"Taught by love": the Origin of Painting again

De arte graphica, a Latin didactic piece of poetry on the art of painting, by means of Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy was first printed in Paris in 1668(1) allowing largely forgotten today except through art historians, the poem circulated widely among artists in England in the eighteenth hundred By the early eighteenth hundred two editions had appeared in England, single of 1695 and another of 1716 The frontispiece to the first English edition (1695) with a prosaic translation by the poet John Dryden was designed by the agency of Henry Cooke and engraved by the agency of Simon Gribelin and showed Minerva presenting De arte graphica to "Painting."(2) The next to the first English edition, a revised version of the first, appeared in 1716; it was produc below the patronage of Alexander pontiff and contained a new frontispiece, this time designed as well as engraved by means of Simon Gribelin [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].(3) In this paper I will discuss, first, the iconography of the show depicted in the 1716 engraving and, next to the first the relation of the image in this engraving to the matter of Dufresnoy's poem

The of recent origin frontispiece presents, within an oval frame, an image of the origin of drawing (or painting) in the doubtful narrative of the Corinthian Maid first lay the foundation of in the elder Pliny's Natural History at 35151 Beneath the frame, at either extremity of a plinth, rest the marks of painting and sculpture respectively, while inscribed upon the plinth is the Latin title of Dufresnoy's metrical composition on the art of painting. According to the fictitious story drawing was discovered by the daughter of a Corinthian trifle About to be separated from her lover she discovered that she could secure his likeness by tracing the outline of his shadow cast upon the wall. The potter's daughter came to be known variously as the Corinthian Maid or Dibutades, her name being confused with that of her father.

The date of the image in the 1716 frontispiece is significant, for the make submissive of the invention of painting through the Corinthian Maid did not became popular in painting until the later eighteenth hundred John Mortimer's Origin of Drawing (ca. 1771) Alexander Runciman's Origin of Painting (1773)(4) David Allan's Invention of Painting (1775) and Joseph Wright's Corinthian Maid (ca. 1782-85) are well-known examples, all produc in a short space of time. In contrast, in the early eighteenth hundred artistic representations of the make subordinate matter in any medium were queer The early dating, together with the ubiquity of the edition of De arte graphica that contained the fresh frontispiece, means that Gribelin's 1716 engraving played an important part in disseminating the legend and its iconography in England.(5)

A next to the first significant feature of the image bear upons a detail of its iconography. In the 1716 engraving, Cupid is shown guiding the Corinthian Maid's hand. I will suggest a specific source for the depiction of Cupid as the Corinthian Maid's teacher, as well as a shut connection between the first appearance of this motif in art, in 1668 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED], and Gribelin's 1716 print.

That the myth we are discussing was first illustrated in 1668 - somewhat earlier than previously acknowledged - in Charles Perrault's La peinture was made known in 1992 through Jean-Luc Gautier-Gentes in his edition of this poem(6) In his pioneering article upon the representation of the origin of painting, Robert Rosenblum had identified an engraving by the agency of Joachim von Sandrart of 1675 as the earliest, while demonstrating that before 1770 illustrations of the Corinthian Maid myth were rare.(7) George Levitine's "Addenda" to Rosenblum's essay drew attention to sum of two units previously unmentioned French prints depicting this doubtful narrative widely separated in date.8 The first he identified as an engraving through Francois Chauveau (made "before 1676"(9)) based upon a drawing by Charles Le Brun The next to the first was an illustration engraved through Benoit Louis Prevost and based upon a drawing by Charles Nicolas Cochin ills for Antoine Maron Le Mierre's La peinture, poeme en trois chants, published in Paris in 1769(10)

Although Levitine had correctly identified the Chauveau-Le Brun print as an early representation of the story, he was not aware of its original publication in 1668 Following Henry Jouin's 1889 application of mind of Charles Le Brun, he assumed the print had appeared in Charles Perrault's Le cabinet de beaux arts, on the other hand he did not realize that it had already been used in an earlier work through the same author. It is clear that neither Levitine nor Jouin had seen the engraving in either of its original connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss Jouin had inferred that the print had been the frontispiece for Charles Perrault's Le cabinet de beaux arts. Levitine himself thinking - correctly, as it now make go rounds out - that the Chauveau-Le Brun print was more likely to be the tailpiece of this work.(11) At any rate, upon the basis of the evidence available to him, Levitine conjectur that the English eighteenth-century representation of the fiction derived from "continental" sources, which he was not in a position to define. He identified the essential simple bodys of this eighteenth-century representation, however, as "the pseudoclassic setting, the Corinthian maid, her lover and Cupid."(12)