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Lot Essay
Louis XIV’s Manufacture Royale des Gobelins – founded in 1662 and initially led by the premier peintre Charles Le Brun – gathered the greatest talents of the Sun King’s reign to produce furnishings for the Royal palaces. In 1668, the ‘foreign’ artistic tradition of pietra dura or ‘pierres fines’ was introduced and this superb example depicting a fruit and flower still life in high relief, demonstrates that the Gobelins lapidary workshops could rival their Florentine counterparts at the Opificio delle pietre dure.
It almost certainly once adorned one of the nineteen cabinets made by the Gobelins workshop for Louis XIV, which were subsequently sold and dismantled in 1752.
Made of rare marbles and hardstones carved in high relief, this splendid plaque exemplifies the short-lived production at the workshop for pierres fines at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins. In this Manufacture, which was set up in 1662, many workshops were brought together including tapestry weavers, painters, bronze-workers, furniture-makers, and gold- and silversmiths for the production of furnishings for the palaces of King Louis XIV; Charles Le Brun, the King’s premier peintre, was its artistic director. As a result of financial difficulties, the Gobelins Manufactory was forced to close in 1694, reopening in 1699 but only to produce tapestries.
In 1668 four Italian lapidaries, Orazio and Ferdinando Megliorini, Filippo Branchi and Gian Ambrogio Giacchetti, were installed at the Gobelins with the intention of rivalling the Opificio delle pietre dure that was one of the glories of the Medici court in Florence. The present plaque must be the work of one of these four Italian masters. Depicting an arrangement of flowers and fruit in a magnificent alabaster vase, it beautifully demonstrates the way stones were carefully selected in order to represent materials and textures by means of their colour and figuring. The centrally placed pomegranate made of yellow and red jasper, burst open to reveal its glistening seeds carved in cut-glass is a particularly virtuoso instance of this art form. The plaque is very closely related to the central plaques of the two celebrated cabinets made by Domenico Cucci at the Gobelins for Louis XIV and now in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle; it undoubtedly is by the same maker, and probably originally occupied a similar position on a great cabinet.
Cabinets with pietre dure were amongst the grandest furniture made for Louis XIV, but by the middle of the eighteenth century their ponderous magnificence was completely out of fashion. The Garde-Meuble de la Couronne decided to sell them all, notably in two sales in 1751 and 1752, at which a total of nineteen cabinets decorated with hardstones were sold. Those at Alnwick are the only ones to survive: the others were soon taken apart and deprived of their hardstone panels, which were re-used to decorate commodes and other smaller items of furniture in the newly fashionable neo-classical style (see: S. Castelluccio, Les meubles de pierres dures de Louis XIV et l’atelier des Gobelins, Dijon, 2007). Among the marchands-merciers (dealer-decorators) who specialised in this field were Philippe François Julliot (d. 1835) and Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796). Daguerre was almost certainly responsible for the commission of a Louis XVI commode by Martin Carlin which was mounted with plaques of pietra dure depicting luscious fruits, intriguingly two of which were signed by Gian Ambrogio Gacchetti. The commode was formerly in the collection of Baron de Besenval and is now in the Royal Collection (RCIN 2588). Close parallels can also be drawn between the present plaque and the central plaque that decorated the superb cabinet-on-stand formerly in the collection of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905), at the château de Ferrières, Seine-et-Marne, which was recently sold: Rothschild Masterpieces; Christie’s, New York, 11 October 2023, lot 18 ($856,800 inc. premium).
Exceptionally, the present plaque was not mounted onto a new piece of furniture, but framed in gilt bronze to be displayed as an independent work of art.
It almost certainly once adorned one of the nineteen cabinets made by the Gobelins workshop for Louis XIV, which were subsequently sold and dismantled in 1752.
Made of rare marbles and hardstones carved in high relief, this splendid plaque exemplifies the short-lived production at the workshop for pierres fines at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins. In this Manufacture, which was set up in 1662, many workshops were brought together including tapestry weavers, painters, bronze-workers, furniture-makers, and gold- and silversmiths for the production of furnishings for the palaces of King Louis XIV; Charles Le Brun, the King’s premier peintre, was its artistic director. As a result of financial difficulties, the Gobelins Manufactory was forced to close in 1694, reopening in 1699 but only to produce tapestries.
In 1668 four Italian lapidaries, Orazio and Ferdinando Megliorini, Filippo Branchi and Gian Ambrogio Giacchetti, were installed at the Gobelins with the intention of rivalling the Opificio delle pietre dure that was one of the glories of the Medici court in Florence. The present plaque must be the work of one of these four Italian masters. Depicting an arrangement of flowers and fruit in a magnificent alabaster vase, it beautifully demonstrates the way stones were carefully selected in order to represent materials and textures by means of their colour and figuring. The centrally placed pomegranate made of yellow and red jasper, burst open to reveal its glistening seeds carved in cut-glass is a particularly virtuoso instance of this art form. The plaque is very closely related to the central plaques of the two celebrated cabinets made by Domenico Cucci at the Gobelins for Louis XIV and now in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle; it undoubtedly is by the same maker, and probably originally occupied a similar position on a great cabinet.
Cabinets with pietre dure were amongst the grandest furniture made for Louis XIV, but by the middle of the eighteenth century their ponderous magnificence was completely out of fashion. The Garde-Meuble de la Couronne decided to sell them all, notably in two sales in 1751 and 1752, at which a total of nineteen cabinets decorated with hardstones were sold. Those at Alnwick are the only ones to survive: the others were soon taken apart and deprived of their hardstone panels, which were re-used to decorate commodes and other smaller items of furniture in the newly fashionable neo-classical style (see: S. Castelluccio, Les meubles de pierres dures de Louis XIV et l’atelier des Gobelins, Dijon, 2007). Among the marchands-merciers (dealer-decorators) who specialised in this field were Philippe François Julliot (d. 1835) and Dominique Daguerre (d. 1796). Daguerre was almost certainly responsible for the commission of a Louis XVI commode by Martin Carlin which was mounted with plaques of pietra dure depicting luscious fruits, intriguingly two of which were signed by Gian Ambrogio Gacchetti. The commode was formerly in the collection of Baron de Besenval and is now in the Royal Collection (RCIN 2588). Close parallels can also be drawn between the present plaque and the central plaque that decorated the superb cabinet-on-stand formerly in the collection of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905), at the château de Ferrières, Seine-et-Marne, which was recently sold: Rothschild Masterpieces; Christie’s, New York, 11 October 2023, lot 18 ($856,800 inc. premium).
Exceptionally, the present plaque was not mounted onto a new piece of furniture, but framed in gilt bronze to be displayed as an independent work of art.