Destructions et vandalisme pendant la Révolution française - article ; n°4 ; vol.33, pg 703-719

Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations - Année 1978 - Volume 33 - Numéro 4 - Pages 703-719
Both the counterrevolutionaries and the revolutionary elites were scandalized by the destruction of works of art. For the former (and their historians) the question was a simple one : it was the fault of the Revolution! For the latter, on the other hand, it was necessary to find an explanation which did not disavow the Revolution. For this purpose they invented a complot vandale which was all the more convenient in that it placed the blame for the destruction on ignorant or misguided revolutionaries. The vandals were therefore the perfidious people who inspired the destruction rather than those who actually carried it out and they existed only to the degree that they were unmasked by those who held power. This schema made possible all kinds of manipulations notably after the nineth of Thermidor, the lumping together of vandalism, royalism, and Robespierrism! While this highly political notion of vandalism can scarcely account for the destruction itself, which in fact derived essentially from iconoclasm among the lower classes it did make it easier for the new bourgeois elites to check this iconoclasm and to establish control over the artistic domain. Vandalism is thus a key episode in the process by which the new society took over the artistic heritage of the Ancien Regime
17 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.