Huysmans the prefacer Milestones in the history of sacred art in the nineteenth century

This article considers Huysmans’ prefaces to Dutilliet’s Petit Catéchisme liturgique and Abbé Broussolle’s La Jeunesse du Pérugin et les origines de l’École ombrienne. It puts the importance of the author’s role in politicizing the aesthetic debates on “sacred art” into perspective and restores the complexity of a notion that evolved during the nineteenth century.