Les rapports entre les sciences et les beaux-arts dans les écrits de C.-H. Watelet : pour une représentation de l'ordre de la nature

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Étienne Jollet : The relationship between science and art in the writings of C.-H. Watelet. Towards a representation of the order of nature. C. H. Watelet's didactic poem L'Art de peindre (1760) was part of the movement which aimed at giving legitimacy to painting, but this first French poem on the subject was characterised by the importance given to the relationship between science and the arts. Watelet's aim was to present Newtonianism to artists, as can be seen in several of the articles he wrote for the Dictionnaire des beaux-arts (published after his death by P. C. Lévesque in 1788-92). The link with Newtonian physics can be seen far more in the emphasis placed on empathy for a work of art than in the reference to a coherent body of physical notions, in particular the equilibrium of bodies. The relationship to science, mainly physics, can be seen above all in the desire to integrate humans into the natural world order, which leads to an interest in gardens (Essais sur les jardins, 1774). Thus the reference to Newtonian physics becomes the expression of a desire to merge with the dynamic totality of nature, and nostalgia for the observable world, now outdated due to the growing mathematization of science.