“Uma visão bastante estranha”: reflexões sobre a pintura de Fragonard nos salões de Diderot

This article aims to present some reflections on certain aspects of Diderot’s art criticism regarding Fragonard’s work, specifically as found in his Salons, focusing on the use of an invented dream and the reinterpretation of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. These elements appear in the famous passage from the Salon of 1765, in which the philosopher invites Grimm, his interlocutor (and, by extension, the privileged circle of readers of his Correspondance littéraire), to share the “strange vision” he claims to have experienced the night following a morning visit to that year’s Salon and after reading some of Plato’s dialogues.