David d'Angers

Dorothy Johnson explores the significance of David d'Angers's public and private works, from medallions and busts to statues and statuettes of famous figures. In particular, she considers the ways in which David read and interpreted the world and the individuals who helped shape it as visible signs of a hidden language of nature and culture.
 

The modern, Romantic music virtuoso borrowed postures and gestures from sculpture, painting, and dramatic acting and raised the profile of performers in the public eye. This presentation considers the ways in which performers such as Liszt, Chopin, and Paganini transformed the image of the virtuoso. Playing musical excerpts on the piano, Professor Dana Gooley shows how virtuosos paid musical homage to, and created a pantheon of, composer-heroes.

In a celebrated passage from his Histoire de la Révolution Française, historian Jules Michelet (1833–1867) asserted that the French Revolution left no lasting monuments, only empty space. Pierre-Jean David d’Angers (1788–1856), perhaps the greatest sculptor of the early nineteenth century, made it his life’s work to fill that void. This lecture follows David’s attempts to reinvigorate and adapt the notion of a historical monument to the new social and political landscape of modernity.