Louis XIV was a man like any other, but the money and attention spent on his public image by the French government transformed him into a divine figure. In this fascinating book, an internationally renowned historian provides a retrospective on the modern representations of Louis XIV and shows how the creation of the royal image illuminates the relationship between art and power. Images of Louis XIV include hundreds of oil paintings and engravings, approximately three hundred medals struck to commemorate the major events of his reign, statues and bronzes, as well as theatrical plays, ballets (in which the king often appeared on stage), operas, odes, sermons, official newspapers and stories, fireworks, fountains, and tapestries. Through an analysis of these representations as well as preserved documents, Peter Burke demonstrates the conscious effort to "invent" the king's image and reveals how the oversight of the royal image was assigned to a committee, the so-called little academy. This book is not only a captivating chronological study of the mechanics of a king's image production during a seventy-year reign but also an exploration of the nature of cultural construction. Burke discusses the propaganda element underlying the image production process, the manipulation of the media of the tenth praise (oral, visual, and textual) and their codes (literary and artistic), as well as the intended audience and its reception. He compares and contrasts the public image of Louis with that of other rulers from Augustus to modern American presidents.
