Idolatry and Sculpture in Ancien Regime France

Many texts and visual images produced in France from the later seventeenth century through the mid-eighteenth displayed a concern with idolatry. Literary figures from La Fontaine to Voltaire, ecclesiastics including Bossuet and Jurieu, and antiquarians and theorists of art such as Charles Perrault, La Font de Saint-Yenne and Antoine Le Mierre also associated the worship of false gods with sculpture. Bound up with interest in ancient and non- European mores and forms of worship, the idolatry-sculpture linkage also fed into contemporary political and religious debates. Huguenots, Jansenists, and philosophes utilized the connection to assist in promoting their views. Several public political and religious monuments appear to have been created partly in reaction to their charges.