Our research group, which is interdisciplinary by composition and its analysis methodology applied to the texts, seized the opportunity of this re-edition in order to carry out a communal reflection on various conceptual nodes.

• The epistolary document: at once a material and textual document, the understanding of which must be through a multifaceted approach, combining paleography, codicology, linguistics, philology, and history.
• The importance of networks as illustrative of cultural bodies: relationships between scholars and artists, the art market, politics, and so on.
• Discourse analysis: epistolary exchanges testify to the development of a new form of discourse on art and artists, with a unique terminology, specific topoi, and several contact points with rhetoric and the literary tradition. The discursive tooling of artists who write letters is complex, sophisticated, and codified.