About this blog

Blog created and maintained by Volker Schröder (VS), Department of French and Italian, Princeton University.

The purpose of this blog is to present and analyze objects, not opinions. Typical entries are built around unique or rare, unknown or neglected artifacts encountered during research in various (physical and/or digital) collections and archives. The commentary aims to be accurate and informative, but by no means definitive. All corrections and comments are welcome.

The main focus is French culture during the “long seventeenth century” (ca. 1598-1715), but occasional excursions into other areas are not excluded.

Header image:
Cesare Ripa, Iconologie, Paris: M. Guillemot, 1644, Première Partie, p. 59 (no. LI, Estude).
Bibliothèque numérique de l’INHA, collections Jacques Doucet.
http://www.purl.org/yoolib/inha/8625

Background image:
Sébastien Leclerc, L’Académie des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts, 1698.
Rijksmuseum.
http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.468212