“Ce lieu de délices”: Art and Imitation in the French Libertine Cabinet

Abstract

by 1777, when Damon, the young protagonist of Vivant Denon’s Point de lendemain, admits: “j’avais beaucoup de curiosite; ce n’etait plus Mme de T... que je desirais; c’etait [son] cabinet,” architecture had become an important motif in eighteenth-century French literature, and space, as Denon’s tale demonstrates, was often pressed into the service of eroticism.1 Nowhere was architecture’s erotic potential more widely explored than in the number of libertine writings that appeared during the last century of the ancien regime, and throughout the century, the libertine text provided an arena in which authors reflected upon the changes that architecture underwent in France as early as the latter part of the seventeenth century. As architects moved to incorporate “commodite” into their plans for living spaces, creating smaller and more intimate rooms that contrasted with the larger, more formal spaces of the previous century, libertine writers put these spaces into play, mining them for their erotic potential, and making the niche, the alcove, the boudoir, and the cabinet, which were central to eighteenth-century French notions of architecture, mainstays of the libertine text.2