 A new academically centered art theory had developed in the seventeenth century, and by 1700 it was joined by a new persona, the connoisseur, who was helping collectors to hone their judgment when separating truly great art from mere craft. The bi-annual Parisian salons had already become a site of Enlightenment aesthetics and connoisseurship by 1750, yet before Diderot no one had brought together the job of the connoisseur and the aesthetician with that of the public writer reflecting on art in relation to ordinary human experience. In his “Salons”, as they came to be called, Diderot brought all of these agendas together into one discursive program, inventing as a result a new identity: the art critic sustained through contemporary art criticism. The result was also a new and pioneering notion of philosophy of art.