D'angiviller's Grands Hommes and the Significant Moment

Abstract

IN this paper I intend to discuss one aspect of the iconography of a series of statues which were executed in the late eighteenth century. This aspect is the choice of a moment of action which would be significant or meaningful in relation to past or future events. The idea of such a choice was first applied in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to paintings of history when an artist was faced with the selection of a significant moment in the representation of an episode drawn from classical or religious literature. Later in the eighteenth century the idea of the significant moment was developed in the context of Neoclassicism and applied to sculpture as well as to painting. In relating this idea to the statues in question, I propose first to examine the different ways in which the device of the significant moment was applied to monumental portraits of historical figures, and then to survey briefly various formulations of this idea which preceded its application to these statues and to glance at the various manifestations of its influence in the early nineteenth century.