Rodama: a blog of 18th-century & Revolutionary France

A new TV documentary starring the irrepressible Philippe Charlier has recently aired on France 5: this time it is Voltaire, no less, who fin...

Just over sixty years ago the so-called "Branche Verte" was  a conspicuous landmark on the D878  between La Prévière and Juigné-de...

It is the suffering,  finally,  of this young woman of 1796 which has been erected into a sacred phenomenon. Françoise Gründ,  ethnoscénogra...

Woodcut by Pierre-François Godard, engraved in Alençon and dated 1796. From a popular edition of the  Complaintes en l'honneur de Perrin...

The Duke of Württemberg has had the kindness to offer me the château of Montbéliard; I could pass the winters there with all my entourage; b...

 Yes, Messieurs, we live in the century of light ("le siècle des Lumières") and good taste; minds are more enlightened, discernmen...

The Jesuit priest Father Joseph Menoux is remembered today, if at all, chiefly as an adversary of Voltaire. He warrants barely a footnote in...

Joseph Highmore, Painting showing a scene from Richardson's Pamela , 1744.  Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge  ( Wikimedia ) Travel by road ...

Voltaire reading his play  Seminaris  to King Stanislas, lithograph by the 19c Spanish artist, Vicente García de Paredes (1845-1903). Privat...

To enjoy for Christmas.... These gorgeous, beautifully re-imagined, rococo interiors are by Vicente García de Paredes, a Spanish artist who ...