The sovereignty of the royal portrait in revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe: five case studies surrounding Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples

Thesis

This study demonstrates how royal portraiture functioned during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars as a vehicle for visualizing and processing the contemporary political upheavals. It does so by considering a notion of the 'sovereignty of the portrait', that is, the semiotic integrity (or precisely the lack thereof) and the material territory of royal portraiture at this historical juncture. Working from an assumption that the precariousness of sovereignty which delineated the Revolutionar...

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Authors: Goudie, A; Allison Jessica Isabel Goudie

• Publication date: 2014
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: Oxford University, UK
• Language: English
• Keywords: Queen of Naples; death masks; silhouettes; Kingdom of Naples; Antonio Canova; wax portraiture; Maria Carolina; espionage; Napoleonic Wars; caricature; French Revolution; Royal portraits; miniatures; portraiture
• Subjects: History of Britain and Europe; Fine art; Painting & paintings; Art