Katie Scott's seminal book Becoming Property examines the interrelation between artistic practice and intellectual property from the sixteenth century to the French Revolution. In “‘Ut Pictura Poesis’: Matters of Privilege and Property,” the socio-legal conditions of the privilège (pre-copyright) in the ancien regime are introduced. Equal parts autocratic and egalitarian, the French privilege system began as exclusive reproduction rights of a limited duration gifted by the king or governmental authority to an individual, independent of the “order, title, or place to which he or she belonged” (37). Transitioning temporary privileges to perpetual rights, the Literary and Artistic Property Act of 1793 became the first law to recognize an author's intellectual property. What started as a gift of patronage for loyalty reformed into a bureaucratic mandate and, ultimately, revolutionized into an inherent right. Case studies pertaining to an illustrated edition of Jean de La Fontaine's Fables choisies (1668–79) and the plates for Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1762–72) exemplify the legal system's progression across time.
French privileges are further examined through the lens of art theoretical themes: emulation, imitation, and invention. The medium of print forms the basis for analysis in “Emulation: Privilege and Plagiarism.” Unlike their Italian counterparts, French artists rarely requested privileges administered by the Chancellerie and subsequently by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Scott addresses this point using the code of conduct within the Académie, where distinctions existed between encouraged emulation and denounced plagiarism. Comparatively, “Imitation: Crimes of Likeness,” focuses on wax and print portraits to postulate that “since portraiture is defined by Renaissance and post-Renaissance art theory. . . can one copyright a copy?” (211). Establishing that waxes and prints can be multiples, disputes brought before the Châtelet and the Tribunaux de police correctionelle challenged the concept of the privileged image since the genre includes both faithful likenesses (wax death masks) and fictitious representations (printed images). Scott concludes that cases involving portraits “resolved. . . long-standing difficulties raised in law by the notion of imitation” since, through the deployment of artistic theory in legal proceedings, “emerged the idea of the original copy” (238–39).
Relabeling imitation as invention, “Invention: The Secrets of Colour” sets aside the conventional early modern definition of invention, instead applying it in terms of productive knowledge in relation to color-printing technology patents. In the 1737 privilege granted to Jacob Christoph Le Blon for a color application process with three plates, among Le Blon's reasons for applying for a privilege was his advanced age. Scott proceeds to discuss a case brought against Jacques-Fabien Gautier, briefly an apprentice to Le Blon, who obtained a 1745 privilege for the same technique four years after Le Blon's death. As an invention, the three-plate color-printing method was akin to property, an object “distinct from the self that could be. . . inherited, divided, bought and sold, and, of course, allegedly stolen” (279). The art theoretical concepts of emulation, imitation, and invention are thus shown to have legal agency in the development of French property law.
Scott returns to the Literary and Artistic Property Act of 1793, which fortified art's status as property with the conversion of privileges to rights, in “Art and Industry: Intellectual Property and the French Revolution.” To scrutinize the edict's realization of printmakers’ aspirations, she examines the two earliest criminal and copyright cases concerning pirated prints, after Carle Vernet's representations of Napoleon's Italian campaigns and the illicit sale of wallpaper designed after two engravings by Marguerite Gérard. Not immediately apparent to artists, Scott declares that the 1793 edict established “a [legal] class of intellectual property owners for the first time” (289).
Scott's appendix will be beneficial to future scholarship, as it delineates all known privileges granted between 1714 and 1789 by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture as recorded in the Procès-verbaux of the Académie's monthly meetings. Legal documents provide primary information pertinent to the examination of any privileged work, including the applicant's name, petition date, author, printmaker, title, sales location, and number of copies. These specifics resolve long-standing art historical questions, while policymakers and lawyers can address legal disputes by retracing the past. Scott's publication is an important contribution to the interrelated fields of art and legal history.
