Portrait From The 18th Century, Philosopher Voltaire, Age Of Enlightenment, Pastel, Gilt Frame

Large antique pastel dating from the second half of the 18th century.
A very fine portrait of the philosopher Voltaire.
Gilt wood frame with a glazed cover.
60cm x 54cm.
In good condition.

Voltaire, whose real name was François-Marie Arouet, was born on November 21, 1694, in Paris, where he died on May 30, 1778. He was a French writer, notably a playwright and poet, a philosopher, and an encyclopedist, a major figure of the Enlightenment, enjoying international renown during his lifetime. Voltaire left his mark on his era through his literary output and political activism. His influence on the educated classes was considerable in the decades preceding the French Revolution and at the beginning of the 19th century, but subsequently diminished due to the triumph of Rousseau's philosophy and the development of pre-Romanticism. An Anglophile, passionate about the arts and sciences, anticlerical but a deist, he denounced religious fanaticism throughout history, both in France and elsewhere, in his Philosophical Dictionary. Using his renown to defend victims of religious intolerance and arbitrary rule, he took a stand in cases he made famous: the Calas affair, the Sirven affair, and those of the Chevalier de La Barre and the Comte de Lally-Tollendal. Politically, he favored a moderate and liberal monarchy, enlightened by the "philosophers." He initially modeled it on the British system of government, which emerged from the Revolution of 1688, but also briefly believed he had found model princes in the "enlightened despots" (Frederick of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia). He was not, however, in favor of a republican regime, unlike Rousseau, a citizen of the Republic of Geneva. During the first partition of Poland (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) in 1772, Rousseau supported the Poles, Voltaire the princes who partitioned it.