The Sun King at Sea Offers New Perspective on Art, Power, and Slavery in Louis XIV’s France

This new title from the Getty Research Institute reorients the study of this era to focus on maritime art, enslaved labor, and Mediterranean conflict

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The Sun King at Sea

Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV's France

Authors

Meredith Martin, Gillian Weiss

The Sun King at Sea book cover
Oct 04, 2021

Mediterranean maritime art and the forced labor on which it depended were fundamental to the politics and propaganda of France’s King Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715).

Yet most studies of French art in this period focus on Paris and Versailles, overlooking the presence or portrayal of galley slaves on the kingdom’s coasts. By examining a wide range of artistic productions—ship design, artillery sculpture, medals, paintings, and prints—Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss uncover a vital aspect of royal representation and unsettle a standard picture of art and power in early modern France.

With an abundant selection of startling images, many never before published, The Sun King at Sea (Getty Research Institute, $60) emphasizes the role of esclaves turcs (enslaved Turks)—rowers who were captured or purchased from Islamic lands—in building and decorating ships and other art objects that circulated on land and by sea to glorify the Crown. Challenging the notion that human bondage vanished from continental France, this cross-disciplinary volume invites a reassessment of servitude as a visible condition, mode of representation, and symbol of sovereignty during Louis XIV’s reign.

Author Information

Meredith Martin is an associate professor at New York University. She is an art historian specializing in French art, architecture, empire, and intercultural exchange from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries.

Gillian Weiss is a professor at Case Western Reserve University. She is a historian specializing in early modern France, its relations with the Islamic world, and Mediterranean slavery.

Endorsements

“This is not only an original and archivally rich study but also an unsettling and necessary one. The authors combine rigorous historical research with fresh and insightful visual analysis to chronicle the violence, coercion, and suppression that underpinned the fabric of Louis XIV’s navy and the diplomatic, material, and symbolic structures of his reign. Martin and Weiss’s book is a must-read for all students and scholars of the Sun King’s court as well as those interested in slavery, maritime power, and society in early modern Europe.”

— Mark Ledbury, Director of the Power Institute, The University of Sydney

“A dazzling collection of early modern artworks and a major interdisciplinary achievement between social history and art history that uncovers, for the first time, how and why the French Sun King Louis XIV shaped his propaganda on the enslavement of Mediterranean Muslims. A masterpiece!”

— M’hamed Oualdi, Sciences Po, Paris

“An indispensable and original book that centers the Mediterranean Sea in the visual and ornamental imaginary of the so-called Grand Siècle; interprets maritime vessels as pluralistic micro-societies and vehicles of royal propaganda; and locates the roots of Orientalism in an early-modern Turquerie complicated by the longstanding presence of slavery and Islam in France. A must-read!”

— Anne Lafont, directrice d'études à l'EHESS

"Superbly illustrated, The Sun King at Sea is a tour de force of the historical imagination that deploys the resources of social and cultural history and of material and visual culture to reveal and portray the enslavement of Muslims for Louis XIV’s Mediterranean galley fleet. Martin and Weiss’s approach to a disturbing subject too long hidden in plain sight is unflinchingly illuminating yet humane."

— Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London

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