Musées de Langres – Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot – Musée d'Art et d'Histoire

This bust of Diderot by Jean-Antoine Houdon is inscribed “Denis Diderot, à ses concitoyens” (“Denis Diderot, to his fellow citizens”). Diderot presented the bust to his fellow townspeople in 1780, at the request of the city of Langres. According to a letter he wrote to his daughter, five plaster casts of the same bust came with this gift. The work was cast in bronze from a terracotta original presented by Houdon at the Salon of 1771 (this original was probably a commission from Prince Galitzine, Russian ambassador to the French court and Diderot’s friend). The sculptor sought to portray the philosopher as a man of truth and experience, strong-willed, his eyes unflinching. Diderot seems to have liked the bust well enough, believing it a good likeness. However, he looks older, more wrinkled, in the bronze cast of the bust than in the terracotta original at the Louvre.