Browse Items (202 total)

Philosopher Immanuel Kant defined the Enlightenment, an 18th century intellectual movement, as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed…inability to use…understanding without another’s guidance” (Jacob 203). Kant argues that there are two ways to use…

The painting is of a London coffeehouse during the Enlightenment in the late 17th century. England was famous for its coffeehouses during the time. These places were public spheres where men (women were excluded) would exchange ideas and join…

Italian economic political theory played an important role during the age of crisis and throughout the enlightenment. Economic theorist Ferdinando Galiani focuses on Value and Interest theory as well as Economic Policy (Ferdinando). He specifically…

The Kunstkamera is Russia's first museum, established by Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. The edifice was designed in the Petrine baroque style that dominated the constructions of Peter's reign, based on Dutch architectural styles of the era.…

The Chateau Ferney-Voltaire was the home of Voltaire, one of the French Enlightenment's most memorable and illustrious figures, from 1759 until his death in 1778. When Voltaire acquired the property, the 12th century manor house was in ruins, and the…

Neoclassical architecture, which looked not to the Renaissance for its inspiration as the preceding baroque and rococo styles had, but instead to the classical world, was Enlightenment philosophy realized as marble and glass. Like their counterparts…

Jean-Jacques Rousseau political theories were constructed off the foundation of Italian political thought. Throughout Rousseau’s historical and political writing, it is clear he is trying to present a favorable view of Machiavellian philosophy and he…

The papacy of Clement IX lasted only thirty months, from the summer of 1667 to December 1669. His papacy is primarily remembered if at all for a truce of sorts in the Jansenist controversy, discussed later in this exhibit, but Clement IX was also…

Created sometime around the plague outbreak, this set of engravings show the suffering and response of Roman authorities to the spread of disease through the city in 1656. Rome, like the rest of Italy, underwent steep population and economic decline…

In the face of a proliferation of Protestant books and other writings across the European continent, the papacy created the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, “the Index of Banned Books.” By outlawing the ownership and reading of works that expressed…

Le Petit Trianon is a château on the Palace of Versailles grounds. Its construction started in 1758 under the order of Louis XV and was completed in 1768 by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, one of Louis XV's favorite architects during the time period. Gabriel's…