French Ornament in the Nineteenth Century: Nature, Life, and Form

A lecture duet by Ralph Ghoche (Barnard College) and Estelle Thibault (École nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris-Belleville), moderated by Martin Bressani (McGill University) Inspired by thirteenth-century gothic architecture, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc understood ornament as the medium through which the vital energies of the living world became visible. Ornament distilled the anatomical logic of the plants or animals it imitated, reaching back to primordial, pagan cults of nature and acquiring a regenerative power for the modern age. In this lecture duet—hosted and moderated by _Viollet-le-Duc: Drawing Worlds*_ co-curator Martin Bressani—Ralph Ghoche and Estelle Thibault explore, respectively, the contrasting ornamental philosophies of the Romantic/Eclectic and the Neo-Gothic movements, and the “natural laws” that guided nineteenth century ornamentation design in industrial arts education. Ralph Ghoche is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at Barnard College. He is the author of _Ornament and Symbol in French Romantic Architecture: Simon-Claude Constant-Dufeux,_ published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2025. His current research is centered on French colonial architecture in Algeria during the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the architectural, urban and territorial interventions of the Catholic Church in Algiers. Estelle Thibault is a professor of architectural history and theory at École nationale supérieure d’archite