Dall’ut pictura poësis all’ut musica pictura: un percorso francese tra sette e ottocento

The article tackles the crisis of it pictura poesis as an aesthetic concept, which occurs between the 18th and 19 centuries. The undermining of this principle, which had been indeed the main pillar of academic theory, coincides with the beginning of a theoretical reflection on the autonomy of the pictorial language from the verbal one. By dwelling on French culture on the transition between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, the author aims to demonstrate how the musical pattern played a fundamental role in the development of such a reflection. On the one hand, Lessing refuses the principle of ut pictura poesis and acknowledges poetry as a free art, while restricting the features of painting and sculpture, considered as just aiming to represent beauty. On the other, French theoreticians foster an alternative reflection pivoting on the linguistic features of visual arts, thus freeing them from the subordination to the literary model. By means of a reconstruction starting from Roger de Piles and encompassing also Paillot de Montabert and Delacroix, the article stresses in particular the role that instrumental music as an anti-mimetic art performed in stimulating a new discussion on the autonomy of the pictorial code.