Overview

This rich overview of masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts—the original school of fine arts in Paris and a repository for work by Europe’s most renowned artists since the seventeenth century—includes over 140 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The focus is on epic themes such as courage, sacrifice, and death, as well as the ways that changing political and philosophical systems affected the choice and execution of these subjects. Among the featured works are paintings by Jacques Louis David, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Anne-Louis Girodet, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres; sculpture by Antoine Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and Francois Rude; drawings by François Boucher, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolas Poussin, Titian, and Jean Antoine Watteau; and prints by Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn.

About the Editor

Emmanuel Schwartz has been Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts since 1996 and has written extensively on the history of its buildings and collections. Among his recent exhibitions are L’École de la liberté: Être Artiste À Paris, 1648 – 1817 (2009) and The Legacy of Homer: Four Centuries of Art from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2005). He is also the author of Les Sculptures de l’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris — Histoire, Doctrine, Catalogue (2003).