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This essay was influential in the field of aesthetics. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose aesthetic sensibility straddled the Enlightenment and Romantic movements, expressed deep admiration for Diderot's Essay on Painting, on it as one of the most insightful texts on art produced in the 18th century. Goethe encountered the essay later in life, after its posthumous publication, and it echoed strongly with his own preoccupation with the fusion of sensibility, form, and expressive economy in visual and literary art. What Goethe found persuasive in Diderot was not merely his descriptive brilliance, but his insistence that art be animated by an interior moral movement, that it not simply imitate, but speak. Goethe's praise, yet, was not uncritical. He recognized that Diderot's exaltation of Greuze and sentimental moralism risked overburdening painting with story clarity and ethical intent. Goethe says in his notes to the translation of Diderot's Versuch über die Malerei: "Who has reached the feeling of the flesh, has already come far, the rest is nothing compared to it. A thousand painters have died without having felt the flesh, a thousand others will die without feeling it. I was in these dispositions..., when Diderot's Essay on Painting fell into my hands for the second time. I talk to the writer again, I rebuke him when he strays from the path I hold to be right; I rejoice when we find ourselves in agreement; I get angry at his paradoxes; I revel in seeing the promptness of his eye; his word draws me in, the fight becomes lively, and I have the last word without difficulty, since I am dealing with a dead adversary. I then return to myself. I notice that this work has already been written for thirty years, that the paradoxical assertions purposely directed against the pedantic mannerists of the French school have been judged; that the aim they had in mind no longer exists, and that this little work needs a historical commentator more than it needs an adversary..." Hegel read this work and largely agreed with Goethe's assessment of it. Hegel writes in his lectures on Aesthetics: "Goethe already says in his notes to the translation of Diderot's Versuch über die Malerei: "One by no means admits that it is easier to make a weak coloring more harmonious than a strong one; but admittedly, if the coloring is strong, if colors appear vivid, then the eye also feels harmony and disharmony much more vividly; but if one needs the colors weakened, some bright, others mixed, others soiled in the picture, then admittedly no one knows whether he sees a harmonious or disharmonious picture; but that one knows at most to say that it is ineffective, that it is insignificant." Diderot's essay remains a cornerstone of Enlightenment aesthetics, offering deep observations into the relationship between art, nature, and human perception. His critique of the artificiality of modern French painting and his advocacy for a more naturalistic approach influenced his contemporaries and later thinkers like Goethe and Hegel, cementing his legacy as a central figure in the philosophy of art. Alongside Essay on Painting, the volume provides a new Epilogue by the translator, a glossary of Philosophical Terms used by Diderot, a chronology of his core life and works, and a summary index of all of Diderot's works. This edition translates Essay on Painting from Diderot's Enlightenment-era French into contemporary English while retaining its intellectual context.
This essay was influential in the field of aesthetics. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose aesthetic sensibility straddled the Enlightenment and Romantic movements, expressed deep admiration for Diderot's Essay on Painting, on it as one of the most insightful texts on art produced in the 18th centu...
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About the author
Denis Diderot (1713 to 1784) was a French writer, philosopher, art critic, and editor. He directed much of the Encyclopédie, wrote fiction and drama, and produced essays on art, religion, natural philosophy, education, politics, and the material basis of mind.
Denis Diderot (1713 to 1784) was a French writer, philosopher, art critic, and editor. He directed much of the Encyclopédie, wrote fiction and drama, and produced essays on art, religion, natural philosophy, education, politics, and the material basis of mind.
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