Mathematical Skills and Household Service in the Career of Sébastien Le Clerc

Sébastien Le Clerc (1637-1714), one of the most successful engravers of Louis XIV’s France, was born to a family of goldsmiths in Lorraine, and received classical artisanal training. Yet over the course of a highly successful career as an engraver, he also became a widely published scientific author. His publications ranged from topics commensurate with artists’ interest, such as perspective and optics, to publications on cosmology, far removed from the workshop. This paper argues that mathematical skills played a key role in the dual development of Le Clerc’s career, who simultaneously became an engraver and strove to recognition as a man of letters and natural philosopher. Yet these mathematical skills only came fruition in the context of household service, in particular as an education to the children of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the powerful minister who spearheaded the transformation of the French cultural sphere in the 1660s. By tracing Le Clerc’s dual career arch, and showing how mathematical skills served to integrate Le Clerc into several contexts, from the Colbert’s household, through the world of publishing and the royal manufactures at the Gobelins, this paper seeks to revisit the thorny question of the relations between scholars and artisans during the Scientific Revolution. Rather than relying on hands-on, bodily experience, it was Le Clerc’s skill in mathematics that lend support to his aspiring scholarly career. These skills were published and advertised though his connections to powerful houses, which connected the developing state bureaucracy and manufactures with the market for scientific books.