Diderot in the Painter’s Space

Abstract

By responding to Grimm’s requests, Diderot consented to write about art at the Salon of 1759 for the readers of the Correspondence littéraire. An order to deliver? Absolutely; but, finishing the theoretical and practical adventures of a new theater, the circumstances, and the brilliant vintaged spectacle of the squared Salon was convenient to Diderot and it could provide a foil for him. He would get a taste for this; he would return to but not without grumbling about an even greater task which an abundance of ideas made even more difficult to decide. The occasion offered Diderot to speak as he liked to speak: to a specific person, at a specific moment, in front of a series of specific objects, whilst thinking of listeners’ at distances in space and time. All pretexts were primed, and first of all the challenge that the “silent” arts defy speech and the occasion to answer by allowing the painters, sculptors to quarrel on their ways of translating into images poets, dramatists and historians…

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0062-8_13