The contribution of the Salon and the Masonic Lodge to the circulation of enlightened ideas in eighteenth-century Europe

Résumé du document

The Masonic Lodge embodied the new type of private societies with public effects that developed remarkably over the eighteenth century in Europe. On the contrary, the Salon, as an official exhibition of paintings, was the representation of the influence of the monarchy on artistic matters during the same period of time. Its main characteristic being to be totally opened to the population could make it join the Masonic Lodge as an alternative social space within a monarchy still claiming its complete monopoly over the public sphere. The effect of such a development of social networks was the diffusion of different ideas about society, namely to create the “Enlightenment”. Jürgen Habermas talked about the birth of a new “public sphere” in the eighteenth century, for these networks encouraged the formation of a public opinion different from the monarch's.

Extraits

[...] Jacob, ibid. p Ibid. p Thomas E. Crow, ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid., p Denis Diderot, Essais sur la peinture : Salons de Hermann T. E. Crow, ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. [...]

[...] More generally, the Masonic Lodge and the Salon were conveyors of enlightened ideas. The Masonic Lodge created a new model for society, and thus it was also a noteworthy promoter of many progressive ideas. The Salon played an important part as well in the circulation of enlightened ideas, mainly through education and the reduction of social division. The ideal society called for by the freemasons assumed the equality and the fraternity between men. Within the lodge, there was a “brotherhood of equals[13]”. [...]

[...] Ibid. p Ibid. p.98. Greuze was said to ennoble the rustic genre without altering its truth ibid. p Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment: a comparative social history 1721- 1794, Arnolds p.69. M. C. Jacob, ibid. p T. Munck, ibid. p.64. [...]

[...] Thomas E. Crow, ibid. p. 82-88. M. C. Jacob, ibid. p J. A. Leo Lemay, Deism, Masonry and the Enlightenment, Associated University Presses M. C. [...]

[...] Both the Masonic Lodge and the Salon of paintings had a significant and different role in the promotion of enlightened ideas in eighteenth-century Europe, but their dedication to the latter has to be contrasted by analysing some of their evident characteristics and the breadth of their audiences. On the one hand, even if the Salon gave birth to a fairly enlightened and critical public, it always remained state-dependent in itself. On the other hand, the Masonic Lodge was socially exclusive and the Salon geographically limited. The Salon was originally created by the Royal Academy of Painting in order to assert the monopoly of the latter on arts. [...]