A multitude of artists from all across Europe relocated during the upheavals from the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 to the final collapse of the Empire in 1815. Over the course of these decades, the artistic centers of Paris and Rome, as well as a number of greater and lesser metropoles from Naples to Geneva turned into points of departure for migrants and exiles. Due to the incalculable dynamics of political developments, very few of these migrants directly established themselves in one permanent place. Subject to exceptional conditions, a larger number of artists than ever before instead came to circulate between the urban centers and sub-centers of Europe and the US. This mobility could mean a liberation from academic norms and routines, and result in the mediation of new artistic impulses, but first and foremost the presence of migrant artists from the centers even in the periphery created the conditions for a singular homogeneity of artistic production across borders.

Yet neither the causes and structures of the migration of international artists between 1789 and 1815 nor its impact have received more than scant attention. The research project aims at confronting the established model of separate, national histories of art with a description and an analysis of their dense transnational interrelations amidst political turmoil and war.

Funding and Term of Research

Financed by the German Research Council (DFG), August 2012 – July 2014