pamphlets and prints representing her as the devil, a witch, a vampire, “Austria’s creature,” a hydra
headed monster and, generally, as a personification of vanity, sexual perversion and profligacy (Hunt,
1991, 122–126; Thomas, 2001, 105–135; Weber, 2006, 209–212). More rarely, positive representations
of the queen featured in prints and print series and were exported to royalist supporters elsewhere in
Europe (Wettlaufer, 1999, 1–37). In Italy, politically suspect prints could be circulated through coffee
shops (Pasta, 2005, 210).
Exhibitions, Collectors, Museums and their Visitors
In addition to an expanding and increasingly complex market for art, the eighteenth century witnessed
substantial improvements in the opportunities for artists to exhibit in public (and hence advertise) their
work. This exhibition culture later became dominated by fine art academies, as they established
themselves as centers of the highest forms of art. Earlier public exhibitions had been smaller, less formal,
sometimes serendipitous and generally brief. The display of art objects had taken place in the sites of
everyday life such as cemeteries (where funerary monuments were important), festivals (for which
decorative artworks were made) and religious ceremonies. Churches had, for centuries, afforded natural
opportunities to display religious works, particularly on the continent where Catholicism thrived. The
best and most famous of these, for example, NotreDamedesVictoires in Paris, which housed Carle
Van Loo’s painted series on the life of Saint Augustine (Wrigley, 1993, 15), were often accompanied by
viewers’ guides. In terms of cultural status, visiting works such as these was regarded as the equivalent of
viewing the private collections of the social elite, to which access could be gained through introductions
and invitations. Both ways of viewing art had been popular in Rome through the Renaissance and
seventeenth century.
While the viewing of celebrated or monumental public art represented a “high” cultural pursuit, there was
more suspicion from the establishment concerning more popular exhibition culture, connected
traditionally with street processions and displays. Exhibitions held at the Place Dauphine in Paris, for one
day a year on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew, concurrently with an open exhibition of tapestries at the
Gobelins factory, had been established in 1644 through the Corpus Christi processions. This custom
followed a longestablished Italian tradition of linking public exhibitions with religious sites and
occasions, often through oneday events. In the Place Dauphine, works were literally mounted on railings
and on textile awnings covering buildings. These exhibitions focused initially on the display of high
status works from the Académie royale (Oudry was among exhibitors there) and of famous old master
works, but later included works by younger, less established artists and by women. The Académie royale
established its own exhibitions, which grew in stature, and from 1737 its artist members were forbidden
to exhibit at the Place Dauphine, which became a byword among many critics for works of poor quality
(Wrigley, 1993, 315). This judgment arose partly from the fact that the Place Dauphine exhibitions
generally ignored the official hierarchy of genres, as they mixed serious art with “parade” or “festive” art
and displayed works of all genres with apparent equality. After a break the shows resumed from 1759 to
1788, but in a reduced form, and became known as “exhibitions of work by young artists” (Berger, 1999,
149–155). The exhibitions were banned completely in 1788 after popular uprisings at the Pont Neuf, an
adjacent site used to supplement the exhibition space at the Place Dauphine itself, amid general suspicion
of the power of popular taste and protest. Yet in the early part of the century the Place Dauphine had
provided an additional exhibiting opportunity for history artists such as Jean II Restout (1692–1768),
Carle Van Loo and Jouvenet, as well as for Boucher’s mythologies and for the still life painters Chardin,
Oudry and Desportes.
The Académie de Saint Luc (see Chapter 1) provided further opportunities for the exhibition of a broad