CIRCA 1670, PROBABLY BY AUBERTIN GAUDRON

This splendid armoire, with its fine pewter inlays and delicate floral marquetry epitomises the art of 'painting in wood' practised by the most accomplished marqueteurs of the second half of the 17th century and relates to the work of André-Charles Boulle
and Aubertin and Renaud Gaudron.

The expansive scale, relative freedom of handling, and excellent figurative translation of subject on the marquetry of this armoire recalls marquetry on the central door of a cabinet attributed to Boulle in the musée du Louvre (OA 5516). The masks on the present lot, with their foliate beards and headdresses relate in particular to masks depicted on a corpus of tables by Andre-Charles Boulle, including one currently preserved in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (inv. no. 71.DA.100).

The armoire also draws parallels with the work of Aubertin and Renaud Gaudron. The treatment of the flowering vase on a platform supported by scrolling uprights relates to descriptions of items by the Gaudrons as well as directly to the top of a bureau mazarin attributed to Renaud Gaudron, illustrated C. Demetrescu, Les ébénistes de la couronne sous Louis XIV, Lausanne, 2021, p. 179, fig. 188. The decorative scheme of the marquetry on the door and side panels of the armoire relates to a description for a pair of bureaux supplied by Aubertin Gaudron to Louis XIV's Garde-Meuble in 1688 for Madame de Maintenon's apartments at Versailles: deux bureaux de marqueterie de bois à fleurs...au dessus est representé un vase pleins de fleurs posé sur une table d'attente aux oiseaux et papillons; and more particularly to a description of a marquetry commode supplied by Gaudron to the château de Compiègne, with the mask beneath the vase of flowers clearly indicated:
'...de bois de plusieurs couleurs fond d'ebène ornée milieu d'un vase rempli de fleurs posé sur un bout de table et un masque grotesque au dessous le reste rempli de rinceaux fleurs oiseaux et papillons au naturel...'

While these descriptions relate to commodes and bureaux it is apparent that armoires were a large part of the workshop's production, with the journal du garde-meuble de la Couronne listing twenty armoires delivered by Gaudron. A commode with related marquetry, comparable to the work of both Boulle and Gaudron, was sold from the Wildenstein Collection, Christie's, London, 15 December 2005, lot 115.