DIDEROT Denis Langres, 1713 - Paris, 1784, French... Lot 39

DIDEROT Denis [Langres, 1713 - Paris, 1784], French writer. Autograph manuscript. [1765]; 4 pages in-4°. Important manuscript of the last part of his Essays on Painting to follow up on the 1765 salon. Very Damaged. "It is said of Saint Peter's in Rome that the proportions are so perfectly kept that the building loses at first sight all the effect of its size and extent, so that one can say, Magnus esse, sentiri parvus. Here is how we reason. To what did all these admirable proportions serve? To make small and common, a great thing? It seems that it would have been better to deviate from this, and that there would have been more skill in producing the opposite effect, and in giving grandeur to an ordinary and common thing. It is answered that in truth the building would have appeared greater at first sight, if one had sacrificed with art the proportions; but one asks which was preferable, or to produce a great and sudden admiration, or to create one which started weak, increased little by little and became finally great and permanent by a reflected and detailed examination. It is granted that, everything being equal, a thin and slender man will appear taller than a well-proportioned one; but it is still asked which of these two men will be admired more; and if the first one 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 building that art has enlarged ends up being conceived as it is; instead of the great building that art and its proportions have reduced to an ordinary and common appearance, ends up being conceived great, the unfavorable prestige of the proportions disappearing by the necessary comparison of the spectator with some of the parts of the building"... Attached : an autograph manuscript. 4 pages in-4°, very damaged in a corner, touched by moisture. "The finished supper, we talked, we joked, we made music, we danced. However, the business manager Cotenski was alone in a corner, lying on a large armchair, head down, eyes closed, pretending to sleep, but not sleeping. From time to time, our dancers, who were looking at him, let out a burst of laughter, which they attributed to a false step, to the lack of rhythm, and to anything else that came to mind, but our false sleeper did not show up... At two o'clock in the morning, we separated". Unpublished document. Attached: Copy of Diderot's text being prepared for the Correspondance littéraire (at the time of Meister), with a nota, p. [6] to indicate a reorganization of the text. With also an autograph correction by Diderot at the bottom of p. 3. Text that appeared in the Correspondance littéraire, known under the title Result of a conversation, here entitled "Letter", 6 p. numbered up to the fifth. Pages 7 and 8 are blank. A very rare document that plunges us into the heart of Diderot's work in collaboration with the Correspondance littéraire.