This small wood carving depicts the goddess Sekhmet as a woman with the head of a lioness. Sekhmet was both destructive and benevolent. Her priests healed humans and animals alike. The Langres museums were gifted their Egyptian collection in the first half of the 19th century, by corresponding members of the Langres Historical and Archaeological Society.
The torque is one of the most emblematic artefacts of the Celtic world. It was found around the neck of a wealthy woman buried under a tumulus excavated during the first half of the 20th century.
This statue of what seems to be an emperor was discovered in Langres in 1660. Its marble may be of Greek provenance, but it is not clear where it was made. It was almost certainly commissioned for a public place. It was given to King Louis XIV as an ornament for the gardens of Versailles. Its head and arms were added by the sculptor François Girardon (1628–1715). It is one of the major pieces of Langres’ classical heritage, but only entered the museum’s collections in 1980, on loan from the Louvre.
This mosaic was discovered in 1985–1986 during excavation work carried out to extend the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. It covered an area of around 58 m2, and used to ornament the dining room – or triclinium – floor of a sumptuous dwelling in the early 2nd century CE. This mosaic was made in a Rhone valley workshop, using tesserae cut from stones of different colours and origins.
The motifs of craters, oenochoes and cups are references to the figure of Bacchus as a young man in the most detailed part of the mosaic. We know that this is Bacchus because of his attributes, the thyrsus and panther. The fruit motifs, notably apples and pears, that complete the iconography of the mosaic echo the function of the dining room.
Andemantunum (now Langres), the main settlement of the Gallic tribe of the Lingones, was home to four large necropolises. Excavations have uncovered significant vestiges associated with Roman funeral rites. Funerary stelae like this one used to mark out cremations in a necropolis. They might name the deceased, state their profession, and say something about them or their relatives.
Roman funerary rites changed in Late Antiquity as burial practices became more widespread. This glass jug was discovered in 1895 inside a sarcophagus, at the foot of the body. It is one of the finest examples of the output of a workshop that was probably based in Trier and specialised in ornamental glass motifs in the shape of snakes.
This clock used to stand in Diderot’s study, after Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777) presented it to him in 1768. Diderot refers to it in his Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Regrets on Parting with my Old Dressing-Gown). In the same book, he also describes how Geoffrin, a famous salonnière, decorated his home, her way to provide for him.
The sextant (one sixth of a circle) is a post 1757 variant of the octant (one eighth of a circle). In the second half of the 18th century, the combined use of a sextant and marine timekeeper made it possible to locate ships more precisely thanks to the addition of longitude to latitude measurements. The new data made it possible to calculate the coordinates of ships at sea, but also newly discovered lands, leading to significant improvements in cartography. The sextant was used widely from the end of the 18th century, and remained in use until the middle of the 20th century.
This globe was designed to demonstrate changing ideas of the world. It compares the map of the world at the end of the 18th century, on the globe itself, with a map of “The WORLD as known in CÆSAR’S time” on one side of the box. The other side lists the latitude and longitude coordinates of several cities around the world. Objects of this type illustrate the period’s taste for geography and cartography.
This engraving is based on a drawing by Nathaniel Dance (1735–1811) of Omai (1751 or 1753–1779 or 1783), the first Tahitian ever brought to England. When the navigator Tobias Furneaux (1735–1781) brought Omai to England in 1774, several portraits were made of the Tahitian, who aroused great curiosity and was feted by scholars and grandees. Diderot challenged the social and religious models of 18th-century France by comparing them with Tahitian practices.
When European sailors made contact with new populations, they brought back emblematic artefacts gifted by (or looted from) the locals. This Tongan bowl was used to drink a fermented beverage called kava. James Cook (1728–1779) brought an identical bowl back from Tonga in 1774.
This informal portrait represents Diderot in his beloved moiré dressing gown. Van Loo vividly conveys the philosopher’s features, especially his large forehead, piercing eyes and full lips.
This bust of Diderot by Jean-Antoine Houdon is inscribed “Denis Diderot, à ses concitoyens” (“Denis Diderot, to his fellow citizens”). Diderot presented the bust to his fellow townspeople in 1780, at the request of the city of Langres. According to a letter he wrote to his daughter, five plaster casts of the same bust came with this gift. The work was cast in bronze from a terracotta original presented by Houdon at the Salon of 1771 (this original was probably a commission from Prince Galitzine, Russian ambassador to the French court and Diderot’s friend). The sculptor sought to portray the philosopher as a man of truth and experience, strong-willed, his eyes unflinching. Diderot seems to have liked the bust well enough, believing it a good likeness. However, he looks older, more wrinkled, in the bronze cast of the bust than in the terracotta original at the Louvre.
Sarpedon, son of Zeus, was killed in the Trojan War. “Sarpedon’s body washed […], Apollo ordered Sleep and Death to take him to Lycia where his family and friends would give him a magnificent funeral”. This painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1781. It was Berthélemy’s reception piece at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Diderot praised the “good composition” and “pleasant effect” of the work, despite some reservations, notably about Apollo’s leg (“a little too big for his body?”) and the sky (“rather even in tone”).
The frontispiece, located opposite the title page, seeks to provide the reader with a snapshot of the work. At the centre of the picture is the veiled figure of Truth. Reason tries to lift her veil, while Philosophy attempts to tear it away. In contrast, Theology kneels at the foot of Truth, and Imagination seeks to embellish her with a garland of flowers. The other allegorical figures evoke the disciplines covered in the Encyclopaedia, including History, Geometry, Astronomy, Physics, Optics, Botany, Chemistry and Agriculture, but also Poetry, Music, Painting and Architecture.
Dubois was a great cabinet-maker under the reign of Louis XV. This curved dresser with two drawers is decorated with floral marquetry veneers and gilt bronze. It is a fine example of the work of Parisian cabinetmakers. Their technique and style marked French and European cabinetry.
The case holds ten instruments, some of them signed Michael Butterfield, a manufacturer of scientific instruments based in Paris. The set includes instruments for measuring (protractor, sector, folding square, divider) and drawing straight lines (rule, ruling pen), right angles (square) and circles (two compasses). Diderot used similar tools for his own studies on squaring the circle.
Great care was taken to produce accurate drawings. However, the stiff postures of the subjects suggest taxidermy birds. Some plates feature the birds against an elaborate background, as though drawn from life in their natural environment. A scale indicates their size.
This illustration, the first of two plates devoted to the cutler’s art, presents an idealised vision of the trade. It brings together two separate spaces and activities: the workshop where the cutler and his assistant practise their craft, and the shop where the cutler’s wife sells their products. The cutler lies stretched out over a plank in the foreground, sharpening a blade against a grindstone operated with a crank mechanism. Under this image are numbered and captioned illustrations of the cutler’s tools: a bow drill, pincers, an anvil, a grindstone and its mechanism, etc.
Claude-Julien Braillard designed this Rococo clock using a clock mechanism devised by Joseph de Saint-Germain. The clock’s curves are adorned with botanically-inspired bronze mouldings and scrolls. The green-tinted horn contrasts with the gilt metal. The clock is representative of the French decorative arts that shaped European tastes in the mid-18th century.
Carl Linnaeus, also known as Carl von Linné, gave the puffin its scientific name, Fratercula arctica, in 1758. The same year, Linnaeus, who invented the binomial system and the classification of species, named human beings Homo sapiens. There is a plate illustration of the puffin in the Encyclopaedia.
Betskoi, Catherine II’s advisor on education, wrote this ambitious proposal to reform education in Russia. His plan included provisions for every population group, from the care of abandoned children to the education of elites. Diderot supervised the translation of this work into French, adding his own comments in praise of the project.
The blades are stamped “à la Perle” and inscribed “Diderot A L’Angre”. It is a rare surviving example of Didier Diderot’s work as a cutler.
The Cyclopaedia was published in 1728 and was so successful in England that it was reprinted several times. Its translation into French inspired Diderot and D’Alembert’s own Encyclopédie. The collective nature of their project was a break with the past: no single individual could claim to know everything.
Joseph Vernet was a celebrated artist in his day, and was especially renowned for his landscape and seascape paintings. In 1753, he returned to France after a long period in Italy. He was a prolific artist, having to meet the demand spurred by his popularity. In 1766, Vernet delivered two oval paintings to Madame la Présidente de Bandeville (widow of Pierre-François Doublet, Marquis de Bandeville): La source abondante (The Bountiful Spring) and Les occupations du rivage (Seashore Occupations). There are two versions of this pair of paintings, and the painting we see here probably belongs to the second. It has the same date as, and is identical to, the painting presented at the Salon de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1767, as part of a set of seven landscapes.
After visiting this Salon, Diderot took a whimsical approach to art criticism. Writing on these paintings, he pretended to move on from his critique of Vernet’s works: “I wrote the name of this artist at the top of my page and was about to describe his works, when I left for a seaside spot celebrated for the beauty of its sites […]; I was walking with the teacher of the children of the house […] towards the finest sites in the world. My plan is to describe them to you”. Diderot then goes on to describe this walk, which is in fact an imaginary stroll through Vernet’s landscapes paintings.
In Promenade Vernet, Diderot takes an essentially poetic – less critical, freer – approach to art criticism. In his writings on art, he defined “magic” as an artist’s ability to make “what is represented seem real”. The paintings discussed in Promenade Vernet exemplify this magic: Diderot writes that “nature appeared grave in areas deprived of light, tender on the bright plains. […] I was not mistaken. But how to convey their effect and magic?” Diderot saluted Vernet’s talent when he said, discussing the position of the clouds in the composition of the painting: “Vernet wants his [clouds] to have the movement and magic of the one we can see”.
This work by Charles Royer represents the goods found in the grave of a great Celtic aristocrat buried circa 500 BCE. Inside the burial mound, excavated by H.E. Millon in 1880, were a bronze mirror, an Attic ceramic kantharos and an Etruscan bronze stamnos. These three imported objects are evidence of the trade links between Celtic Gaul and the Mediterranean world. They are currently housed at the Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
This bas-relief is thought to have originally been part of a rood screen erected in Langres Cathedral in the mid-16th century. It depicts the martyrdom of Mammes of Caesarea, a 3rd century saint who lived in Cappadocia, in what is now eastern Turkey. Mammes preached Christianity and read the Holy Scriptures to wild animals. After his arrest, he was cast into the flames and left to burn for three days, but emerged unscathed. The Cathedral was dedicated to him in the 8th century, following its acquisition of a relic, a bone believed to have come from the saint’s neck. Langres Cathedral was named after Mammes and benefited from its association with this popular saint.
Little is known about the life of Jean Duvet, a silversmith active in Langres and Dijon. However, Duvet was one of the first to apply burin techniques to engravings. Some seventy odd prints are attributed to him today.
Although Duvet had seen Italian engravings by Mantegna, Primaticcio, Rosso and Raphael, he showed little interest in perspective. His compositions were initially comparatively light and airy but became denser and more dramatic over time. He developed a deeply original style. The saturated space, and overlapping, contorted bodies, lend great expressive intensity to his work.
Duvet’s cycle of engravings on the Book of Revelation is one of his major achievements. It follows in the footsteps of Albrecht Dürer’s (1471–1528) illustrations of the last book of the New Testament in his 1498 Apocalypse. However, Duvet took a rather unusual approach: his engravings interpret rather than illustrate the Book of Revelation, and deviate somewhat from the order of its chapters. Duvet started on his twenty-three engravings circa 1546. They were published in Lyon in 1561, probably after his death.
Originally from Spain, the painter Jusepe de Ribera lived in Rome between 1612 and 1616. During that time, he adopted the manner and style of Caravaggio, active in the Italian capital from 1592 to 1607. This painting is a major early work by the Spanish artist. It shows Christ debating the doctors of the faith in the Temple. Works on this theme traditionally place Christ at the centre of the canvas, but Ribera positions him to the right, dividing the composition into two groups of figures separated by a diagonal line. The column reminds the viewer that the child is the son of God and symbolically connects the earthly and heavenly realms.
The child’s interlocutors respond to his words with gestures and comments. Reactions to the main exchange feed into other discussions in the background. Christ is teaching the doctors: some listen, others think or speak. The Word is physically and symbolically spreading across the room. The figures in the foreground form a semi-circle around a central void. The diagonal opens up the scene towards a dark background where other heads emerge. The gestures and faces are individual, the postures varied. Some figures turn their backs to the viewer. They are imposing and wrapped in sculptural cloaks. The whole gives an impression of verisimilitude, breaking with idealised Renaissance models.
The son of Langres painter Jean Gillot (1639–1711), Claude Gillot was a painter, engraver and illustrator largely based in Paris. His works broach a wide range of themes, including religious subjects, notably Le Christ près d’être attaché à la croix (Christ Nailed on the Cross) his reception piece for the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1715; mythological subjects, notably Embarquement pour Cythère (Voyage to Cythera) genre painting, notably Les deux carrosses (The Two Carriages, 1707); and stage paintings, notably La scène des Tréteaux (The Stage Boards, circa 1711), which can be seen at the Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot. His output shows great imaginative range, including numerous representations of farces, the theatre, witchcraft and bacchanalia. Claude Gillot was the teacher of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), who acquired his taste for scenes featuring the stage, ballet and gallantry.
Originally from Langres, the painter Jules-Claude Ziegler studied under Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) and is best known for the frescoes he was commissioned to paint at the Parisian church of Sainte Marie Madeleine – aka La Madeleine – in 1837. Ziegler was a prolific and multi-talented artist. His output also included photography from the early 1840s, and glazed stoneware ceramics, which he made at the studio he founded near Beauvais.
The armoured woman crowned with laurels is an allegorical representation of Imagination. Ziegler based her on his Joan of Arc, in the apse of La Madeleine. Under the allegorical figure’s arm is a canvas with sketch portraits of Dante, Raphael and Michelangelo. In the foreground is an orb with the inscription “Imagination is the queen of the world”.
Ziegler’s clean lines, bold palette and masterful lighting effects led him to be seen as the leader of a new school indebted to Spanish painting.
A woman steps through her neighbour’s open door and discovers a scene of desolation: a mother’s lifeless, emaciated body, probably starved or frozen to death. At her bedside are two children, still alive under a warming ray of spring sunshine. Viewers can surmise – but are not told – the mother’s private drama. As they take in the bare walls of her very modest interior and the pride she took in her well-kept home, they can guess that she was very alone and that any food was for the children first… This scene was inspired by a passage from the poem “Les Pauvres Gens” (The Poor) in Victor Hugo’s La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Centuries), written between 1855 and 1876.
Alizard, a Langres painter, wished to bear witness to the harsh realities of life. Painted in the spirit of mid-19th century realism, the work displays the period’s taste for shocking news items.
This portrait of a woman was believed to be by Jean Ranc until 1983, when it was reattributed to Nicolas de Largillière (1656–1746). Largillière was one of France’s three major portraitists between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the first half of the 18th century, together with François de Troy (1645–1730) and Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743). The sitter is depicted as Diana the Huntress accompanied by her dogs. From the Renaissance onward, ladies were often portrayed in the guise of classical figures, in order to extol their beauty and character. Such portraits lent the attributes of divinities, or even saints, to the real persons they featured and were very popular at the time. The work’s vertical composition and refined colour plate, together with the elegance of the sitter’s pose, suggest the influence of English portraiture, notably Van Dyck and Peter Lely, who had a strong influence on Largillière’s generation.
Langres cutlery goes back to the 15th century and reached its golden age in the 18th century, at a time when tableware underwent rapid change. The pieces in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire exhibit the variety of materials used to manufacture cutlery knives and their many uses.
The knife has a handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl and a folding blade at each end, one steel and one silver. The precious metal made it possible to slice through pieces of fruit without their acids damaging the blade. The knife is stamped “au bâton royal”, the motto of the Béligné family.
Between 1742 and 1744, Jacques Lallemant founded a faience manufacture in Aprey, a village around fifteen kilometres away from Langres. With the help of his brother Joseph, he produced fine faience ware prized for its technical and aesthetic qualities. In the 18th century, Aprey began to face competition from Sinceny, Strasbourg and Marseille. Aprey faience ware was manufactured until the end of the 19th century, when it became less sought-after.
In this large work by the Lyon painter Michel Dumas, the iconic persona of Fra Angelico incarnates both the figure of the artist and the painter’s art, through his mastery of his craft. This is a portrait of a painter, as much as a friar. We see a pensive man caught in a private moment – is he concentrating, weary, or in the throes of doubt? Notice the pot of spilt paint at his feet. Fra Angelico looks very human, fragile even. The execution is three-dimensional and clear, and the composition careful if somewhat stilted. Dumas belonged to a generation when painters were master craftsmen capable of wielding the brush with utmost precision.
This work by Jules-René Hervé – “the painter of provincial poetry” – represents a Corpus Christi procession in Langres. On this feast day celebrating the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a procession used to march down streets bedecked with flowers, garlands and banners. The painting influenced by Impressionism was awarded a gold medal at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1925.
The provenance of this parclose screen is uncertain. It was dismantled during the Revolution and decorated a garden before coming into the hands of the Langres Historical and Archaeological Society in 1847. Its similarities with the ornamental repertoire of various architectural vestiges conserved in Langres Cathedral suggest that it may be linked to refurbishment work carried out in the second half of the 16th century.
The screen combines ornamental effects of transparency with a clear structure. The fine stonework shows great craftsmanship. Some of the screen’s many ornaments were inspired by the architectural works of Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau (circa 1515– 1585); others, notably the plant and animal motifs, as well as the angels on the open-work, can be found on furniture.
The screen probably dates from between 1565 and 1570. Its dimensions match those of some of the Cathedral’s chapels. The pre-eminence of the angel motif may suggest that it used to screen off a funerary chapel or a chapel connected to the choir.
Presented at the Paris Salon of 1827, this work illustrates “The Shepherd and the Sea”, a fable by Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695) on the pitfalls of the quest for worldly riches.
The painting hesitates between classicism and romanticism. The classical literary allusions, moral message, and composition – whose static clarity is typical of Turpin de Crissé’s work – all point to the classical world and pictorial classicism. Yet, this is also a romantic work: the shepherd cuts a small figure against a vast wilderness, his bare flesh exposed to animals and rocks. This imagery conveys a sense of newfound virtue, innocence or chosen humility – i.e. notions that conjure a romantic vision, even as they speak to the moral of the fable. The shepherd seems to have renounced worldly riches and found peace in his sunny, peaceful retreat, a calm sea in the distance. His candid, almost virginal nakedness and the untouched natural environment are also classical references.
The work does not only owe its remarkably poetic quality to its imagery, but also to its execution: the treatment of the bushes and rocks is fine and precise, and the palette delicate, especially the shades of pale blue in the background. The quality of the light, the effects of translucency and the play of light and shadow on the rocks, are central to Turpin de Crissé’s work. This picture of a man at peace again evokes a muted version of romanticism, typical of a painter whose classical training and education taught him to avoid the excesses of passion and drama.
The work was so well received by the public that the lithographer and print dealer Augustin-François Lemaître (1797–1870) made an engraving, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1837.
Girault de Prangey painted this picture after a long journey that took him to Italy, the Maghreb and Spain (February 1831– autumn 1834), with a stop in Palermo (Sicily) in the first half of 1834. Dated 1835 or 1839, the work was painted for the Salon of 1839, on his return to France.
Documentary accuracy was as paramount to Girault de Prangey in this painting as in his drawings and watercolours. The architectural features, ornaments and materials of the chapel are meticulously recorded, and the use of perspective is precise. Artists sometimes deliberately resorted to miniaturism in order to make the lithographic transcription of their paintings of monuments as detailed as possible. However, the focus on descriptive accuracy does not preclude picturesque details, for example the figures sitting on the steps of the sanctuary.
Born into a modest Jewish family, in Luxeuil-les-Bains (Haute-Saône), Adler was a realist painter and a follower of the “naturalism” movement. Mythological, historical and religious paintings were of little interest to him: his preferred subjects were workers, miners, diggers, housewives and peasants, pubs and railway scenes, or social movements and strikes. He was a painter of the people and his portrayals of ordinary, sometimes downtrodden members of society brimmed with humanity, as in the case of this country postman out on his round. His focus on social issues and the working classes earned him the sobriquet of “painter of humble folk”. Jules Adler’s art was part of a wider commitment to progressive political causes, for example in the Dreyfus Affair in 1899. From 1888, his works were regularly exhibited at the Paris Salons – notably the Salon d’automne from 1903 – as well as in provincial towns, including Langres.
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1722–1764) and a favourite of Louis XV, supported the publication of the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie and encouraged the publication of further volumes, despite a ruling to the contrary by the Conseil d’État on 7 February 1752. Commissioned in 1751, the original pastel by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour was exhibited at the Salon of 1755. On the table are copies of volume IV of the Encyclopédie (1754), Voltaire’s La Henriade (1728) and Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois (1748). Guarini’s tragicomedy Il Pastor Fido, a globe, engravings, drawings and musical scores complete this portrait of the intellectual pursuits of the Marquise.
In this novel, the adventures of Jacques and his master unfold within an undefined narrative framework: “Where were they going? Does anyone really know where they’re going?” Diderot takes great liberties with the rules of novel writing. He leads his main character, Jacques, from one encounter to the next and digresses in order to confuse his reader and force a reaction. Initially published in instalments in the rather confidential Correspondance littéraire, the novel only reached a wider readership after his death in 1796.
This telescope is unsigned. Comparative analyses suggest that it was probably made by Claude Paris, a leading Parisian manufacturer of telescopes and microscopes from 1733 onward. The Gregorian reflecting telescope is composed of a main brass barrel and two optic devices. A primary concave steel mirror located at the bottom of the main barrel reflects the light – and therefore the image – back up to a smaller secondary concave mirror. This image can be observed at the other end of the telescope through an aperture at the centre of the primary mirror. The image is seen through the lenses of the eyepiece, which is the narrow barrel at the end of the main body of the telescope. A worm screw fitted along the length of the main barrel helps to adjust the distance between the two mirrors and focus the image. This telescope was used for both terrestrial and astronomical viewing because the image was not inverted.
Made in a workshop of “celestial mechanics”, this instrument illustrates the spread of the heliocentric model championed by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). The 18th century gradually saw this new model of the solar system gain acceptance, despite years of opposition from the Church, which championed Ptolemy’s Earth-centric model. The realisation that the Earth was one of several planets revolving around the sun indirectly called into question God’s central place in the universe. The idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way around, gained traction in Diderot’s time. It was one of the great scientific advances of the Age of Enlightenment.
1746 saw the anonymous publication of Diderot’s first original work, Pensées philosophiques. In this book, a response to Blaise Pascal’s (1623–1662) Pensées, Diderot toys somewhat inconclusively with deism and atheism: “I should be expected to seek the truth, but not to find it”. Diderot’s free-ranging and incisive thoughts are couched in small short dialogues. Diderot rejected dogmatism in all its forms:
“As I looked for proofs, I found problems. The books that motivated me to believe also gave me reasons to disbelieve. They were an arsenal of arguments for both. In these works, I saw deists arm themselves against atheists; deists and atheists lambast Jews; atheists, deists and Jews castigate Christians; Christian, deists, atheists and Jews pillory Moslems; a multitude of Christian sects attacking Christians; and sceptics alone against them all….
The book was banned.
Still in its original box, this instrument, which is signed “Duhamel A Paris”, was used by land surveyors and topographers. The graduated semi-circular limb is mounted on a staff via a ball-and-socket joint, and fitted with two alidades, one fixed and the other movable. It was used to measure angles between objects located on the same horizontal or vertical plane. According to the Encyclopédie, the “pinnules help to align the alidade with the object to be observed, and the slits are used to discern certain parts of the object in a very specific manner; this is why the slits – which are rather wide to allow the object to be seen more easily – have a thin metal blade or ‘hair’ stretching across the midline, from top to bottom”.
The graphometer was used to draw the mid-18th-century Cassini map of the Kingdom of France.
Jean-Baptiste Deshays won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1751 and trained at the École royale des élèves protégés before leaving for Rome in 1754. On his return to France in 1758, he was admitted to the Académie royale, where he was accepted as a history painter in 1759, the year that marked the start of his official career, following his acclaimed entry to the Salon.
Deshays was one of Diderot’s favourite artists: “I could not wait to get to Deshays. This painter – my friend – is in my opinion the nation’s greatest painter […]” This work was a sketch for a large and now destroyed painting presented at the Salon of 1761. Commenting on the painting, Diderot wrote: “The figures are so well-distributed, characterised and draped! How simple and grandiose everything is! What awful but beautiful poetry! […]”.
These lines point to Diderot’s intellectual and aesthetic priorities in his art criticism. They tell us what he essentially looked for in art: a painting that expressed the “passions”, figures that conveyed powerful emotions (“simple and grandiose”) and a sense of drama (“He imagines striking things”), a felicitous composition, great powers of imagination, and the presence of historical and literary references (to Corneille in this case).
The works of Jean III Michelin are little known. This is partly because there were several painters of the same name: he was born in Langres in 1623, in a family of painters, several generations of whom shared the same first name. He travelled to Rome in 1650 and was admitted to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1660. A Protestant, he left Paris in 1681 for the Court of Hanover in Germany. Like the Parisian painters Antoine, Louis and Mathieu Le Nain, Michelin painted religious scenes and scenes of everyday life (peasant interiors, markets, inns, etc.) but his works are distinctive for their stylistic naivety and sincerity. The clothes are those of seventeenth-century peasants and there is great attention to realistic details. However, the composition is somewhat clumsy, and the characters are rather stiff, with frozen facial expressions. They look isolated, as though disconnected from each other. Michelin painted several versions of the Adoration of the Shepherds, all of them with the Holy Infant at the centre of a circle of onlookers.
This composition is part of a ceiling design for the chapel of the Château de Versailles. It was commissioned in 1672 from Charles Le Brun, who was First Painter to the King and responsible for interior decorations at Versailles from 1661. Le Brun worked on this design until the project was shelved in 1683, after Louvois (1641–1691), who did not get along with him, took over from Colbert (1619–1683) as superintendent of Bâtiments, Arts et Manufactures de France. Le Brun repeatedly tried to regain Louvois’ favour and complete the work, but was unsuccessful. The Langres museum’s painting covers around two-thirds of the overall design, which is framed by a balustrade. The other third of the design represents the Glory of God and is located next to the altar of the Versailles chapel. At the centre of the complex composition of the Langres museum’s painting is Saint Michael slaying a seven-headed monster that symbolises the seven deadly sins. Below him are three figures in freefall: the Devil (a sceptre in hand), the (deathly pale) Lust of the Flesh and the Fallen World (seen from the back). Around Saint Michael, the Angels sound their trumpets to announce the Triumph of God, and push the rebellious Angels to their fall. At the sides, the Shields of Virtue fight the Vices. The influence of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) is clear in the treatment of the groups of angels, and in the figure of Saint Michael, inspired by Rubens’ The Fall of the Damned (circa 1620).
Usually associated with rather more peaceful compositions, Jean Tassel presents a very dynamic image of Archangel Michael slaying the dragon, an allegorical figure of evil. The suspended, frozen movement of the intricate drapery is characteristic of part of the painter’s output. The mood is neither contemplative nor gentle: the work does not shy away from convention or theatricality as it asserts the triumph of faith. The powerful use of colour also foregrounds the victorious figure: the reds and blues of his clothing are emphasized by deep dark shadows, echoing the flames and smoke in the background.
Tassel occasionally drew inspiration from widely circulated engravings of compositions by other artists. Here, the figure of the archangel is indebted to Rémy Vuibert’s (1607–1652) engraving of a painting by Guido Reni (1575–1642). As for the figure of the devil, it is borrowed from the work of engraver Jean Ganière (circa 1615–1666).
Originally from Leiden, Cornelis de Heem lived in Antwerp and mostly painted still lives, following in the footsteps of his father Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684). Still lives enjoyed great popularity in the 17th century, especially in Dutch and Flemish schools. These elaborate decorative compositions often carried a moral message. The peeled lemon was a ubiquitous symbol of the passage of time and a reminder of mortality.
All eyes – and the light – fall on the infant, as his mother presents him to the two shepherds on the left. The vine branches at the feet of Christ allude to the Gospel according to John: “I am the vine, you are the branches”. The background is in the shadows but not dark, which fosters a mood of serene intimacy and invites contemplation. A very similar composition on the same subject by the artist’s friend Carlo Saraceni (1579–1620) may have influenced this work.
Originally from Lorraine, Jean Leclerc spent the first part of his life in Venice, where he met Saraceni. He also spent some time in Rome with Saraceni between 1612 and 1616. Both artists were influenced by Caravaggio’s (1571–1610) lighting effects. Leclerc’s Italian works exhibit his debt to Caravaggio’s and Saraceni’s powerful style. In 1622, Leclerc returned to Nancy, where he worked for the Dukes of Lorraine. He remained faithful to the spirit of Caravaggio’s style, but his play with light and dark was more muted.
Under the Ancien Régime, this painting, which originally may have been an altarpiece, hung in the Saint-André side chapel of Langres Cathedral. Some of the works decorating it were commissioned by a Duke of Lorraine, which may explain why the chapel included a painting by one of his court painters. Leclerc also received commissions from the Jesuits and the Carmelites of Chaumont. Towards the end of his life, he trained a number of artists, including the Langres painter Jean Tassel (1608–1667).
The painter and sculptor Gustave Courbet was the leader of Realism, a movement that emerged in the mid-19th century in reaction to Romanticism. In this stormy landscape, with its threatening sky and palette of blues and greys, patches of white emphasise the clouds and spume, as waves crash against a dark rocky cliff that turns deep red at the top. Two birds struggle against the wind at the centre of the painting. The dark colour scheme and thick brushstrokes convey the power of the elements, lending raw intensity to the scene. This work, which probably dates back to the early 1870s, depicts the sea at Étretat, the Normandy resort where Courbet painted a series of seascapes. Paintings on this subject were sought after and several of them, including this one, were either produced by Courbet in collaboration with his studio or painted entirely by a member of his studio. A brownish-red signature is clearly visible in the lower left-hand corner. It may have been added later for commercial reasons.
This stormy landscape was part of the collection of the brothers Charles (1848–1920) and Joseph (1850–1941) Royer, local Langres art collectors who built up large collections of paintings, decorative arts and books in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. A member of the Société Historique et Archéologique de Langres which ran the museum, Charles Royer may have purchased this painting at the same time as he acquired Courbet’s Une combe dans le Jura on behalf of the museum, at an 1897 exhibition of Courbet’s works, at the École des Beaux-arts in Paris.
Early 18th-century developments in optics led to the invention of this type of microscope in order to observe “animalcules”, a term defined as follows in the Encyclopédie: “This word usually designates animals so small that they can only be seen through a microscope. Since the invention of this instrument, we have seen small animals we never knew before […]”.The microscope helped to prove theories on the development of life in microbial cultures. Diderot referred to these experiments in his reflections on deism and materialism. He was influenced by the English biologist John Needham (1713–1781), who defended the theory, published in 1745, of the spontaneous generation of microscopic life. In his 1749 Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient, Diderot questioned the existence of God based on Needham’s observations.
This painting is a second version of an eponymous composition presented by Gabriel François Doyen at the Salon du Louvre in 1759. It is the “piece” that the artist presented for his reception at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture on 23 August 1759. Denis Diderot saw the painting when he visited the Salon in 1759, but did not write about it. The Académie played a major role in Parisian artistic life. Exhibitions of its members’ recent works were held every two years in the Louvre’s Salon carré.
The plaque inside the lid of the box indicates that the chronometer was made by “James Hatton, CHRONOMETER MAKER to the Hon(oura)ble the EAST INDIA COMPANY, St Michaels Alley, Cornhill, LONDON”. The dial bears the manufacturer’s signature and the item’s serial number (400).
The marine chronometer was a significant18th-century breakthrough because it made precise timekeeping possible on long sea voyages. In combination with a sextant, the chronometer allowed seafarers to calculate a ship’s longitude, which they could not do before. The marine chronometer was invented and gradually perfected by the English watchmaker John Harrison (1693–1776) between 1736 and 1759. Chronometers were commonly used on ships between 1770 and 1780. The use of chronometers at sea became widespread in the 1770s.
A true portrait of Ancien Régime society, this scene depicts a Normandy Lord, the Seigneur de Canon, Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont (1732–1786), and his wife Anne-Louise, ceremonially awarding deserving peasants – the eponymous “good people” – prizes for their upstanding character and morals. At the centre of the painting, a virtuous maiden is crowned with roses; at her side is a wise old man waiting to receive a crown of oak leaves and ears of wheat. Gifts also await them: bags of coins, medals, clothes and a blue ribbon worn by the Count of Artois as a sign of protection. This ceremony actually took place in Canon in 1775, and was followed by a party. Such events pointed to the new relationship that enlightened aristocrats sometimes hoped to establish with the Third Estate, under the auspices of the clergy. Such charitable performances nevertheless also affirmed the pre-eminence of the aristocracy in the social hierarchy.
This work, presented in 1777 at the Salon de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, is characteristic of the period’s taste for paintings with edifying moral messages, in contrast with the frivolity of earlier subjects. Pierre-Alexandre Wille trained under the great artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805). Like Greuze, he painted virtuous themes (almsgiving, filial duty, the patriarchal family, village harmony, morality, etc.). Although Denis Diderot never saw this particular painting, he knew the organisers of the ceremony and supported their initiatives. He also approved of paintings on such subjects, because he felt that art could serve a useful moral purpose and improve minds.
This painting probably belonged to the Marquis de Clermont d’Amboise (1728–1792), French ambassador to Naples between 1776 and 1782. It is representative of the work of the French painter Pierre Jacques Volaire, who specialised in views of Vesuvius. After working with the landscape painter Joseph Vernet, he moved to Rome in 1762, then Naples in 1767. Shifting away from the seascapes associated with his master, he focused on depictions of Vesuvius, whose eruptions he witnessed in 1767, 1771, 1779 and 1794. The painting represents a spectacular eruption that took place between 8 and 15 August 1779. The explosions lit up the sky as Vesuvius spewed out an impressive volume of volcanic matter, including lava plumes that shot up into the air and flowed down its slopes, and clouds of volcanic ash. These eruptions attracted scientists and curious visitors from all over Europe. The fashion for paintings of Vesuvius was tied to the rise of the veduta, a new genre of landscapes sold as souvenirs to predominantly English and French sightseers on their Grand Tour to Italy.
This work illustrates the evolution of taste in Diderot’s day, notably the period’s predilection, notably among art-loves, for the “sublime spectacle” of awe-inspiring natural landscapes. Diderot discusses this new taste in his writings on poetry and the arts. In the article “Beau” in the Encyclopédie, he distinguishes between the sublime and beauty: “It seems that in our language the idea of beautiful is always associated with that of greatness […]”. Yet “the idea of great , sublime , elevated , has no place on those occasions when one still uses the word beautiful. Just survey in this way all the beings that are called beautiful : one will exclude greatness; […] some even the marked appearance of order and symmetry; such would be the painting of a storm, a tempest, chaos”.