La première œuvre collective de l’Académie de France à Rome : un apparat éphémère pour la guérison de Louis XIV*

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on the ephemeral, multimedia façade for the French Academy commemorating the recovery of Louis XIV from illness. Known only through an engraved print, this installation seems tobe the first – and perhaps the only – tangible manifestation of the collective work carried out by French architects, sculptors, and painters resident in Rome during the second half of the seventeenth century. The aim is to demonstrate that, in addition to constituting a precious reservoir of visual references, whose correct understanding depends on an archaeological study of the ancient and modern repertoires, this apparatus imposes itself as an ambitious project of political mediation at a particular moment in the history of the Kingdom of France.