A young lady called Madame de Montespan (1640-1717), in off-the-shoulder pale gold silk dress, large pearl pendant at corsage, pearl necklace, drop pearl earrings and pearls entwined in her brown hair dressed in ringlets

Details

JEAN PETITOT (SWISS, 1607-1691)
A young lady called Madame de Montespan (1640-1717), in off-the-shoulder pale gold silk dress, large pearl pendant at corsage, pearl necklace, drop pearl earrings and pearls entwined in her brown hair dressed in ringlets
enamel on gold
oval, 1 7/16 in. (37 mm) high, modern gold bezel

Provenance

Sotheby's, Geneva, 6 May 1981, lot 10.

Literature

M. Gabardi, 'Piccolo prezioso amore', Capital, 7, 1981, p. 173, illustrated in colour p. 169 fig. 1.
K. E. Schaffers-Bodenhausen/M. E. Tiethoff-Spliethoff, Catalogue of the Portrait-Miniatures in the Collections of the House of Orange-Nassau, Zwolle, 1993, p. 392, no. 530.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

Two other versions of this enamel are recorded: one in the Louvre (L. Ceroni, Les émaux de Petitot, Paris, 1862, I, no. 10) which gives the identity of the sitter as Marguerite de Lorraine, Duchesse d'Orléans (1615-1672), and one in the Royal Dutch collection (supra) without identification of the sitter.

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