Le Déjeuner de Voltaire à Ferney ou Le Souper des Philosophes (The Lunch of Voltaire in Ferney or the Soup of Philsophers)
c. 1773–75
Medium
Etching in black on bluish gray laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 20.7 × 31.5 cm (8 3/16 × 12 7/16 in.); Plate: 23.4 × 34.4 cm (9 1/4 × 13 9/16 in.); Sheet: 29 × 39.5 cm (11 7/16 × 15 9/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
202429
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The Swiss artist and caricaturist Jean Huber was Voltaire’s longtime neighbor and his most frequent portraitist. This anonymous print after a Huber painting imagines some of the leading statesmen, polymaths, writers, and clerics who often hobnobbed with Voltaire coming to supper at his Ferney estate. Voltaire, his hand raised, calls the group to order. Included in the cosmopolitan cast of characters are Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, authors of the famous Encyclopédie. Although the t...