After the Revolution: Framing Pictures in the Age of Napoleon



Nancy E. Edwards, curator of European art/head of academic services, Kimbell Art Museum

In the wake of the French revolution, the disbanding of the guild system and economic constraints led to the demise of the elaborately carved and gilded picture frame of the Ancien Régime. How did the Napoleonic era meet the urgent need to frame the hundreds of paintings the empire had confiscated from French aristocratic collections and from its conquests in Germany and Italy? This talk will examine the production and ornament of a new type of neoclassical frame to meet this demand and its adoption by Jacques-Louis David and his pupils, among others.


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