In this book the author explores the sociological foundations of domestic design in eighteenth-century France, the acknowledged leader of domestic architecture in this period. Focusing on the Place Vendôme, which was developed by the financiers of Paris, she examines the representational strategies and dilemmas of French elites, which were crucial to the formation of a French mode of design. Through analyses of social distinctions and ambitions, Ziskin explores the manner in which the dwellings of the Place Vendôme embodied beliefs about the nature of society and the appropriate relations among social groups.

The turn of the eighteenth century was a period of transition in France, a time when new but contested concepts of modernity emerged in virtually every cultural realm. The rigidity of the state's consolidation of the arts in the late seventeenth century yielded to a more vibrant and diverse cultural life, and Paris became, once again, the social and artistic capital of the wealthiest nation in Europe. In Sheltering Art, Rochelle Ziskin explores private art collecting, a primary facet of that newly decentralized artistic realm and one increasingly embraced by an expanding social elite as the century wore on. During the key period when Paris reclaimed its role as the nexus of cultural and social life, two rival circles of art collectors--with dissonant goals and disparate conceptions of modernity--competed for preeminence. Sheltering Art focuses on these collectors, their motivations for collecting art, and the natures of their collections. An ambitious study, it employs extensive archival research in its examination of the ideologies associated with different strategies of collecting in eighteenth-century Paris and how art collecting was inextricably linked to the shaping of social identities.