France, late 17th century

On his accession to the throne in 1661, Louis XIV immediately embarked on one of the most ambitious weaving projects ever attempted: carpeting the entire Grande Galerie of the Louvre, some half a kilometre in length. Looms were constructed almost ten metres wide to match the width of the corridor, and Charles le Brun – the First Painter to the King – commissioned to design the cartoons (Sarah B. Sherill, Carpets and Rugs of Europe and America, New York, 1995, p. 73). Though Louis XIV’s move to Versailles meant that they were never installed in the Louvre, the carpets were used on special occasions and as luxurious gifts to other rulers.
The design of this fragment, like those of all the Grande Galerie carpets, balanced the competing demands of making each individual carpet unique and creating a coherent visual whole. The lozenge border motifs on the present lot, as well as the black ground with acanthus scrolls, are shared with most other surviving Grande Galerie carpets. The scene in the central cartouche also elaborates on motifs explored in other carpets from the same commission. The landscape on the left resembles the riverine scene on a carpet in the Rothschild collection (Pierre Verlet, James A. de Rothschild Collection: the Savonnerie, London, 1982, p. 221). The seascape on the right also has parallels in the several nautical-themed carpets which are attested to archivally, even if their current whereabouts are unknown. These may have been intended to evoke Louis XIV’s ambitious ship-building programme and his victories in the Nine Years War. The unusual juxtaposition of the two scenes however makes this both an important addition to our knowledge of this important royal project and a highly decorative testament to the quality of weaving achieved in the Savonnerie workshop in the late seventeenth century.