Abstract

Between 1819 and 1822, painter Pierre Prévost exhibited in Paris his panoramas of Jerusalem and Athens, in a lively cultural and political climate. The article analyzes the double exhibition event by considering it as a catalyst for media flows related to renewals of the travel imaginary, the aesthetic and commercial implications of ephemeral spectacles, and, finally, the practices and forms of public sociability. From such an angle, on the other hand, emerge the political fallout of a far from neutral choice, that of «transporting» to the epicenter of European Restoration two highly symbolic places identifiable as the cradle of Christianity and civilization, subject, however, to the Ottoman Empire. The connections with the Eastern question make the exhibitions a key moment in the fortunes of the panoramas and the spectacularization of the Nineteenth-century «new politics».