Enlightenment’s search for scientific knowledge. The Macaronies in Britain were a group of aristocrats
who, in the 1770s, deliberately sought out and wore outrageous costumes and hairstyles influenced by
continental court fashions, such as those associated with Marie Antoinette (Tullett, 2015). Masked balls
remained popular in France until the end of the century. There was, however, gathering criticism outside
France of such trends (Craske, 1997, 157–160), and even within France the daring fashions of Marie
Antoinette identified her eventually as an enemy of the people.
As discussed in Chapter 4, empiricist aspects of Enlightenment ideology placed great emphasis on the
impressions or “data” gained by the five senses in the formulation of knowledge and taste, but
“sensations” or the crude reflex responses of sense experience were not deemed in themselves to be
sufficient to form true knowledge or insight. John Locke had highlighted the role of “sensations” in
forming simple ideas in the mind such as brightness, hardness and so on. In the thinking person, however,
these data had to be combined and reflected upon in order to allow the formulation of “complex” ideas
such as beauty or truth (Locke, 1694, 41, 48, 75, 79). For “sensationist” philosophers throughout the
eighteenth century, such as Diderot, Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751), ClaudeAdrien Helvétius
(1715–1771) and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780), raw data provided by the sense of sight
must be refined in order to form rational ideas about morality or taste.
There were strong views from Enlightenment thinkers on such issues, since an interest in the supernatural,
the superstitious, occult and mystical often challenged the rationalism that eighteenthcentury thinkers
tried so hard to instil in their readers. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who held strong Catholic beliefs,
continued to be influenced by the supernatural, and his engraved capriccios series (c.1740–1743) defies
rational analysis. Such trends in Venetian art became fashionable in Paris but also lie behind the dark
fears represented in Goya’s Los Caprichos, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la
razon produce monstruos, Plate 43). Occultist freemasonry was popular in late eighteenthcentury
Sweden and appealed to the superstitious beliefs of the court of Gustav III (reigned 1771–1792).
Spiritualism and the study of dream states had become fashionable there through the influence of the
scientist and thinker, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Many eighteenthcentury artists, including the
sculptor Houdon, were also freemasons, a movement imbued with magic and mysticism, although some
tried to reconcile such interests with a more rational approach.
Given the complex ways in which vision might influence beliefs or ideas, it is interesting to discover in
eighteenthcentury art many visual representations of an interest in the processes of looking and seeing.
Watteau’s Shop Sign of the Art Dealer Gersaint (L’Enseigne de Gersaint, 1720–1721) (Figure 3.2)
provides one such representation of looking at art, within a shop setting. Here some prospective buyers
examine, in the background, a circular painting of nymphs in the rococo style. A man indulges in the kind
of “close up” looking that expresses both ignorance (the work might be better viewed from afar) and
lewdness. Many satirical images used the eyeglass as a signifier of voyeuristic viewing. It might also be
used by the curieux collector and was seen as a sign of pedantry, lust or moral and intellectual myopia
(Wrigley, 1993, 273; Brewer, 1997, 279–81; Craske, 1997, 148–151). This form of looking was often
associated with gentleman’s club humor or with societies such as the Society of Dilettanti. Zoffany’s The
Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772–7) represents a crowd of male connoisseurs taking advantage of an
opportunity to view from close up the anatomical detail of Renaissance and antique nude female figures.
Prints representing exhibition crowds highlighted different ways of seeing and looking: the connoisseurs
they featured often representing a patriarchal influence on these processes, mediating the viewing
practices of women (Matheson, 2001, 48–53). By the 1780s, the “decorous” influence of women at such
exhibitions had also become much more noticeable (Perry, 2007, 64). Prints representing exhibitions
emphasized the importance of social interaction in the eighteenthcentury viewing of art, as well as the