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Il faut ruiner un palais pour en faire un objet d'intérêt.
Denis Diderot, Salon de 1767
THE ARTICLE "RUINE" in the Encyclopédie describes the genre in the context of painting as "la représentation d'édifices presque entièrement ruinés. De belles ruines. [...] Ruine ne se dit que des palais, des tombeaux somptueux ou des monuments publics."1 Probably written by Denis Diderot himself, the Encyclopédie's co-editor, this definition points to two essential elements of the eighteenth century's appreciation of the theme and representation of ruins. First, ruins are the remains of grand architecture that is at least supposed to have had an important political or public function. Second, as suggested by the only example of usage of the word "ruines" in the article, "de belles ruines," ruins have a positive aesthetic value attached to them. A higher sensual experience is brought about by the contemplation of the destruction of grandeur.
In the light of these aesthetic sensibilities, as well as in the context of the revolutionary upheaval directly preceding it, Hubert Robert's painting Vue imaginaire de la Grande Galerie en ruines, executed shortly after the end of the Terror, provides a painterly reading of the later eighteenth century's appreciation of ruins of antique grandeur, combining it with an unsettling vision of the recent past and uncertain present. Paired in the 1796 Salon with a much more conventional representation of the Louvre's gallery by the same painter, the Grande Galerie en ruines is part of Robert's extensive series of works showing different projects of the restoration of the run-down, previously magnificent gallery of the erstwhile palace and new national art museum. Yet it cannot be treated simply as one of those projects, just as it cannot be treated simply as a ruine. Here, the Louvre is represented not as a national museum inaugurated by an enlightened revolution, but as the remains of a dying world. Thus, a possible result of the Terror of Year II is put on the canvas as a sublime terror of the kind that had fascinated eighteenth-century philosophers.
The topos of antique ruins has occupied an important place in Western culture since the Renaissance, albeit with a shifting aesthetic focus. Serving more often than not as a monumental backdrop to a scene of religious...