| Sumario: | Charles Duclos based Acajou et Zirphile (1744) on ten drawings by François Boucher, originally designed to illustrate the Comte de Tessin's Faunillane, ou l'Infante jaune (1741). Separated from their source and rearranged, these illustrations, which depict a woman's head severed from her body then reas sembled, tell quite a different story. I consider the materiality of the illustra tions, placing them in the context of the various media in which Boucher worked and which his drawings and engravings inspired, includ ing painting, costume and set design, porcelain, and tapestry. I also explore the materi ality in the illustrations, demonstrating how Duclos, like Boucher, places char acters and objects on the same ontological level in both his tale and his moral treatise, Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle (1751), which share the same pedagogical preoccupations. Boucher's illustrations mediate rela tion ships between the two tales, Duclos's tale and his moral treatise, and Duclos's tale and Charles-Simon Favart's opéra-comique Acajou, affirming the status of book illustration as an intermedial cultural object.
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