Frontispiece: Dictionnaire de musique

Art Historical Context

Created by French artist Jean-Michel Moreau in 1779, this etching and engraving served as the frontispiece for the *Dictionnaire de musique*, a reference work devoted to musical knowledge. As the opening illustration for such a volume, it would have welcomed readers with an image that symbolized the harmony, theory, and cultural role of music, setting a tone of scholarly elegance before the dictionary’s entries began. Moreau worked during the late Enlightenment, when printmaking techniques like etching and engraving enabled artists to produce finely detailed images that could be reproduced an...