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Based on a close reading of Pierre Milan’s and René Boyvin’s engraving of the Nymph of Fontainebleau (c.1545–54), this article addresses the paragone debate underlying the multimedia productions that characterized French Renaissance aesthetics. Despite being a central work of French sixteenth-century art, the engraving has been discussed mostly as a record of a lost painting by Rosso Fiorentino. However, a comparison to closely related works, together with an attentive consideration of the enigmatic relationship between its three components—image, inscriptions, frame—reveals that it is a sophisticated representation with multiple levels of meaning that have not been previously considered, and which are fundamentally concerned with self-reflexive issues of artistic production. The apparent contradictions between the image and the text of the engraving raise art-theoretical questions about fictive illusionistic representation and the status of print as a medium. This article contextualizes these theoretical issues within the historical reception of the paragone in Renaissance France, while examining the ways in which the very nature of sixteenth-century prints—by way of their historical connection to drawing—highlight the diversity between media and provide a particular lens for approaching the questions underlying the comparison between the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The French court, far from being caught off guard by the arrival of the Bouffons in 1752, had in fact been pursuing an independent policy which favoured the performance of operas since 1745. In 1749, it was its taste for spectacle that prompted the court to purchase buildings at Fontainebleau which would make it possible to house the staffs of the Royal Entertainments Department (les Menus-Plaisirs), the workshops and stage properties departments, and to install a small rehearsal room. Three years later, Louis Bays de Cury, who was in overall charge of the Royal Entertainments Department, seized the opportunity of putting on Rousseau's Le devin du village. Two documents preserved in the French National Archives (O1 2991 and O1 2992) reveal the details not only of the extraordinary expenses incurred in the journeys to Fontainebleau, but also the particularly mixed styles of programming. They also give details of the costumes made for Le devin and other performances, which in some instances enhance our understanding of the stage practice of the Italian actors. In 1752, the passion for opera spread from Fontainebleau to Versailles, where the stage of the Salle de Comédie, located in the south wing of the palace, was subsequently enlarged in order to house not only the Bouffons, but also to permit the staging of Zélindor, roi des Silphes, a ballet by Moncrif, Rebel and Francœur. Zélindor was also staged at Versailles in 1745, but that was on a stage erected in the Grande Ecurie, which was destroyed by fire in 1751. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]