Abstract

French naval sculpture under the ancien régime was a significant form of art and architecture that has left almost no trace of its existence. It can however be understood, despite the scarcity of extant objects, by exploring the agents and factors that animated its production, which were legion. These agents and factors in turn were contingent on the intended function of the sculpture, which was tied to: the type and purpose of the warship; the symbolic meaning attributed to the sculptural composition; the sculpture’s decorative style of the time, and; its form and fit as determined by the allotted sculptural space of the hull. Analysis of these criteria will permit greater understanding of what I am calling the production network that surrounded, inhibited, and advanced French naval sculpture as an art form, and how certain rules, which were instrumental in the design and execution of the sculptural composition, conformed to the policy of Versailles at the time. In this dissertation I accomplish this analysis and further this understanding of an important yet under-studied aspect of French art and architecture through careful assessment of the few artefacts on display in naval museums and archival documents. This made it possible to define the production network that governed the practice of naval sculpture and those internal and external agents whose instrumentality ensured its continuation for almost two centuries.