Les Amours de la jument (Denis Diderot, Les Bijoux indiscrets, 1748, fig. 5)
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Description
The scene takes place in the stable. In the foreground, seated three-quarter at a small desk, Mangogul, recognizable by his lack of a wig (compare fig3), points with his index finger at the mare whose jewel he has decided to make speak, unless he is instructing his secretary to transcribe the jewel's neighing. In the center, the mare is depicted as a parody of a court lady at her toilette. A servant presents her with a mirror, while another adjusts an aigrette on her head. To the left, a third unhooks one of her hind hooves (the headdress she wears on her head identifies her as a woman), while a courtier bends down to greet the sultan and the mare: this is the "Provençal", Mangogul's second secretary. This group, made up of the mare, the three maids and the Provençal, forms the confined space of the scene. The kneeling maid, whose back is to the lower left in the engraving, is symmetrically positioned opposite the mare, who is facing the front. The mare
1.T. 1. Pag. 333 (top right)
3. The engraver parodies the iconographic motif of the woman à le toilette. The same type of architecture, with shifted perspective, is found in the illustration of La Petite jument and, outside Les Bijoux, in Poussin's La Mort de Germanicus.
Technical Data
Notice #001286
