Interior as a Scene in the Depictions of French Illustrators of Racine’s Works in the 18th Century: A Comparative Aspect

Abstract

French literary illustration of the 18th century is studied from the point of view of depicting an interior as a locale. The problem of the influence of literary and visual sources on the formation of the image of an interior is studied through several series of illustrations for Racine’s Works in 18th century editions. The main sources of comparative research are the illustrations for J. Racine’s Berenice, engraved from drawings by French artists L. Cheron (1723), L.-F. Dubourg (1743), J. de Sève (1760), H.-F. Gravelot (1768), J.-J.-F. Lebarbier (1796). Reading Racine’s Berenice in French and Russian, reading critical works about “Racine’s space” helps to understand the image of locale in the playwright’s version. The events of Racine’s Berenice take place in the confined space of an ancient Roman palace. The author modernizes the locale, using the concepts of the French noble interior of his time — “cabinet”, “apartments”. The description of the scene has a minimum of detail, is contradictory and insufficient for literal depictions. The artists, following the example of the playwright, interpreted the scene in the spirit of modernity, but changed and supplemented the main and secondary details. As a rule, they depicted the reception area of the ceremonial apartments and accurately conveyed the styles of interior decoration (Grand style, Transition style, Neoclassicism, Directory style). The artists explained the episode and the play as a whole by means of compositional tools that had a wide semantic range. Comparison the illustrations among themselves and comparison the book engravings with architectural engravings shows the continuity of the artistic tradition and adherence to the academic rules of working with depiction. The artists repeated the compositions of similar illustrations and quoted the interior design projects of the 17th–18th centuries. The image of a locale in the illustration was directly dependent on visual sources, and not on the text. The method of depicting an interior in the illustrations was based on selective and arbitrary reflection of the text, actualizing the appearance of a locale, using the semantics of details and partial copying of samples.