Lost Knowledge and the History of the Arts

Abstract

This chapter situates the emergence of the projects on the “history of the arts” in the political and cultural contexts of the 1660s, particularly with respect to the memorandum on trade that Colbert prepared for Louis XIV in 1664. It addresses the ongoing discourse on lost knowledge, revived in the late 1680s by the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which divided the Académie Francaise and intrigued the reading public. The mechanical arts offered an abundance of evidence to support the new idea that human knowledge was cumulative, which was the preliminary step for the elaboration of the notion of progress.