The Unknown Masterpiece

About this film

LibriVox recording of The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac. (Translated by Ellen Marriage.) Read in English by Bruce Pirie. “The Unknown Masterpiece” (“Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu”) is a novella by Honoré de Balzac, published with revisions in 1845, after earlier versions in 1831 and 1837. “The Unknown Masterpiece” grapples with questions of real life vs. artistic representations of life, and artist’s intentions vs. audience reception. We follow a discussion between three artists in the early 1600s. Two of these artists are based on historical figures — Nicolas Poussin and Frans Pourbus (Porbus) the Younger. The third is a fictional creation — “Master Frenhofer,” a genius painter who has been struggling for years to complete his masterpiece. Frenhofer is full of ideas — perhaps too full. He discourses passionately about art and representation, but Balzac the realist was himself distrustful of this intellectualization of artistic processes, and wrote that this story “shows the disorder that thought in all its development produces in the artist’s soul.” Balzac might have been astonished to learn that the very discourse of which he was so suspicious would become, a century later, a…

Directors & creators

Honoré de Balzac

Subjects

librivox; audiobooks;art; painting; realism; artist intentions; audience reception; artistic representation; aesthetic theory

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