The Perfect Foil: Franois-Andr Vincent and the Revolution in French Painting

(Paperback)

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Art history is haunted by the foil: the dark star whose diminished luster sets off another's brilliance. Relegated to this role by modern historians of Revolutionary-era French art, Franois-Andr Vincent (17461816) is chiefly viewed in the reflection of his contemporary, Jacques-Louis David. The Perfect Foil frees Vincent from this distorting mirror. Offering a nuanced and historically accurate account of Vincent's life and work, Elizabeth C. Mansfield reveals the artist's profound influence on the visual culture of the French Revolutionand, paradoxically, on the art historical narrative that would consign him to obscurity.

Reviews

"Elizabeth Mansfields The Perfect Foil is a remarkable piece of scholarship that both transcends and transforms the genre of the art historical monograph. It is a sophisticated work that expands the way we conceive of how the visual arts and politics interacted during the French Revolution. Mansfields provocative and methodological surefootedness will make readers aware of the contingencies that inform their own thinking." Julie Anne Plax, author of Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth Century France

Author Bio

Elizabeth C. Mansfield is associate professor of art history at New York University. Her book Too Beautiful to Picture, also from Minnesota, received the College Art Associations Charles Rufus Morey Book Award in 2008.