Style de cour, art de cour : historiographie et méthode (encore une fois à partir de Robert Branner et saint Louis)

Abstract

This paper deals with a question of method and asks if the concept of court style is useful and even appropriate to gain a better understanding of art production in a court context. To do so it first analyses the book on Saint Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture by Robert Branner who greatly contributed to impose the notion of a court style to the art historical agenda. Fluctuations and inconsistencies in the definition and use of this idea were already apparent in Branner's stimulating and seminal text and became even greater in following studies. At the same time, a number of scholars raised very cogent arguments to question the assumption that a consistent style promoted by the court ever existed; the very concept of style has been criticized as anachronistic. This article argues that it would be better to set aside the notion of court style and to prefer that of a court art: this would help focus on the varied actors of artistic creation and on the specific conditions of production and use of works of art. While the argument is applied here to art during the reign of Louis ix, it is suggested that similar remarks might fruitfully apply to other courts of the High and Later Middle Ages.