Oeuvres de Jean Racine

Pierre Didot l'ainé|Jean Racine|Pierre Paul Prud'hon|Jean Guillaume Moitte|Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson|Taunai|Antoine Denis Chaudet|Jean-Baptiste-Michel Dupréel|baron François Gérard

1801 · Printed book with engraved illustrations · Drawings and Prints

This is the second volume of Didot's three-volume The Works of Racine. In his preface to the books, Didot referred to this edition as a "monument to Racine." He carried out this metaphor in the scale and luxuriousness of the edition, as well as in commissioning contemporary artists to illustrate it. The presentation of the illustrations reinforces the impressiveness of the edition, where an equality of scale is established between image and text: both the distance from the top of each illustration to the bottom of the caption below, and the width of each illustration are equal to the size of the text blocks that open each act and face the illustrations. This visual equivalence asserts the significance of the illustrations as interpretations of the text, and as images in their own right. Didot's claims for the significance of the illustrations were underscored by the fact that the individual prints were exhibited regularly at the Salon.

Artist

Pierre Didot l'ainé|Jean Racine|Pierre Paul Prud'hon|Jean Guillaume Moitte|Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson|Taunai|Antoine Denis Chaudet|Jean-Baptiste-Michel Dupréel|baron François Gérard

Date

1801

Medium

Printed book with engraved illustrations

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and The Elisha Whittelsey Funds; and Gift of John Sise, by exchange, 1958