 In a manner similar to his “philosophy of theatre”, Diderot’s art criticism is also very often a study of the continually recurring interplay between sensible human subjectivity and the natural world through the perceived empirical reality of natural representation. What happens when a viewer stands in front of a painting and experiences its imagery? In particular, what is the relationship between the reality of the viewer in the Louvre in the salon gallery in front of the paintings on display and the reality of the world represented by the image? What is it that happens exactly as we move between these two worlds and realities? And given the presence of both a painting and its artist at the center of this exchange, what is the role played by the painter, his material medium, his craft in manipulating matter into representations, and the viewing subject who both receives this artistic work in her own senses and then recreates it in her imagination in the making of a “natural experience”?