At the Louvre, Vivid and Varied Imaginings of Antiquity

PARIS — One of the most challenging shows on art and culture ever put together at the Louvre Museum, “L’Antiquité rêvée” will feed debates long after it closes. Conceived by Marc Fumaroli of the Académie Française and Henri Loyrette, director of the Louvre, the purpose of the exhibition is propounded in a hefty collective volume that makes compelling reading. It analyzes the renewed taste for antiquity in the years 1720 to 1770, the “resistance” that it is supposed to have triggered from about 1760 to 1790 and its culmination in neo-Classicism from 1770 on. The virtue of the show is to reveal the artistic diversity to which the taste for antiquity led in different cultures.