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A museum of souvenirs

2015; Oxford University Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jhc/fhv002

1477-8564

Anca I. Lasc,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

This essay examines the collection of copies after Renaissance artworks amassed by Adolphe Thiers in the private office ( cabinet ) of his hôtel particulier throughout the nineteenth century. It studies the varied techniques of reproduction that Thiers employed to build and – after the Commune – rebuild his collection in order to understand the multiple meanings that these copies held for their owner. Unlike photograph albums of Italian masterpieces, widely available from the 1860s, small-scale reproductions of Italian Renaissance works of art in watercolour or marble filled Thiers’ museum as a means of recording and bringing to mind his personal experiences as a traveller to the Italian peninsula and of restoring Renaissance originals – through their copies – to former glory. The reproductions purchased or commissioned by Thiers can thus be compared to what Siegfried Kracauer has termed ‘memory images’ – souvenirs of a past long-gone, mementos of a geographically-remote present and, at the same time, reminders of personal experiences.