Realistic Allegories. Artistic Ambitions in Public Monuments by David d’Angers by Tobias Kämpf

The French sculptor Pierre-Jean David (1788–1856) who adopted the name of David d’Angers considered the creation of innovative public monuments the very core of his art and became one of their leading creators in the beginning of modernity. My talk aims at addressing his hitherto unexplored and highly successful conceptual negotiations between two aesthetic conventions his time associated with his preferred genre, the growing request of realistic representation on the one hand and the classicising allegorical tradition and its academic background on the other. It was David’s powerful synthesis that led French public sculpture into the future.

Tobias Kämpf lectures in art history at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg focusing mainly on sculptural artworks and their reception from the Renaissance to the present day. He defended his PhD at the University of Würzburg after graduating with an MA from the Warburg Institute and with a BA with distinction from University College London. His book The Reclining Statue of Saint Cecilia Viewed by an Epoch of Change appeared in German in 2015. His other publications contain studies of Soldani, Cellini, Carpeaux and Rodin as well as aspects of the fin-de-siècle, ranging from esoterism and Japanism to museum foundations in Germany.