Subject
The print depicts the turning point of the 1664 farce Tartuffe, ou L'imposteur by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin). The depicted moment is that when the title character Tartuffe, a manipulative hypocrite who performs exemplary piety and spiritual insight in order to defraud a bourgeois family, is about to be unmasked. The family's loyal maid Dorine and her mistress Elmire have engineered a meeting that will unmask the imposter's plot. Unaware of their scheme Tartuffe persists with his excessive religiosity, insisting that Dorine cover her bosom with a handkerchief to save him from ‘temptation’, saying “Hide that breast, which I cannot look upon…”
The play was controversial in France from the moment of its first performance due to its suggestion that public spirituality was hypocritical and a mask for self-interest. Under pressure from the Catholic Church, the work was banned by Louis XIV. Nonetheless, by the nineteenth century Tartuffe was firmly established within the French literary canon.
