Poética das ruínas e modernidade: acerca de alguns fragmentos da crítica de arte de Denis Diderot sobre Hubert Robert

Abstract

In this essay, I intend to briefly present Diderot’s art critic about the painter Hubert Robert (1733-1808). First of all, I will look at the meaning of the pictural theme emergence of the ruins in the Eighteen century. After this introduction, I analyze some fragments about this painter, translated by me from the Salon de 1767. At the end of these reflections, I conclude that Diderot’s poetics of ruins is inscribed in the break with some of the most important precepts of classical aesthetics, insofar as it questions the Enlightenment ideal that, confident in progress, saw, in art, a means to instruct and morally uplift. In that sense, Diderot’s critique of Robert can be considered modern.