Today, titles on and next to art objects in museums, collections, exhibitions and catalogs as well as their use in art criticism, art scientific discourse and media reporting are omnipresent. That wasn't always the case: for a long time, paintings and sculptures with traditional motifs from religion, history and mythology were sufficiently understandable even without titles. Why, when and under what circumstances were titles created?
The so-called livrets – the exhibition catalogs of the Paris Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture – provide an answer to this question. The art academy, founded in 1648 under the rule of Louis Due to their long, continuous series of publications, the livrets with the list of the respective exhibition objects are an excellent source for the diachronic examination of the origins of the title. These first exhibition catalogs of contemporary art in Europe have not yet been the subject of a systematic evaluation from the point of view of title.
The genesis of the title shows a gradual transition from detailed descriptions of the exhibited works to concise short titles: The emergence of new, previously unknown image motifs, the development of the art market and the beginning of art criticism required and encouraged the development of short, easy-to-read titles that facilitated a quick identification of the work's content as well as the art theoretical discourse about the artist and the work:
From the middle of the 18th century, the art-interested public understood the naming of the exhibition objects in the salon guide as a title - the title had applied to the pictures.
Given the Académie's outstanding position in European art and cultural life, it had a role model effect: the salon and its title paved the way not only for the first museums in France, but also for the beginning of the modern art world.
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