A FRENCH MYTHOLOGICAL TAPESTRY
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buy… Read more THE STORY OF PSYCHE The following two lots form part of a series of tapestries of The Story of Psyche which were supplied to the 5th Principe di Campofiorito. THE PROVENANCE These lots form part of a set that originally consisted of five panels that was supplied to the 5th Principe di Campofiorito, Luigi Riggio Saladino Branciforti-Colonna, of Palermo (d. 1756), Grande di Spagna, Capitano generale delle guardie di Sua Maestà Cattolica, who was the ambassadeur extraordinaire du Roi d'Espagne at the court of Versailles from 1741 - 1746, and his wife Catarina Gravina. The Prince became a Chevalier du Saint Esprit on 1 January 1746, and it appears that the first payments for the commission were received at Beauvais already in October 1744 and lasted until July 1746. Interestingly the Principe di Campofiorito received a set of twelve Gobelins tapestries depicting The Story of Don Quixote from Louis XV in January 1745. That set of tapestries was later in the Royal Collection of Carlo III di Borbone. It remains unclear if it was expressly a gift by Louis XV meant for Carlo III or if it was bequeathed to Carlo III by the Principe di Campofiorito upon his death. However, it appears that the Borbone did not benefit from the transfer of the Prince's Psyche set, as they ordered a separate set from Beauvais through him in 1749 (G. Bertini and N. Forti Grazzini, Gli Arazzi dei Farnese e dei Borbone, Exhibition Catalogue, Milan, 1998, p. 64). The Prince completed a majestic palace in Atricezza, Sicily, in 1747, for which his Psyche set was probably commissioned. Upon the death of the last descendent of the family in 1790, the palazzo passed through various hands until it was split by lottery and fell into ruin in the late 19th century. THE SERIES The Story of Psyche was only the second set of tapestry designs supplied by François Boucher (d. 1770) to Beauvais. It was commissioned by Louis XV through his contrôleur général des Finances Philibert Orry in November 1737. The cartoons were displayed at the Paris Salon of September 1737 and the first set was woven between 1741 and 1742. The series formed part of the decision by the crown to have two sets of tapestries made each year for the Département des Affaires Etrangères to be used as diplomatic gifts. The series proved popular and was woven approximately eight times, including all five subjects The Arrival at Cupid's Palace, The Toilet of Psyche, Psyche Displaying her Treasures to Her Sisters and the two subjects offered here, and five partial sets were woven. By the 1770s the series had lost its moralizing message and was abandoned. The signature to the blue outer slip of the Basketweaver tapestry confirms that the set was woven at Beauvais while Jean-Baptiste Oudry (d. 1755) and Nicolas Besnier (d. 1754) were co-directeurs de la Manufacture de Beauvais between 1734 and 1753. COMPARABLE EXAMPLES One of the panels, depicting Psyche Displaying her Treasures to Her Sisters, that forms part of the same set and that was also sold from the Cronier sale as lot 164, is in the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Toilette de Psyche from this set was sold from the collection of Madame Isaac Pereire, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Paris, 4 June 1937, lot 92. The 1937 sale also lists the last panel, L'Arrivé in a Galerie particulière, but remains untraced today. Of the other thirteen sets, one remains at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, another in the Royal Swedish Collection, Stockholm, one in the Palazzo Quirinale, Rome, one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and one set in museums in Berlin. (C. Bremer-David, French Tapestries and Textiles in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 1997, pp. 115 - 119)
A FRENCH MYTHOLOGICAL TAPESTRY

CIRCA 1746, BEAUVAIS, AFTER FRANCOIS BOUCHER, BY NICOLAS BESNIER AND JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY

Details
A FRENCH MYTHOLOGICAL TAPESTRY
CIRCA 1746, BEAUVAIS, AFTER FRANCOIS BOUCHER, BY NICOLAS BESNIER AND JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY
En suite with the following lot, woven in silk and wool, depicting Psyche and the Basketmaker from The Story of Psyche, with Psyche being helped by an elder, with two ladies seated to the right, all before an open landscape with old trees, within a simulated giltwood frame-border topped by a coat-of-arms, within a blue outer guard border with areas of replacements and with signature 'BE..ER.ETOVDRY', the main field with signature 'f.Boucher' to the lower left corner, the reverse with remains of old lining woven to new lining inscribed in black ink 'A to 15½. L go 14½.', limited areas of re-weaving
11 ft. 11 in. (363 cm.) high; 9 ft. 8 in. (295 cm.) wide
Provenance
Commissioned by Principe di Campofiorito, Luigi Riggio Saladino Branciforti-Colonna, ambassadeur extraordinaire du Roi d'Espagne at the court of Versailles, in 1746.
Ernest Cronier, sold Galerie Georges Petit, 4 - 5 December 1905, lot 165.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, Monaco, 22 - 23 June 1991, lot 563.
Literature
A. Alexandre, 'La Collection Cronier', Les Arts, November 1905, pp. 20 - 22.
H. Macfall, Boucher: The Man, His Times, His Art and His Significance, London, 1908, p. 136.
J. Badin, La Manufacture de Tapisseries de Beauvais, Paris, 1909, p. 60.
H. Göbel, Die Wandteppiche und ihre Manufakturen in Frankreich Italien Spanien und Portugal, Leipzig, 1928, p. 226.
A. Ananoff, M.B. Wildenstein, François Boucher, Geneva, 1976, vol. I, pp. 308 and 311.
K. Hiesinger, 'The Sources of François Boucher's Psyche Tapestries', Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, November 1976, vol. 72, p. 7.
N. Forti Grazzini, Il patrimonio artistico del Quirinale: Gli Arazzi, Milan, 1994, vol. II, pp. 492, 494 and 508.
A. Darr and T. Albainy, Woven Splendor, Five Centuries of European Tapestry in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Exhibition Catalogue, Detroit, 1996, p. 62.
H.H. Hawley, Tapestries in The Dodge Collection of Eighteenth-Century French and English Art in The Detroit Institute of Arts, New York, 1996, p. 146.
C. Bremer-David, French Tapestries and Textiles in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 1997, pp. 115 - 119.
G. Bertini and N. Forti Grazzini, Gli Arazzi dei Farnese e dei Borbone, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1998, p. 64.
Special notice
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

The Basketweaver shows a scene that is not commonly told as part of the story of Psyche. Boucher appears to have combined two different
episodes from the original text by Lucius Apuleius' Metamorphoses
or The Golden Ass of the second century AD. One is Psyche's
meeting with Pan who consoles her while his goats graze nearby, the
other is her attempted supplication of Ceres, who is shown in this
panel with her daughter Proserpine, and the harvested grain.

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