Troubadour style

Even while exhuming the remains of the kings and putting on the market a multitude of objects, works of art and elements of medieval architecture, the revolutionaries brought them back to life, it could be said.

Later, from the Bourbon Restoration and under the impulse of Quatremère de Quincy and Mérimée, a new tradition of teaching architecture put it back under the fine arts umbrella, in the margins of the declining official school, beginning with private workshops that behaved as diocesan architects working for historic monuments that would give rise to the Société Centrale des Architectes and make Troubador-style architecture possible.

Napoleon himself did not disdain this artistic current: he took as his emblem the golden beehive on the grave of the Merovingian king Childeric I, rediscovered in the 17th century, and saw himself as the heir of the French monarchy.

The Waverley Novels of Walter Scott were hugely popular across Europe, and a major influence on both painting and French novelists such as Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo.

Ingres' Death of Leonardo da Vinci in the arms of King Francois I of France is one of several works bringing rulers and artists together.

The peak period was brought to an end by the Revolution of 1848, and later the arrival of Realism, although the style arguably merged into late 19th-century academic painting.

Thanks to its moving subject matter, the painting was an enormous success – seeing it, David cried "This resembles nothing anyone else has done, it's a new effect of colour; the figure is charming and full of expression, and this green curtain thrown across this window renders the illusion complete".

[9] A fashion for medieval architecture may be seen throughout 19th century Europe, originating in England, and a blooming of the Neogothic style, but in France this remains limited to certain 'feudal' buildings in the parks surrounding châteaux.

After the Troubadour style disappeared in painting, around the time of the 1848 French Revolution,[10] it continued (or re-emerged) in architecture, the decorative arts, literature and theatre.