Theatre iconography systematically attempts to integrate the pictorial representation of theatre as a vital source of information in researching the history of theatre. Given the primacy of the written word (lógos) in western culture, the status of the illustration as a source of historical research has remained low in the West where it is the norm to give the text priority over illustrations, which serve merely as decorations, to support a conclusion or confirm a statement made in the text. Theatre iconography, however, involves the search for a new dialectical relationship between the written word and the theatre illustration, one in which the illustration is not immediately interpreted as an appendage to a text. It involves an autonomous ‘reading’ of the image in which the use of other documents, preferably from other sign systems, cannot and may not be discounted. The aim here is to study theatre history with the help of tools that are more effective than those used previously.

In 1926 the German theatre critic and scholar Julius Bab compared the endeavour of the theatre historian engaged in reconstructing past performances with that of the art historian required to study paintings solely on the basis of descriptions. The analogy serves as a justification for Bab's own study of contemporary theatre based on personal observations: only the privileged status of the eye-witness account can do justice to the transitory nature of theatrical performance, he argues. What today may seem like a self-evident truth was in the 1920s by no means so. German Theater-wissenschaft of the time was very much a historical discipline, focusing on the theatrical past and utilizing historiographical tools borrowed from neighbouring disciplines. Contemporary theatre was not in its field of vision.

The earliest Dutch illustrations of indoor theatrical performances date from the seventeenth century, and portray the activities of itinerant professional actors or plays performed in fixed areas, in chambers of rhetoric (Het Wit Lavendel in Amsterdam) and in what may be classed as their successors: the Nederduytsche Academie (1617–37) and Jacob van Campen's Theatre (1637–65). There are also between thirty and forty illustrations of open-air theatre performances given by non-professional actors (mostly rhetoricians), in paintings and prints of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes one cannot be entirely sure as to whether the illustrated scene contains a theatrical performance or even a stage. These are the ‘doubtful images’ of my title.

On 23 February 1653 the 15-year old Louis XIV performed in the court ballet La Nuit (Plate 21), at the Petit-Bourbon in Paris. A political allegory with clear allusions to recent events, it represented the suppressed rebellion of the Fronde, with a promise of a glorious future for the realm. The dénouement featured the monarch in an apotheosis, in the shape of Le Roy Soleil (Sun King), who dispels the dark forces of the night. This was certainly Louis's first appearance in the role, but definitely not the last.

In recent years, eighteenth-century actors' portraits have deservedly received growing attention from both art and theatre historians. For its extent, variety and quality, for its social and aesthetic implications, eighteenth-century theatrical portraiture demands a refined theoretical approach: it has helped to create an interdisciplinary field where new methods in dealing with theatre iconography have been profitably deployed. English and American scholars have contributed to develop this field in a specific way, devoting single studies and monographs to portraits of actors. In spite of the importance of French theatrical portraiture, French contributions are less significant. In most cases theatrical portraits are considered exclusively by art historians, and in the context of catalogues or monographs on a single painter. In France the stage portrait is often undervalued: it is relegated to a pictorial genre considered as inferior (tableaux de théâtre), or it is thought to derive from a disreputable theatricalization of history painting; in any case there has been a real difficulty in submitting these images to critical and specific investigation. In short, even if a new approach to theatrical iconography prevails over the strict utilitarianism of the theatre historians, who—in the best cases—sought in actors' portraits only documentary evidence of acting practice, costume or set design, more work has to be done by art historians, to accord theatrical images the independent status of an iconographic text.

In a recent issue of New Theatre Quarterly an article on the visual documentation of performance notes that theatre has proved to be resistant to ‘mechanical reproduction’ and that theatre practitioners are unconvinced of its value. The author goes on, however, to argue for the ‘urgent need’ for full archives of video recordings of performances. She even quotes Eugenio Barba to the effect that what really matters in performance is not the immediate effect on the spectators, but a kind of afterglow and the impression to be made on future generations.