For the senses and the spirit: The place of sensitivity in the debates about the aim of painting in the French Royal Academy

Abstract

The article studies the presence of the concept of sensitivity in the debates of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture during the final decades of the seventeenth century, in the context of the so-called Querelle du Coloris. Beyond the discussion of the primacy of drawing or color in painting, a deeper question is expressed: What part of the human being should be given priority in the pictorial act: the mind or the senses? The study of these peculiar debates, using both texts and the artists involved, reveals the image of a France that seeks to position itself not only at an artistic but also at a theoretical and intellectual level.