This book is Michel Comte’s personal analysis of the neoclassical style. Employing an eclectic approach including original photos, reproductions of neoclassical treasures, and reworked images of masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s Pietà and Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon, Comte traces the classical aesthetic and its rebirth as the neoclassic throughout the ages. From the Parthenon to Gianni Versace’s designs, from Bernini to Albert Speer’s Reich Chancellery, the style has persisted and transformed itself again and again, as empires rose and fell around it. In Comte’s words, the neoclassic demonstrates a “dream of perfection,” one we are seduced by even as we know its danger: “History tells us that ‘grandeur’ is destined to fail.”