A continuous and intricate relationship between statuary and politics is a given within the history of sculpture because of the interest on the part of patrons and rulers, in particular, in projecting and perpetuating images of power, whether in public spaces during their lifetimes, or as means of commemorating their achievements after death. The quest to control the representation and reception of a ruler's image and to define the ideological terms in which that ruler should be discussed, even in the eye of posterity, is a central aspect to the history of art. However, it is less obvious that philosophy and political thought in particular should be linked with the history of sculpture, especially given the relatively lowly place accorded to sculptors within the artistic hierarchy, focused as they were more on the technical challenges of their craft than on abstract reflection about its ideological significance or potential impact on shaping public opinion.

This position began to shift during the middle decades of the eighteenth century in both Britain and France when sculpture became caught up in the ideological self-fashioning of both the neo-Augustan British commercial empire and similar less successful attempts by successive French rulers to promote a secular patriotic identity based on French history. Its prominence as an element in debates over the formation and preservation of civic and patriotic identity brought it into the purview of political philosophers who were already preoccupied with the paradoxes of enlightened absolutism.