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Diderot, la figure et le lieu : de la théorie du paysage aux pastorales de Boucher

Philippe Déan

Abstracts

Diderot, figures and places : from the theory of landscapes to Boucher’s pastorals
Roger de Piles based his description of the characteristics of landscape composition on the model of Renaissance treatises of painting ; it should produce places whose object is to define a particular circamscription of realistic space. But theoreticians, following the example of Du Bos, insisted that what gave “ soul ”, or meaning, to landscape was the inclusion of figures. Diderot’s 1767 review of a Loutherbourg landscape, which gave him the opportunity to evoke Poussin’s Lanscape with a snake, indicates the importance of this tradition of interpretation based on a logic of identification and making painting the illustration of iconographical themes or values. On the other hand, his commentaries on Boucher’s Pastoral landscapes reveal a strange paradox for, while remarking classically on the suitability of the relationship between the figures and the pastoral setting, they also show that in Boucher the work of figurability destroys the realistic unity of the setting. Even if his landscapes are still presented as imitations of natural space, his paintings, rather than accrediting a mimetic register or authentifying narrative verisimilitude, are presentod as paintod images.

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References

Electronic reference

Philippe Déan, “Diderot, la figure et le lieu : de la théorie du paysage aux pastorales de Boucher”Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie [Online], 25 | 1998, Online since 04 August 2007, connection on 15 April 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rde/1211; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rde.1211

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Philippe Déan

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.

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