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DECORATING KNOWLEDGE: THE ORNAMENTAL BOOK, THE PHILOSOPHIC IMAGE AND THE NAKED TRUTH
Author(s) -
Sheriff Mary
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.0141-6790.2005.00459.x
Subject(s) - fable , art history , portrait , art , the arts , interpretation (philosophy) , philosophy , literature , visual arts , linguistics
This essay examines the relations between decoration and knowledge, reason and imagination, truth and fable in eighteenth‐century France. Focusing on the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, it explores the complicated and contradictory relations of these concepts developed not only in the Encyclopédie's entries, but especially in its Frontispiece designed by C.N. Cochin, fils. Using Maurice Quentin de La Tour's monumental pastel portrait of the marquise de Pompadour sitting beside the Encyclopédie as a central example, the essay also suggests that tensions between decoration/knowledge, reason/imagination, truth/fable still shape current interpretation.