Univ., Habil.-Schr.--Münster (Westfalen), 2004. / Literaturverz. S. [340] - 355.

Le présent travail de thèse portant sur la vie et l’œuvre de Carl Ludwig Fernow a pour principal objectif de présenter sous un jour nouveau la genèse de ses idées sur la théorie de l’art, aussi à l’égard des aspects socioculturels et anthropologiques de son temps. Pour ce qui est des principaux axes de recherche, on tentera, dans un premier temps, de reconstruire les sources philosophiques ayant nourri sa pensée esthétique et surtout les écrits de Kant, de Schiller et de Winckelmann, tout en opérant une sélection des textes les plus importants. Puis, nous nous demanderons, dans un deuxième temps, dans quelle mesure les monographies d’artistes de Fernow comportent des élans sociocritiques, se dirigeant non seulement contre la politique de formation des académies, mais également contre l’hétéronomie de la production artistique de son temps. Cet aspect sera envisagé sous la forme d’une comparaison de la monographie d’Arioste à celles d’Antonio Canova et d’Asmus Jakob Carstens. La troisième partie sera consacrée à une présentation synthétique des idées esthétiques de Fernow, afin d’évaluer, de façon cohérente et sous un nouveau jour, de l’originalité de sa conception de l’art autonome. / AThe main target of the present study is to reconstruct the genesis of the esthetical ideas of the German art theoretician and writer Carl Ludwig Fernow (1763-1808), whose work and intellectual importance has been recently rediscovered and revalued by several researches. Carl Ludwig Fernow’s name is particularly related to the art discussion of the so called “Weimarian art friends”, the circle of amateurs of beauty who assembled very famous members and personalities such as Goethe, Schiller and Meyer. However, Fernow has always acted in the shadow of these main actors, trying to make him known as an author. Thus, quite a number of his publications and articles in German appeared in German well known revues such as “The Propylees”, “The new Mercury” or “The journal of fashion and luxury” have never been touched a large public, but still would merit a closer look, based on a reexamination of the role he played for the formation of the movement of art’s autonomy, in order to show his art theory, resuming his main ideas and concepts concerning the character, the ideal of beauty and the enthusiasm of the artiste, which he personally considered as the principal components of genuine art expression representing the key to real artistic creation.

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 Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars goes hand in hand with the precariousness of representation during the same period, it reframes prevailing readings of royal portraiture in the aftermath of the French Revolution by approaching the genre less as one defined by the oneway propagation of a message, and more as a highly unstable intermedial network of representation. This theoretical undertaking is refracted through the figure of Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples (1752-1814), close sister and foil to Queen Marie- Antoinette of France, and who, as de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Naples, physically survived revolution but was twice dethroned and thrice exiled. A diverse ecology of royal portraiture revolving around Maria Carolina is presented across five case studies. Close attention to the materiality of a hyperrealistic wax bust of Maria Carolina reveals how portraiture absorbed the trauma of the French Revolution; Maria Carolina’s correspondence in invisible ink is used as a tool to read a highly distinctive visual language of 'hidden' silhouettes of sovereigns and to explore the in/visibility of exile; a novel reading of Antonio Canova's work for the Neapolitan Bourbons through the lens of contemporary caricature problematizes the binary between ancien régime and parvenue monarchy; and a unique miniature of Maria Carolina offers itself as a material metaphor for post-revolutionary sovereignty. Finally, Maria Carolina’s death mask testifies to how Maria Carolina herself became a relic of the ancien régime.