Antonio Baldassarre

The Politics of Images Considerations on French Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Art (ca.1800 – ca.1880) as a Paradigm of Narration and Translation

This paper combines the analysis that emerged from the encounters between nineteenth-century French artists and the “Orient” with considerations on methodological issues that – almost inevitably – arise when dealing with visual source material in such a context. Regarding the latter topic, the perspective includes visual sources “narrating” twentieth-century and current Western perceptions of the “Orient.” The in-depth examination of these encounters reveals many points of mutual reference. Visual language and the corresponding codes and symbols realized by French nineteenth-century orientalist artists referred, in a double-bind manner, to both supposed orient “narratives” and modes of translation dependent on their own cultural traditions and contexts amalgamated with specific agendas, not only of a political but also of an artistic nature.1