Madeleine de Boulogne was the daughter of Louis de Boulogne I, and came from a large family of artists which also included her brothers Bon de Boulogne and Louis the younger. Her recorded work is confined to sumptuous still lifes such as the present lot, displaying objects, books, armor and symbols denoting the intellectual as well as the physical emblems of life. Always influenced by her tutor, the Professor of Theology from the University of Leiden, André Rivet, she worked in the mainstream of court tradition under Louis XIV. In 1669 she submitted works to the Académie Royale de Peinture in Paris, and in 1673 she is again recorded as exhibiting six works all depicting trophies of war which she had painted as part of a scheme of eight pictures for the Apartment of the Duchess of Bourgogne at Versailles, four of which now hang in the Apartment of the King at Versailles. She undertook another royal commission for the antichamber of the Grand Apartments of the King at the Tuileries