board, 25.9 x 20 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A little painting from the end of the Old Regime perfectly captures the essence of libertine literature. In Pierre-Antoine Baudouin’s La Nuit [The Night] (ca. 1778) as in the masterpieces of eighteenth-century French erotic fiction such as Crébillon’s Les Egarements du cœur et de l’esprit [The Wayward Heart and Mind] (1735-1738), Denon’s Point de lendemain [No Tomorrow] (1777) or Laclos’ Les Liaisons dangereuses [Dangerous Liaisons] (1782), pleasure is represented in a state of permanent suspension between the grace of a pas de deux and the violence of an assault. The scene is bathed in a titillating demi-jour redolent of the ambiguity that clouds the characters’ and artist’s intention and blurs the aftermath
6370 words
Citation: Ganofsky, Marine. "Libertine Fiction". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 September 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19554, accessed 19 April 2024.]
