Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

ANCIEN RÉGIME
Though literally meaning the ‘old’ or ‘former’ regime, and describing
the French aristocratic and political system of absolute rule
established from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, the term
ancien régime has become synonymous with the years immediately
preceding the French Revolution. It evokes in particular Louis XVI
and Marie-Antoinette, whose dazzling court life at the Palace of
Versailles epitomised an era of astonishing, sophisticated luxury,
frivolity and refinement. The epoch also embraces the Age of
Enlightenment, when radical new propositions about the nature of
mankind, and the use of reason to investigate and understand the
world, challenged the dogmatic rule of the Church and encouraged
the evolution of modern science and the secular, democratic state.
Under the ancien régime, French society was divided into the
Three Estates. The First Estate comprised the privileged clergy
and the Second the equally privileged nobility – though only a tiny
percentage of the population, together they owned most of the
land and were exempt from taxes. The Third Estate encompassed
the rest of France (some 25 million people in the early eighteenth
century), largely peasants living in gnawing poverty, as well as a
growing bourgeoisie who, despite their increasing wealth,
were heavily taxed and had no status within the regime.
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