Scale Models and Stables: Form and Function in the Eighteenth-Century Louvre

Though the eighteenth-century Louvre has often been read in a teleological framework for its coming into being as a museum, a closer look at the building’s history reveals how it took on contingent functions throughout the century, its empty form inviting new uses while resisting others. Accounts of the palace’s decrepit state depended upon whether one saw it as a symbol of royal power or as a building to be used by the people of France, a monument to the nation. Ultimately, the image of an abandoned Louvre was itself the product of an eighteenth-century century historiographical tradition.