DIDEROT Denis [Langres, 1713 - Paris, 1784], French writer. - Lot 121

DIDEROT Denis [Langres, 1713 - Paris, 1784], French writer. Autograph manuscript. [1765]; 4 pages in-4°. Important manuscript of the last part of his Essais sur la peinture, a follow-up to the 1765 salon. Freckles and creases in the corners. "It is said of Saint Peter's in Rome that the proportions are so perfectly preserved that the edifice loses at first glance all the effect of its grandeur and extent, so that it can be said, Magnus esse, sentiri parvus. Here's how we reason about it. What is the purpose of all these admirable proportions? To make a great thing small and common? It seems that it would have been better to depart from this, and that it would have been more skilful to produce the opposite effect, and to give grandeur to an ordinary and common thing. The answer is that, in truth, the edifice would have appeared larger at first glance, if proportions had been artfully sacrificed; but it is asked which was preferable, either to produce a great and sudden admiration, or to create one that starts weak, gradually increases and finally becomes great and permanent through thoughtful and detailed examination. It is granted that, all things being equal, a slender and slender man will appear taller than a well-proportioned man; but it is also asked which of these two men will be admired more; and whether the former would not consent to be reduced to the most rigorous proportions of the antique, at the risk of losing something of his apparent grandeur. It is added that the narrow edifice which art has enlarged ends up being conceived as it is; whereas the great edifice which art and its proportions have reduced to an ordinary and common appearance, ends up being conceived great, the unfavorable prestige of the proportions vanishing by the necessary comparison of the spectator with some of the parts of the edifice"...