobachtung und Erfindung in Venedig, London und Wien, ISBN: 978-3777447544, €40.
New Book | Spontaneous Objects
From Penn State UP:
Rebecca Zorach, Spontaneous Objects: A Natural History of Art and Its Others (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2026), 286 pages, ISBN: 978-0271100432, $85.
In the late medieval and early modern periods, European artists, theorists, and natural philosophers imagined Nature not simply as a force of reproduction but as an artist in its own right—a creative power capable of generating images, artifacts, and objects of beauty. Tracing this idea from the fifteenth through early nineteenth centuries, Rebecca Zorach challenges assumptions about human artistic genius and intention that have long dominated histories of art and science.
With inspiration from new materialist theory, Zorach reclaims a largely disregarded undercurrent of historical thought about the powers of nature. Through case studies ranging from Renaissance centaurs and snails to Adam Smith’s beaver hat and Kant’s travelers’ tales, Zorach investigates how ideas about nature’s generative power unsettled conventional definitions of image, artifact, and artistic intention. At the same time, Zorach also confronts the violent legacies of a different vision of nature’s power: as European empires expanded, emerging natural philosophies contributed to global colonial imaginaries and racial hierarchies, reframing nature as a force to be classified, controlled, and exploited. In seeking to understand whether and how these views of nature cohere, Zorach excavates how the historical formation of the ‘human’ and the ‘natural’ depends on ideas about artistic production and artistic intention.
A significant contribution to art history, visual culture, and environmental humanities, Spontaneous Objects will engage scholars interested in the intersections of art, science, theology, and colonial modernity.
Rebecca Zorach is Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art and Art History at Northwestern University. Her books include Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance; The Passionate Triangle; Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965–1975; and Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America’s Racial Enterprise.
Print Quarterly, March 2026
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 43.1 (March 2026)
a r t i c l e s
Conrad Martin Metz, Frontispiece, from Imitations of Ancient and Modern Drawings Engraved and Published by C. M. Metz, 1789, etching and aquatint printed in colour, 360 × 256 mm (London, British Museum).
• Elania Pieragostini, “Conrad Martin Metz and his Imitations of Ancient and Modern Drawings,” pp. 14–26. This article examines the origins, development, and targeted audience of Conrad Martin Metz’s (1749–1827) decade-long project to reproduce drawings held in British collections, aiming to show how art developed over time, starting from Cimabue. Its programmatic introduction addresses key issues such as the disegno–colore debate, the preference for preliminary sketches and the differences between originals and copies. The author summarizes the various collections accessed by Metz, the techniques used to replicate the effects of drawn media, and his business operations and clientele. The project is further discussed in relation to similar print projects of the time.
• Dominika Cora, “New Facts about Russia’s Imperial Portrait Series, 1745–77,” pp. 36–43. This shorter notice discusses the chronology and publication of Johann Stenglin’s (1710/15–76) mezzotints depicting Russian emperors, one of his earliest commissions. The two appendices show how the prints were once believed to be published in six ‘sets’, and how they are organized now in accordance with the new research. The new findings also allow for the correct attribution of the monogram ‘AST’ found on the portraits of Peter the Great, Anna Petrovna, and Catherine I.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Armin Kunz, Review of Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings and Naomi Lebens, eds., Placing Prints: New Developments in the Study of Print, 1400–1800 (Brill, 2025), pp. 44–47. Includes an essay by Donato Esposito on Joshua Reynolds’s print collection.
• Andrew Robison, Review of Felix Reuße, Hans Hubert, and Viktoria Gont, eds., Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Vedute di Roma (Städtische Museen Freiburg and Michael Imhof, 2024), pp. 63–65.
• Ellis Tinios, Review of Andreas Marks, Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo: The Definitive Collector’s Edition (Tuttle Publishing, 2024), pp. 65–67.
• Gervase Rosser, Review of Erin Giffin, Early Modern Replicas of the Holy House of Loreto: Translating Space (Routledge, 2025), pp. 83–86.
• Ellis Tinios, Review of John Fiorillo, Hokuei: Master of Osaka Kabuki Prints (Ludion, 2024), pp. 86–89.
o b i t u a r y
David Bindman (1940–2025), pp. 76–77.
New Book | Performance Costume in 18th-Century
From Bloomsbury:
Petra Zeller Dotlacilová, Performance Costume in 18th-Century France: Louis-René Boquet between Tradition and Reform (London: Bloomsbury, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1350531000, $120.
Petra Zeller Dotlacilová’s study examines the development of theatrical costumes in France during the long 18th century, including the abandonment of long-established traditions, the need to negotiate with the dictates of fashion, and the translation of new ideas into material practice. Using Louis-René Boquet (1717–1814)—the leading costume designer of the French court and the Paris Opera—as its lens, the book traces the development of costume reform from an aesthetics of propriety, defined by strict conventions, to an aesthetics of truthfulness, more open to ideas and inspiration from the visual arts and from real life. Full of rich primary source material in the form of newspaper articles, letters, plays, librettos, drawings and images of garments, and illustrated in full colour throughout, the author shows how playwrights, theatre managers, designers, tailors and performers all contributed to the changes in the design and conception of costume during the 18th century.
Petra Dotlacilová holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University, Sweden. In her research, she specializes on European dance history and theatrical costume of 16th to 18th century. In particular, she explores aesthetic and material properties of costumes, international transfers in design and relations between garments and movement practices.
c o n t e n t s
Acknowledgements
Note on Translation
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Studying historical costume in performance
Boquet: between tradition and reform
Chapter 1 | Making of Costume for Performing Arts
Design Process at the French Court and the Opéra
Costumes at Comédie-Française, Comédie-Italienne and Opéra Comique
Self-fashioning at the Opéra: Designer vs the Soloists
Shaping Costumes According to Performing Arts and Gender
Chapter 2 | The Tradition, or the Aesthetics of Propriety
To Dress Properly: Social Norms of Clothing
‘Something rich and yet true to nature’: verisimilitude and the merveilleux
The Artistic Genres: Rules and Principles
Dressing the genres: French costumes for opera and ballet before Boquet
Breaking point: Expanding genres and fashions
The freedom of the fairground theatre and the Comédie-Italienne
Chapter 3 | The First Wave of Reform, or Towards the Aesthetics of Truthfulness
What is a ‘truthful costume’?
Les philosophes on costume and dress
The Reform in Practice: The problem of genre
Chapter 4 | Reform at the Opéra and the Court
Between the court and the fairground theatre: shepherds, peasants and Le Devin du village
Le Devin du village: a play with the appearances
First Greeks ‘correctly costumed in ancient style’ at the Opéra
Old Alceste in new clothes
‘Costumes of all ages and countries’
Chapter 5 | How to Dress Dance?
Development and diversity of dance techniques
Habit sérieux
Habit demi-caractère
Habit comique
Chapter 6 | Towards the Second Wave of the Reform, and Beyond
New fashions, new costumes: the triumph of simplicity
Boquet and Neoclassicism
Stage costume between nature and art
Glossary
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
New Book | Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s
From The University of Chicago Press:
Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2026), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-0226847412, $30.
As the United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026, renowned historian Marc Stein looks back at the politics of another landmark celebration during a time of striking similarities and surprising differences: the US bicentennial in 1976. In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the bicentennial sparked an extraordinary national conversation about the country’s past, present, and future. As patriots, planners, profiteers, and protesters argued about how to commemorate the national birthday, they collectively reimagined the promises and perils of democracy during a transformational decade.
From award-winning historian Marc Stein, Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s is an original, illuminating, and insightful study of that era. While focusing on festivities and fights in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, the book also explores the many proposed and abandoned celebrations that percolated up around the country. It tells a broadly democratic story of both the ‘official’ bicentennial and counter-bicentennial activism, offering revolutionary perspectives on national politics, social movements, and popular culture. From the queer courtship of President Richard Nixon and Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo to parades and protests with millions of participants, and from a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at Philadelphia’s most prestigious hotel to the establishment of groundbreaking African American, ethnic, and Jewish museums, the bicentennial reveals a kaleidoscope of American peculiarities, problems, and possibilities. The lasting influence of 1976 on one of the nation’s great urban centers and the United States as a whole is undeniable. As the nation—once again enmeshed in political and social upheaval—marks its two-hundred-fiftieth birthday in 2026, there is no better time to look back at its two-hundredth and marvel at what has changed, and what has not.
Marc Stein is the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of US History and Constitutional Law at San Francisco State University. He is the 2026–27 president of the Organization of American Historians and director of the OutHistory website. His previous books include City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, Sexual Injustice, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, The Stonewall Riots, and Queer Public History.
c o n t e n t s
Introduction
1 The Queer Courtship of Richard Nixon and Frank Rizzo
2 The Rise and Fall of Five Bicentennial Plans
3 The ‘Do-It-Yourself’ Bicentennial
4 Ford to Bicentennial City: Drop Dead
5 ‘We Are the Bicentennial’
6 ‘Freedom’s Way—U.S.A.’
7 Philadelphia Renaissance
8 Happy Birthday, USA
9 Let Freedom Ring
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Exhibition | Revealing the Feminine: Fashion and Appearances
Opening soon at the Cognacq-Jay:
Révéler le Féminin: Mode et Apparences au XVIIIe Siècle
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 25 March — 20 September 2026
Curated by Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, Adeline Collange-Perugi, and Saskia Ooms
Jean-Charles Nicaise Perrin, Portait of Madame Perrin, 1791 (Musée des Arts et de l’Archéologie de Valenciennes; photo by Thomas Douvry).
Présentée au musée Cognacq-Jay en collaboration avec le Palais Galliera, l’exposition Révéler le féminin: Mode et Apparences au XVIIIe siècle propose une immersion dans l’univers fascinant des féminités au siècle des Lumières.
Portraits, scènes galantes et pièces textiles historiques dialoguent pour explorer la diversité des représentations de la féminité telles qu’elles se déploient dans les mises en scène du XVIIIe siècle. L’exposition souligne l’essor d’un style français dont l’élégance séduit alors les cours et l’aristocratie européennes, révélant une histoire du costume à la fois ancrée dans une réalité matérielle et nourrie par l’imaginaire.
Au cœur de cette époque, la France s’impose comme le théâtre incontournable du raffinement et du prestige. Les artistes tels que Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Marc Nattier, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, ou encore Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun excellent à traduire l’éclat des étoffes comme la profondeur des âmes, offrant à leurs modèles une aura de grâce et de pouvoir. Le parcours de l’exposition, qui met en lumière ces œuvres virtuoses, s’enrichit de portraits marqués par une dimension psychologique nouvelle, où l’intimité et le naturel prennent une place centrale, sous l’influence anglaise. En parallèle, les pastorales de François Boucher et les fêtes galantes d’Antoine Watteau façonnent une féminité idéalisée et poétique.
Enfin, des photographies contemporaines de Steven Meisel, Esther Ségal, ou encore Valérie Belin, ainsi qu’une création Chanel par Karl Lagerfeld, suggèrent en contrepoint une réflexion sur la persistance des codes et l’héritage du XVIIIe siècle dans la mode actuelle, entre exigence sociale et imaginaire de la beauté.
Commissariat
• Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, conservateur général du patrimoine, responsable des départements mode XVIIIe et Poupées au Palais Galliera
• Adeline Collange-Perugi, conservatrice du patrimoine et responsable de la collection art ancien, Musée d’arts de Nantes
• Saskia Ooms, attachée de conservation au musée Cognacq-Jay
Révéler le Féminin: Mode et Apparences au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Paris Musées, 2026), 112 pages, ISBN: 978-2759606382, €25.
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