Current Location: In storage
Titles
Place des Victoires
Maker(s)
Maker:
Unknown
Printmaker:
Guerard, Nicolas
Entities
Categories
Description
Double leaf of paper painted in polychrome body colour, and gilt. Ivory sticks and guards (18+ 2); the former decorated with gilt silver foil, the latter pierced and backed with mother-of-pearl. Paste rivet.
Double leaf of paper, painted in polychrome body colour, and gilt. Ivory sticks and guards (18+ 2). The front of the sticks are engraved with striations, alternately two with a line down each side, and two with three lines close together. The guards have three lines on the lower part. All were originally covered with silver-gilt foil, some of which is missing (see condition). The upper part of the guards have a pierced and carved floral stem originally covered with silver-gilt foil, mostly missing, and backed by mother-of-pearl. The front of the leaf is decorated overall with a view of the Places des Victoires, Paris, with a statue of Louis XIV in the centre. At either side there are two green bushes, and a border of gold flowers and foliage, which extends round the top edge of the leaf. The reverse is decorated with a street scene with four tradesmen, and two ladies wearing hooped skirts, and on the left, two gravestones (?)
Notes
History note: Colonel Leonard C. Messel (1872-1953); his daughter Anne, Countess of Rosse (1902-1992)
Legal notes
Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and a gift from The Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
The source for the view of the Place des Victoires was probably the engraving of 1687 by Nicolas Guérard (d.1719).The project for the statue and Place des Victoires had been conceived and carried out by the Duc de la Feuillade in order to glorify Louis XIV. The gilt-bronze statue of the King by Martin Desjardins (1637-1694) situated in the centre was destroyed in 1792 during the French Revolution.
