Mangogul's dream (Denis Diderot, Les Bijoux indiscrets, 1748, fig. 6)
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Description
Chapter XXXII, The best and perhaps least read of this story. Mangogul's dream, or Journey into the region of hypotheses. Plato shows Mangogul the spectacle of the dogmatists. In the lower foreground, the hippogriphe by which Mangogul arrived at the palace of hypotheses is lying on the clouds that form the palace floor. With his body turned towards us, he turns his head back to look at Mangogul and Plato. A little further up on the left, Plato, recognizable by his long beard and holding a half-rolled scroll of parchment symbolizing his writings against his hip, points out to Mangogul, shown from behind but recognizable by his long hair, the orator who, in the upper right, on a podium balanced on a spike on the ground, is blowing soap bubbles from a reed tube held in his left hand, while his right hand holds up the container of soapy water. Below the podium, or pulpit, is the speaker's monstrous audience. On the right
1. On the right gaut, above the engraving, it reads "T.1 Pag. 341"
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3. The spider's web overhanging the pulpit from which the orator pours out his vain eloquence, figured by the soap bubbles coming out of his blowtorch, can be compared with the allegory of Dialectics painted by Veronese on the ceiling of the College Hall, in the Doge's Palace in Venice.
Technical Data
Notice #001288
