Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain (c.1752-1842)

The second half of the eighteenth century prepared the cultural conditions of revolutionary France and of the Restoration period. Many studies have dealt with the artistic sphere under Napoleon, but little has been done on historians, journalists and scholars who framed the day-by-day history of the time such as Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain (c.1752-1842). Trained as a painter during the Ancien Regime, he wrote about art during the early nineteenth century. His eclectic scholarship has never been the object of a broad study or monograph. This book is therefore the first attempt to explore Gault as an intellectual figure. The first two chapters examine the materials and sources Gault used in framing his knowledge and deals with his historical approach and the impact of Nicolas Poussin and Leonardo da Vinci as artistic models. The last two chapters focus on the use of these ideas and deal with his collection of drawings and his reviews of the Paris Salons. This work casts light on the cultural life in early nineteenth-century France and is useful to art historians as well as anyone else interested in French history of art during the Napoleonic period and the Restoration.