Abstract EN:

A study of the drawings of Laurent Mahelot's Mémoire (a manuscript containing 47 sketches for scenery-painting, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris) permitted me to establish a theatrical iconography based on a definition of the scenery-painting image : a contextual image elaborated from pictorial and poetic referents, and made according to theorical implications. The first part of my thesis is an attempt to delimit the historical context of the Mémoire's sketches. The discovery of some new archive documents allowed me to demonstrate the importance of Georges Buffequin in the artistic life of Paris in the first half of 17th century (the King's painter employed by Richelieu, and creator of the drawings of the Mémoire). In the second part, I show how a specific iconographic analysis could help us to understand the particularity of scenery-painting iconography, i. E. An interconnection of symbolic and real visual elements. Finally, in the third part, I treat the theoretical implications of the scenery-painting image, especially the question of stage "extent". The analysis of the Discours à Cliton reveals the importance of this text, which can be considered as a manifesto of the aesthetic of variety, and thus belongs to pre-academic debates. The analysis of the scenery-painting image during the first years of the 17th century, using a methodological plurality because of the polyvalence of the subject, gives proof of its iconographical and theoretical validity. In fouding my research on Georges Buffequin's drawings, now re-evaluated, I hope perhaps have opened a new door in the knowledge of pre-academic art history.