I'm interested in other examples of this besides the most famous, in Madame Bovary. If you haven't read it, or need a reminder, Flaubert begins by grounding the narrator as a fellow student of Charles Bovary, but within a few pages the narrator fades completely into the background, the narration becomes more godlike and removed, describing scenes which the individual in the beginning could not possibly have seen. I know there must be other examples, I feel I have probably read a few but they don't immediately come to mind.
What I find exciting and artistic about this choice is that it functions as a kind of free indirect discourse sort of, but on a grander level than what is typical. If you read Madame Bovary always remembering the disappearing narrator, there are a few passages which take on a certain mysterious beauty because it's like the narrator seems to speak more subjectively, to appear again, like he slips back into this ever so slight sentimentality, which seems more human, more like the beginning, and you can't tell for certain if this is Flaubert speaking as the author, as the limited narrator of the first few pages, or if it is the tone which the novel is more known for, that impassive, removed, Demiurge-like figure who seems to look down on the characters with a bemused cruelty.
Is there any interesting criticism about the purpose or intention behind it? I want to believe it's more than just authors partaking in the conventions of the novel writers of their time.