Sculpture in the city and the cemetery : the formation of political identities in Paris and PĂšre Lachaise 1789-1853
During the first half of the Nineteenth Century the dynamic of public commemoration was largely played out in the Parisian cemetery rather than in the capital. Particularly at PĂšre Lachaise, most of the social and political changes of the capital below were mirrored and to a certain degree, the political identities of the living were actively being formulated through the erection of monuments. The purpose of this work is to illustrate, through a number of examples, that dynamic between city and cemetery. Late eighteenth-century legislation and debates evolved to allow a variety of socio-political groups the opportunity of carving out their own spheres of identity and status in the cemetery. Like ideas about death and religious beliefs, previously used as the basis for a collective analysis of funeral monuments, this establishment of socioeconomic and political identities may be perceived as a unifying function for a seemingly disparate group of monuments. During the Restoration, Parisian monuments dedicated to Louis XVI, urban and religious in nature, functioned in direct contrast to the essentially secular, extra-mural and relatively democratic space of PĂšre Lachaise promoting the cemetery as a space for
Pantano, Nadine A.
Public statutes; Monuments; Parisian cemeteries
Sculpture in the city and the cemetery : the formation of political identities in Paris and PĂšre Lachaise 1789-1853. During the first half of the Nineteenth Century the dynamic of public commemoration was largely played out in the Parisian cemetery rather than in the capital. Particularly at PĂšre Lachaise, most of the social and political changes of the capital below were mirrored and to a certain degree, the political identities of the living were actively being formulated through the erection of monuments. The purpose of this work is to illustrate, through a number of examples, that dynamic between city and cemetery. Late eighteenth-century legislation and debates evolved to allow a variety of socio-political groups the opportunity of carving out their own spheres of identity and status in the cemetery. Like ideas about death and religious beliefs, previously used as the basis for a collective analysis of funeral monuments, this establishment of socioeconomic and political identities may be perceived as a unifying function for a seemingly disparate group of monuments. During the Restoration, Parisian monuments dedicated to Louis XVI, urban and religious in nature, functioned in direct contrast to the essentially secular, extra-mural and relatively democratic space of PĂšre Lachaise promoting the cemetery as a space for
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