Details
A FRENCH MYTHOLOGICAL TAPESTRY
CIRCA 1746, BEAUVAIS, AFTER FRANCOIS BOUCHER, BY NICOLAS BESNIER AND JEAN-BAPTISTE OUDRY
En suite with the previous lot, woven in silk and wool, depicting The Abandonment of Psyche from The Story of Psyche, with Psyche seated on a rock with outstretched arms with three naiads before them and looking at the vanishing Cupid, in a rocky river landscape, within a simulated giltwood frame topped by coat-of-arms and within a partially replaced blue outer guard border, with signature 'f.Boucher' to the lower right, the reverse with old lining inscribed in black ink 'A to 15¾. L go 13.' sewn to new lining, minor areas of re-weaving
11 ft. 8 in. (355 cm.) high; 10 ft. 9 in. (327 cm.) wide
Provenance
Commissioned by Principe di Campofiorito, Luigi Riggio Saladino Branciforti-Colonna, ambassadeur extraordinère du Roi d'Espagne at the court of Versailles, in 1746.
Ernest Cronier, sold Galerie Georges Petit, 4 - 5 December 1905, lot
166.
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's Monaco, 22 - 23 June 1991, lot 564.
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 Dedge 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.
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