Images

Portrait of Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (1727-1794), oil on canvas painting by an unknown artist, c. 1770-1794. Palace of Versailles.

Portrait of Louis XVI of France, oil on canvas painting by Antoine-François Callet, 1786. Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

Portrait depicting Jacques Necker (1732-1804), Genevan banker and popular finance minister under King Louis XVI of France prior to the French Revolution. His dismissal in 1789 was one of the catalysts for the Storming of the Bastille on 14...

A lit de justice on 12 September 1715 in the presence of King Louis XV of France, against the Parlement of Paris. Power struggles between royal and parlement authority would continue up until the French Revolution abolished both monarchy...

Portrait of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802), Controller-General under King Louis XVI of France, oil on canvas, painted by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1784. Royal Collection of the British royal family.

The meeting of the Assembly of Notables of 1787 in Versailles, engraving by Claude Niquet, late 18th century. National Archives, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France.

Title page of Defending Clerical Marriage (1524), an open letter by reformer and theologian Katharina Zell (nee Schütz, l. 1497-1562).

Home of Matthäus and Katharina Zell, illustration by Henri Armand-Delille, 1902. National University Library of Strasbourg.

An 1873 oil on canvas painting, The Cotton Market, New Orleans (aka The Cotton Office), by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. The scene shows a busy office with 13 people, including buyers, brokers, and office layabouts...

An 1874 oil on canvas painting, The Dance Class, by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the French impressionist painter. The expert conducting the class, probably an examination in the Paris Opera, is Jules Perrot (1810-1892). The scene is one that...