No eighteenth-century writer was depicted more often than Voltaire; and
no image of him has greater iconic status than the bust sculpted by Jean-
Antoine Houdon (fig. 1). In fact, there is not one bust but a whole assortment
of them, in various materials and presentations; the number of surviving
portrait busts makes clear that Voltaire was Houdon’s best-selling subject.2
Mme Denis, Voltaire’s niece and mistress, even commissioned a full-length
version, the large seated statue in marble which now dominates the first-floor
foyer of the Come´die-Franc¸aise. Voltaire’s head, wearing no wig, is turned
to the right, his eyes in a piercing glance, his lips drawn tightly in a smile.
So potent and so omnipresent was this image that writers in the nineteenth
century not only debated Voltaire’s ideas, they argued about his smile. The
Romantic poet Alfred de Musset famously described Voltaire’s ‘hideous
smile’.3 Joseph de Maistre evidently had the phrase in mind when he spoke
of Voltaire’s ‘ghastly grin’ (‘rictus e´pouvantable’), a phrase which Gustave
Flaubert quotes when he mocks the received bourgeois wisdom concerning
the writer whom he admired: ‘Voltaire: Superficial knowledge. Famous for
his ghastly grin’ (‘Science superficielle. Ce´le`bre par son rictus e´pouvantable’).4
Victor Hugo tried to set the record straight: ‘This smile is wisdom. This smile,
I repeat, is Voltaire’ (‘Ce sourire, c’est la sagesse. Ce sourire, je le re´pe`te,
c’est Voltaire’).
Cambridge Companion to Voltaire. “”Introduction”.