In 2026, we will be launching Voltaire Iconography – the first critically annotated digital database of visual representations of Voltaire. Spanning engraving, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts, the project will bring together works from across Europe, dating from the earliest known likeness (1718) to the Bourbon Restoration (1830). By consolidating this dispersed visual material for the first time, the database will offer an innovative tool for tracing how Voltaire’s image evolved across both time and media.
Building on an extensive analogue archive generously donated to the Foundation by Professor Samuel Taylor, the database will feature reproductions of a wide range of objects — from canonical works by Largillière, La Tour, Huber, Houdon, and Pigalle to lesser-known artefacts such as caricatures, playing cards, snuff boxes, and porcelain figurines.
These diverse objects will be organised into c.50 curated thematic collections, each highlighting a different aspect of Voltaire’s visual legacy (e.g., Voltaire and Rousseau, The Image of Voltaire in the Revolution, Artist-Visitors to Ferney, and Coronation as a Motif in Voltaire’s Visual Representations). Each collection will include a bibliography and art-historical commentary offering historical context and iconographic analysis. Together, they will show how Voltaire’s public image took shape during his lifetime and transformed in the politically turbulent decades that followed.
Once complete, Voltaire Iconography will be the first resource to bring together the full breadth of Voltaire’s visual representations in a single, accessible archive. It will consolidate a body of scholarship that has until now remained fragmented and shed light on images that have hitherto received little or no academic attention.
Designed to support research in literature, history, and art history, the database will also engage broader audiences, fostering new engagement with Voltaire’s visual legacy and the early modern dynamics of fame and image-making.
The project will complement, and be integrated with, the Voltaire Foundation’s existing resources: the digital edition of Voltaire’s complete works, the Catalogue of Manuscripts related to Voltaire (CMV), and the Library of Voltaire.