Opvoering van 'Le Malade Imaginaire' door Molière in de tuin van Versailles 1676

This print by Jean Lepautre shows Molière’s play ‘Le Malade Imaginaire’ being performed in the garden of Versailles. It was made using etching, a printmaking technique which relies on acid to bite into a metal plate. The image shows a highly controlled world: the ordered theatre, the straight lines of the architecture, the symmetrical garden design. The very process of etching, where the artist meticulously scratches through a waxy ground to expose the metal to acid, reflects the meticulous control of the Ancien Régime. Consider the labor that would have gone into every aspect of this scene, from the architecture to the costumes to the very production of the play itself. The performance and this print are a form of cultural production, part of a larger system of patronage, with the King at its center. Lepautre's print preserves the spectacle, but also turns it into a commodity. The lines of the etching, so precisely rendered, invite us to think about all the other lines of power, labour, and consumption that converge in this image.