Political Censorship of the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Arresting Images

This volume provides the reader with a comprehensive summary of the latest findings available on the subject of nineteenth-century continental European censorship of the image. This volume consists of six essays by specialists in the history and art of France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and the Habsburg Empire. The essays deal with the applicable laws, the bureaucratic mechanisms for enforcement, the guidelines and purpose behind the censorship, the means and success of evasion and resistance, and the impact on those directly affected by censorship, such as authors, theater, and directors, as well as the broader society. Although most scholarship on political censorship has focused on the printed word, such as books and newspapers, there is considerable evidence that nineteenth-century European authorities especially feared the impact of visual imagery and censored such materials both more intensively and for longer time periods than was the case with print.

This volume is the most comprehensive ever published on nineteenth-century continental European censorship of the image in any language.

In this comprehensive account of censorship of the visual arts in nineteenth-century Europe, when imagery was accessible to the illiterate in ways that print was not, specialists in the history of the major European countries trace the use of censorship by the authorities to implement their fears of the visual arts, from caricature to cinema.