Frontispiece for Almanach Historico-Physique 1762

Curator: This intaglio print is entitled "Frontispiece for Almanach Historico-Physique," etched by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin in 1762. The artwork resides here at the Art Institute of Chicago. The texture is so fine, and yet it represents a cacophony! Editor: Indeed! It strikes me as a visual encyclopedia stuffed into a single room. The baroque abundance feels almost… anxious. All that detail battling for attention! Curator: Well said. Consider this: almanacs in that era were repositories of knowledge—astrological predictions, recipes, scientific observations. Saint-Aubin visually embodies that jumble. Look at how he combines natural history specimens—stuffed birds, skeletons, what looks like a crocodile—with classical sculpture and allegorical figures. Editor: Ah, yes, there are the two strange and rather unsettling creatures flanking the table. It's a curated Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, compressed into a frontispiece. I wonder if Saint-Aubin is pointing to a sort of human drive? Our inherent compulsion to categorize, display, and ultimately, comprehend our universe through symbols. Even that central, faceless statue... Curator: She acts as a silent guardian, amidst all the hustle of enlightenment accumulating around her. Everything meticulously labelled in reality now squeezed into a single image, labels now gone as objects overwhelm. Is she meant to hold them? Or maybe observe this world with a knowing but neutral stare? Editor: It's as though time itself has become compressed. Ancient statuary alongside newly discovered wonders. The etching itself is like a map of collective human obsession, a cataloguing not only of scientific advancement, but an unacknowledged visual id, with both Apollonian form and something darker besides... Curator: It speaks to the 18th-century desire for comprehensive knowledge, this intense surveying of all things knowable that in turn produced an incredible self-consciousness and desire for freedom from categorization. You wonder what a twenty-first century equivalent of the same drive looks like. Editor: Perhaps it's the internet itself? That sprawling, endlessly branching network of information. It would be curious to see an updated allegorical frontispiece from the perspective of Saint-Aubin. It’s rather thrilling, considering it now!