Word: 18th
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Still, an artist deserves to be judged on his best work, and the idea that Reni was just a painter of saccharine devotional figures does not stand up. He will never get back on the pedestal he occupied in the 17th and 18th centuries, alongside Raphael. But there was a distinct grandeur in Reni, which his sometimes irksome professional smoothness served, and it is still perceptible today...
...azure-and-gilt hot-air balloon, a reproduction of an 18th century model, wafted skyward in a "salute to liberty" as thousands of spectators gathered in the Tuileries Gardens last January for the official launch of the bicentennial of the French Revolution. The Republican Guard played a fanfare. An actor solemnly read the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen...
...surface, at least, that of a united nation celebrating its glorious past with the hoopla of a spectacular Bastille Night parade and sound-and-light show down the Champs Elysees. Already, merchants are hawking underwear decorated with little guillotines. French television is reveling in soap-opera love affairs between 18th century aristocrats and commoners. Villages across France are dressing up their summer festivals in blue, white...
...class struggle," wrote historian Claude Mazauric in the Communist Party newspaper L'Humanite. "The message of 1789 . . . is to build a society unconstrained by multinational capitalism." SOS-Racisme, a civil rights group, for example, will celebrate with a rally for Toussaint L'Ouverture, a former slave who led an 18th century Haitian rebellion against French colonialism. A group of prominent Parisian socialists is agitating to rename part of the Rue St.-Honore after Robespierre. "All revolutions have excesses," explains former Health Minister Leon Schwarzenberg, "and any revolution without them must be considered suspect." But so far Robespierre's defenders have...
...tastes became more refined, sensuous dining did the trick. Richelieu (the 18th century duke, not, thank heaven, the Cardinal) gave elegant little suppers for his friends and their mistresses, all of whom dined in the buff. Madame de Pompadour got interesting results with truffles. Brillat-Savarin, the French jurist and gastronome, found that the truffle "makes women more amiable and men more amorous." Rabelais, on the other hand, got his kicks from marzipan...