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attention to his patronage. 18 Within the last twenty years, several studies have revised this<br />

picture <strong>of</strong> the king, arguing instead that he was a self-sufficient leader with an active artistic<br />

policy. 19 In 1992 Anne Le pas de Sécheval wrote a doctoral thesis, based largely on archival<br />

documents, cataloging the king’s patronage <strong>of</strong> the <strong>arts</strong>, including several <strong>of</strong> the churches<br />

presented in this study. 20 A few years later Marc Fumaroli wrote an article abut the king’s<br />

rejection <strong>of</strong> the last scene <strong>of</strong> a tapestry series designed by Peter Paul Rubens representing the Life<br />

<strong>of</strong> Constantine, arguing that Louis viewed the image as a threat to his temporal authority. 21 Each<br />

<strong>of</strong> these works is critical in establishing that Louis XIII had an interest in the patronage <strong>of</strong> the<br />

<strong>arts</strong> <strong>and</strong> that he was aware <strong>of</strong> its power to convey political messages.<br />

Several studies have been devoted to individual Parisian churches dating to the<br />

seventeenth century, providing invaluable archival material in addition to reconstructing the<br />

buildings’ original form. 22 A few <strong>of</strong> these focus on the influence <strong>of</strong> individual patrons, moving<br />

beyond personal religious concerns to show that ambition <strong>and</strong> political ideals drove the<br />

construction <strong>of</strong> the building. 23 One such study that considers a church covered in this work is<br />

Martin Schieder’s essay on Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, which argues that Louis XIII’s patronage<br />

<strong>of</strong> the church played a role in the formation <strong>of</strong> the absolutist <strong>state</strong> <strong>and</strong> helped to legitimize the<br />

Bourbon dynasty. While this work is valuable because it places the building within the political<br />

context <strong>of</strong> early modern France, it ignores Louis XIII’s early involvement with the Oratory <strong>and</strong><br />

Saint-Louis-des-Jésuites by suggesting that Notre-Dame-des-Victoires was the first church<br />

supported by the king.<br />

By far, the architectural projects <strong>of</strong> the Society <strong>of</strong> Jesus have received the most scholarly<br />

attention <strong>of</strong> the religious groups discussed here. Within the vast field <strong>of</strong> literature, scholars have<br />

traditionally focused on two themes: viewing the Gesù, the mother church <strong>of</strong> the order in Rome,<br />

as the prototypical example <strong>of</strong> Counter-Reformation church design <strong>and</strong> arguing for <strong>and</strong> against<br />

the idea that the Jesuits imposed a monolithic artistic <strong>and</strong> architectural program on all <strong>of</strong> their<br />

commissions throughout the world. Recent scholarship has done much to answer these issues by<br />

finding that the Society developed numerous solutions for the appropriate Catholic Reformation<br />

church, <strong>and</strong> that instead <strong>of</strong> having an institutional approach to design, it allowed factors such as<br />

regional styles <strong>and</strong> preferences <strong>and</strong> the influence <strong>of</strong> non-Jesuit patrons to determine the final<br />

project. 24<br />

7

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