Art Institute of Chicago

Le Triomphe de Voltaire

A. Duplessis

1778/79

Attribution

A. Duplessis French, 18th century

Medium

Etching on ivory laid paper

Physical dimensions

Image: 39.8 × 58.8 cm (15 11/16 × 23 3/16 in.); Image with text and vignette: 49.7 × 60.4 cm (19 5/8 × 23 13/16 in.); Plate: 50.8 × 60.9 cm (20 × 24 in.); Sheet: 59.5 × 87.2 cm (23 7/16 × 34 3/8 in.)

Credit line

Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection

From the museum

The French philosopher, playwright, and satirist Voltaire frequently deployed allegories touching on antiquity in his writings In this epic print, Melpomene, Muse of tragedy, leads Voltaire to Apollo to receive the crown of immortality, while his detractors face the fiery pit of hell and Thalia, Muse of comedy, doubles over in laughter. In the background a sculpted bust of Voltaire is wreathed, a ceremony enacted on Paris stages after the writer’s 1778 death. The print was likely made around 1791 to celebrate Voltaire’s re-burial inside the Paris Panthéon, a repurposed church designed after the ancient Roman Pantheon (here described as the Temple of Memory). Voltaire himself owned the original painting of this subject by the same amateur artist who created this print.

Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0