Charles Perrault's Cabinet des Beaux Arts (1690) was written at the height of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. It represents, albeit with the conciseness of a pamphlet, an important document both to understand some aspects of the debate on the arts in late 17th-century France (e.g., the notion of progress between perfection and perfectibity, the relationship between taste and reason) and also to reconstruct a significant shift in the history of the concept of art.
Historically, the Cabinet is the first text to include in its title the term "fine arts". It also synthesizes the theoretical approach that in those same years Perrault was articulating in his momumental Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes and that, three years earlier, he had provocatively presented in his poem Le Siècle de Louis le Grand. Rather than an anticipation of Batteux's "system of the fine arts" and, therefore, of modern aesthetics, the Cabinet makes it possible to understand some of the main assumptions that will establish that concept in the 18th century and also the changes that occurred in the prevailing views on artistic production between the 17th and 18th century.
The present edition, by Giuseppe Di Liberti (giuseppediliberti@virgilio.it), is not only the first one in Italian, but also the first reprint since the original edition. It includes the illustrations that Perrault chose and that, in line with 17th-century rhetorical culture, become discourse.