GOBELINS, DATED 1759, AFTER THE DESIGN BY JEAN-FRANCOIS DE TROY, BY PIERRE-FRANCOIS COZETTE

The present tapestry, depicting ‘L’Evanouissement d’Esther’ from the celebrated seven-panel set, ‘l’Histoire d’Esther’ was woven in the Gobelins atelier of Pierre-François Cozette. Between 1737 and 1740, the renowned Parisian painter and director of the Académie de France in Rome, Jean-François de Troy, designed a new set of cartoons inspired by the Old Testament book of Esther. Although the fainting of Esther does not take place at the beginning of the story, de Troy chose to execute the present scene first and exhibited the cartoon, currently in the collection of the Musée du Louvre, in the Salon of 1737. Famed for his historical, biblical and mythological scenes, Troy modernised the story by placing the scenes within classical Roman architectural settings and representing his figures in costumes of the popular Ottoman style. Initially commissioned for the apartments of the first Dauphine, Marie-Thérèse de Bourbon, the Spanish Infanta, upon her marriage to Louis-Ferdinand, the story of the Persian king Ahasuerus and the beautiful Jewess Esther was particularly evocative.
Gobelins produced the official series eight times, with the present tapestry forming part of the sixth weaving of the subject, which commenced in 1756. The present tapestry, finished in 1759, took the manufactory’s weavers three years to complete. A letter between the Marquis de Marigny, the directeur général des Bâtiments du Roi and the architect Jacques Germain Soufflot, directeur des Manufactures Royales des Gobelins dated 8 February 1767 records the work in the collection of the Grand Maréchal de Russie, comte de Rasamowski. It was delivered to the comte in November of 1766 along with the tapestry ‘Repas’ from the sixth series and a hanging from ‘l’Histoire de Thésée’ after Carle Van Loo (M. Fenaille, op cit.)