Il capolavoro non ancora conosciuto

Il senso di chi fa e di chi guarda

Abstract

The art, once contemplated and admired, is no more understandable even for the artists who produce it. Balzac places The unknown masterpiece in the XVIIth century at the same time of the famous querelle between old times and modern times, between line and colour or Poussin v/s Rubens. The occasion in which the tale has been written places itself in the first decades of the XIXth century, when photography entered the arts sphere. “Impression” is a word which refers both to the portrait photography and to en plein air landscape painting: scholars stand up for photography more than painters. Even Balzac allows himself a daguerreotype posing as an artist. The work of photographers and painters becomes a still “unknown” (master)piece in the new reality of modern vision. The same monument dedicated to Balzac, wanted by Émile Zola for the 50th anniversary of the writer’s death, had a long and suffered gestation by the sculptor Rodin, and its result was refused by the scholars who asked for it, so that it remained a chalk sculpture until the following century.