“Je ne sçay quoy d’éclattant et de noir” The rhetoric of chiaroscuro and the emergence of the subject in Pierre Le Moyne’s Les Peintures morales (1640 and 1643)

The Jesuit eloquence referred to as “painterly” is dependent on a rich optical imagery: light, mirrors, anamorphosis. . . This article aims to study the tenebrist side of these visual metaphors. Les Peintures morales and Les Hymnes show that chiaroscuro plays a central role in Pierre Le Moyne’s sacred sophistry, by suggesting the encounter of divine clarity with a human subject blinded by sin and finitude, but capable of receiving it.