Law and Art in the 19th Century. Power in Images

This volume deals with the figurative representation of law and power in the 19th Century, emphasising the importance of images and, thus, of the iconographic representation of themes and concepts pivotal to law in 19th-century Europe. The twenty collected contributions examine multiple topics connected to different forms of artistic expression and investigate how painting, sculpture, and architecture reproduced a peculiar vision of law and power, sometimes to amplify its importance, sometimes to formulate an open critique. The volume analyses a series of case studies to focus, with a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, on the ways in which the emergence of a new juridical experience in 19th-century Europe led to the replacement – or re-semanticisation – of symbols and images traditionally associated with law and power, in order to express and propose to the society of the time a new conception of the law.