Styles of Sovereignty

Through the lens of monarchical image-making, this doctoral research offers a critical outlook onto late seventeenth-century Anglo-French political and artistic relations. Anchored in the tradition of English academic discourse, it explores the influence of French royal image-making on English monarchies at the turn of the eighteenth century. The study investigates the relevance of Louis XIV to English royal iconography during the reigns of William III and Queen Anne across a wide range of source material - from panegyric and portraiture, to medals, sculpture, and architecture. In doing so, it foregrounds the intricate interplay between political communication and different forms of artistic imagination in the early modern period. The study conceptualises the relation between post-revolutionary English monarchical image-making and its French counterpart as one of contest with and emancipation from French influence. It argues that English post-revolutionary image-making, not only mirrored, but actively contributed to the decline of the Ludovican monarchical model, whilst maintaining the figure of the monarch as central to public political discourse.