Lot Essay
Boxes by François Marteau are of outstanding rarity. In their introduction to Tabatières, boîtes et étuis [...] du Louvre (Paris, 1930, p. VII), H. Nocq and C. Dreyfus describe the almost unique character of Marteau's mark: "Nous n'avons vu qu'une seule fois le poinçon de François Marteau, dans une boîte d'une beauté exceptionnelle d'ailleurs, en or ciselé sur pièce, avec ornements de rubis." This may refer either to the present box or to the only other recorded box by Marteau, a rectangular but stylistically very close gold snuff-box of the same year 1743/1744, in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (illustrated in A. K. Snowman, Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, Woodbridge, 1990, p. 125, no. 229). A design for a snuff-box clearly related to the present box was formerly in the D. David-Weill Collection, then sold Sotheby's, Geneva, 14 November 1984, lot 207.