"Michelangelo's Seal" in Translation: Élisabeth-Sophie Chéron and the Polemics of Print

Abstract

Abstract: In 1709, the French painter Élisabeth-Sophie Chéron (1648–1711) designed a print after an engraved carnelian held in Louis XIV's collection and known as "Michelangelo's Seal" for its supposed previous owner. Soon after its 1710 release in Paris, this print prompted a quarrel between Chéron and antiquarian scholars who condemned her unfaithful reproduction of the prized gem, a judgment later reiterated by the connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette in his Traité des pierres gravées (1750). While previous studies of "Michelangelo's Seal" have discussed the negative reception encountered by Chéron's print, this essay examines how she formulated the image in the first place. Following recent interest in the role of prints in shaping early modern forms of intermediality, the essay treats the 1709 print as a résumé of Chéron's prior achievements in painting and poetry. I adopt a Benjaminian hermeneutic of translation to analyze the artist's visual strategies and engagement with two of the meanings ascribed to engraved gems in her time: their monumentality as cultural remnants of antiquity and their use as seal-stones. I argue that Chéron tailored her translation of "Michelangelo's Seal" according to her skills and status as an active member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture since 1672. Moreover, in the process, she subverted not only the intended status of female members of that institution, but also broader, gendered norms of artistic creativity.