Le Cabinet des Antiques

Realization of the cover of the book Le Cabinet des Antiques by Michel De Jaeghere published by Les Belles Lettres.

"Such is the dark grandeur proposed henceforth to the contemporary historian: to devote his efforts to discredit the ancient authors by showing to what point they had been dependent on their blindness; to underline the gaps, the myopia, the extravagance of their judgments; to flush out class prejudices and gender stereotypes; to draw up the inventory, the genealogy of their successive reinterpretations by each generation.
To hold on the other hand their works for a reservoir of examples, models, useful situations to guide our reflection, as Plutarch recommended, to consider them even as masterpieces of an "inalterable topicality", because they "know how to say what man has of human" would be to remain on the surface of the things, "in the ether of the classic culture". To flatter oneself to continue with these old dead a dialogue that our differences and our distance relegate to the rank of vain dream would be naïve, amateurish and overstated.
I wrote this book because I think the opposite.