Jules Michelet: Writing Art and History in Nineteenth-Century France

Jules Michelet, one of France’s most influential historians and a founder of modern historical practice, was a passionate viewer and relentless interpreter of the visual arts. In this book, Michèle Hannoosh examines the crucial role that art writing played in Michelet’s work and shows how it decisively influenced his theory of history and his view of the practice of the historian.

The visual arts were at the very center of Michelet’s conception of historiography. He filled his private notes,...