Funerary Arts and Tomb Cult: Living with the Dead in France, 1750–1870 by Suzanne Glover Lindsay (review)

How should we commemorate prominent people when they die, and what do our choices say about society’s ideals and values? ‘Statuemania’ offers the most emphatic form of public commemoration for fallen greats during France’s post-Revolutionary period. At its peak during the early Third Republic, and studied notably by scholars such as Maurice Agulhon and June Hargrove, statuemania erected myriad monuments to deceased glories from across civic and cultural life. Always posthumous tributes, yet separate from burial sites, these monuments graced public places throughout France, especially Paris. Suzanne Glover Lindsay’s new book ponders instead a rarer, in many ways more problematic, form: the funerary effigy, considered within the broader context of ‘funerary arts’ and French society’s evolving attitudes towards ‘living with the dead’, during a time of profound social, cultural, and political change, from the mid-eighteenth century to the Second Empire. Glover begins with transformations of the funerary cult in France across this period, from the rise of centralized public cemeteries like Père-Lachaise, to the growing prestige of ‘famous corpses’, whether historical figures like Henri IV or contemporaries like Napoléon, to the marked politicization of funerals and tombs. She continues with rites, burials, and funerary monuments for prominent figures in eighteenth-century France — the Dauphin and Dauphine, the Comte d’Harcourt, Maurice de Saxe, Mirabeau, Voltaire, Lepelletier — examining how these unfolded amid the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary periods’ dislocations, debate over the role of sculpture and architecture in posthumous civic apotheosis, and emergence in particular of the Panthéon as a controversial repository of the celebrated dead. The remaining chapters focus on modern versions of the traditional gisant, or recumbent funerary effigy: David d’Angers’s tomb of Général Bonchamps, tombs for members of Louis-Philippe’s family, projects for Napoléon’s tomb, preceding and following the Retour des cendres, and — the book’s centrepiece — Rude and Christophe’s tomb for Cavaignac. Glover is at her best scrutinizing the intertwined aesthetic, cultural, political, and philosophical implications of these latter-day gisants. However, despite her subtle and well-informed readings, one questions the greater relevance and impact of such effigies — ‘rare and atypical for the period’ (p. 12), as she admits. For example, she asserts, ‘[t]hough apparently never executed, [Rude’s] corpse project for Napoléon marks a critical milestone’ (p. 169). Yet how influential could an unexecuted monument be? In a larger sense, there are gaps between Glover’s careful analysis of selected works, and efforts to situate these within broader historical and cultural contexts. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the nature of the modern gisant, an exceptional rather than emblematic form. Perhaps tensions between specific and general reflect parts unevenly integrated into the whole, over her study’s long evolution. Still, this well-researched, thoughtful book contributes to our understanding of the gisant figure’s intriguing if limited revival, and to ongoing reflections about commemorative practices, sculpture in particular, the workings of historical memory, and the place of the dead in modern France.