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The Age of Enlightenment
12. Denis Diderot by Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)
Around 1769
Oil on canvas. H. 0,82 m. ; W. 0,65 m.
Louvre Museum, Department of Paintings, RF 1972 14
© 2000 RMN / René-Gabriel Ojéda
A student of Chardin and later Boucher, Fragonard was awarded a
Prix de Rome scholarship in 1752, which led him to the French
Academy in Rome in 1756. In Italy, he spent a great deal of time
admiring the works of the Baroque masters and, with his friend
Hubert Robert, made numerous sketches of landscapes around
Rome. After returning to Paris in 1761, he was accepted as an
Academician with the monumental painting The High Priest
Coresus Sacrifices Himself to Save Callirhoë, which was
enthusiastically received at the 1765 Salon. Although he was virtually guaranteed success at the highest
echelons of history painting, Fragonard turned his back on an official career. Instead, he chose to work in
complete independence, for a wealthy clientele of enlightened connoisseurs. His repertoire included light or
delicate genre scenes, landscapes, fantasy figures, and occasionally portraits. His imagination was served by an
astonishing virtuosity. In the 1780s, Fragonard adopted a more Neoclassical style.
The prolific French writer Denis Diderot (1713–84) composed plays, novels (Jacques the Fatalist) and essays,
invented the modern medium of art criticism (Salons), and was the chief editor and contributor to the
Encyclopedia. Espousing an expressly materialistic and atheistic philosophy, he was an ardent proponent of free
will, and a defender of oppressed peoples.
No record exists of a relationship between Fragonard and Diderot. After having applauded the painter of The
High Priest Coresus Sacrifices Himself to Save Callirhoë (Louvre) as the most promising talent of the French
school, Diderot expressed his disappointment two years later, in 1767, criticizing the young artist for falling
back into a style he viewed as too closely related to that of Boucher. Diderot would not have any further
opportunity to write about the artist due to the fact that Fragonard, having abandoned a career as an
Academician, would never again exhibit any of his works at the Salon.
Diderot does not refer to Fragonard’s most celebrated portrait in any of his writings. Some have even challenged
the identification of this Louvre painting, which is not supported by any accounts from the period. Nonetheless,
over time, comparisons with the portrait bust by Houdon and the painted portrait by Van Loo have lent credence
to this hypothesis. Identical features may be noted (chin, mouth, nose, hairstyle), with the exception of the eyes,
which are blue in Fragonard’s portrait while those in Van Loo’s are brown. The robust character of the subject
recalls Diderot’s own comments on his person in 1767: “I had a broad forehead, penetrating eyes, rather large
features, and a head just like that of a Roman orator, with a good-humored nature verging on foolishness, the
rustic simplicity of earlier times.”
Painted in broad strokes, the portrait makes no claim to the precise depiction of features. It aims to spur the
imagination, to symbolize a way of being, a specific character: the forehead is expansive with inspiration, the
smile is philosophical, the open book represents the quest for truth. If the volume leafed through by the sitter
brings to mind the Encyclopedia, of which Diderot was the main driving force, it is without a doubt because this
publication, with more than 16,000 pages and 400 plates, a universal compendium of knowledge, epitomized the
spirit of the Age of Enlightenment.
This painting is part of a series of fourteen canvases known as the Fantasy figures, seven of which are held at the
Louvre. One of these canvases bears the date of 1769 and a tag on the back indicates that it was painted “in the space
of an hour.” Intimate portraits or pure demonstrations of virtuosity, these paintings, whose intended recipients are not
known, belong to a prolific period in the painter’s career (The Swing, Isle of Love and the Progress of Love series). A
master of several styles, here Fragonard chooses to approach the painting in the manner of a sketch, laying on paint in
long, full strokes showing the mark of the brush, using flamboyant colors, with heightened contrasts of light and
shadow to accentuate the subject’s expression. This was a highly original approach for the period.
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