By the mid-1760s, Diderot was impatient to experience more of this kind of art, art that might make him recoil, yet delight him aesthetically. In his review of the Salon of 1765, he proclaims that “I hate all the mean, petty [actions] that indicate merely a base soul, but I do not hate great crimes, first, because they make for beautiful paintings and fine tragedies; and also because grand, sublime actions and great crimes have the same characteristic
