In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic  the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes  with its distinctive institutions and experts  that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority.By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art.

Bernard Lahire is Professor of Sociology at the École Normale Superieure de Lyon. He has published over twenty books, includingThe Plural Actor (Polity 2010).

AcknowledgementsIntroduction. Unravelling a canvasFlights into Egypt: trajectories, rivalries and controversiesBreaking away from legendsCategorised and classified paintings and retrospective illusionsThe real: between material continuity and social discontinuityThe objects of research: status, values and modes of behaviourPulling on a loose threadCodaBook 1. History, domination and social magicChapter 1. Self-evident facts and foundations of beliefsChapter 2. Domination and social magicThe objective forms of dominationA problem hidden beneath the fragmentation of points of viewCapital or symbolic effects?Outline of a general theory of the magic of powerChapter 3. Linked oppositions: dominators/dominated and sacred/profaneA history of the linked transformations of power and the sacredMagic and power in stateless societiesMagic and power in State societiesThe high and the lowPolitical fictions or how man created God in his imageStruggles for the appropriation of the sacredSecularisation, sanctification and the sacred foundations of all societyBook 2. Art, domination, sanctificationChapter 4. The expansion of the domain of the sacred: the emergence of art as an autonomous domain, separate from the profane.Poets and artists, sovereigns and demiurgesThe history of a collective sanctificationFrom relics to works of artThe separation of art and lifeAdmire first, interpret laterBeneath admiration, dominationThe magic of paintingsFables and hoaxesCopies and forgeriesChapter 5. Authentication and attributionWhere to look for scientific truths?The expert: doing things with wordsPerformative act I: the catalogue raisonnéPerformative act II: the exhibitionAttributions and disattributions: controversies and changes of opinionThe history and logic of attributionismScience in the service of the sacredTaking the obvious out of the authenticBook 3. On Poussin and some Flights into EgyptChapter 6. Sublime Poussin: master of French classicismJourney of an artist against time and tide: independence and creative freedomPainter-philosopher and artistOn Poussins successTo art, a nations gratitudeChapter 7. The fabulous destiny of paintings attributed to Nicolas PoussinLinks, associations and changes in statusHistories of paintingsThe painting of a great painter whose talent is decliningOn the trail of an admirable paintingThree canvases resurfaceA growing controversyThe comparison testThe behind the scenes activity of the gallery ownersThe first public recognition of the Pardo versionNew developments: the request for the annulment of the 1986 saleThe acquisition of a national treasureIn search of sponsorsThe magic of a masterpieceThe end of a controversyThe conditions of enchantment and disenchantmentA version without an expertChapter 8. Poussin, science, law and the art marketPoussin in the laboratoryAnalyses of the Piasecka-Johnson versionAnalyses of the Pardo-MBA de Lyon versionPoussin in courtErreur sur la substanceA determining precedent: the case of Olympos and Marsyas or the Saint-Arroman caseThe trial of the other Poussin affairThe price of a paintingChapter 9. How each person plays their gameArt historians: who has the eye?Sir Anthony Blunt (1907-1983)Sir Denis Mahon (1910-2011)Jacques Thuillier (1928-2011)Pierre Rosenberg (1936-)The gallery owners: playing (and losing) the gameA museum director playing (and winning) her gameConclusionsWorking outside the fieldsAt the root of beliefsExposing the invisible monsterA fragile learned gamePost-scriptum. The conditions for scientific creationNotesSummary of information sources consultedBibliographySupplementary BibliographyIndex