TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE - photo 1
TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE - photo 2
TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE - photo 3
TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE - photo 4
TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE - photo 5
TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE - photo 6

TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE

Lot 8
20.11.2024 16:00UTC +01:00
Classic
Sold
€ 441 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationFrance, Paris
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1329894
Lot 8 | TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE
Estimate value
€ 200 000 – 300 000
TAPIS DE LA MANUFACTURE ROYALE DE LA SAVONNERIE
ATELIER DE CHAILLOT, VERS 1650-1655
En laine, au point noué, sur fond bleu nuit, centré d'un bouquet de tulipes, œillets, roses, pivoines et iris, encadré d'une réserve rectangulaire à lambrequins fleuris, ceinte d'une large bordure rythmée de corbeilles ajourées aux bouquets similaires d'où s'échappent mille fleurs, entourée d'une fine frise ornée d'une frise de fleurs sur fond ocre, soulignée d'un perlé
3,45 x 2,52 m. (11,3 x 8,2 ft.)




Provenance

Vente Sotheby's, New York, 27 octobre 1950, lot 73.
Collection privée, puis par descendance.



Literature

Bibliographie comparative :
P. Verlet, The James A. De Rothschild collection at Waddesdon manor. The Savonnerie. Its history. The Waddesdon Collection, Londres, 1989, p. 169 (fig. 104) et p. 171 (fig. 106).
C. Bremer-David, French Tapestries and Textiles in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 1997, p. 136 (fig. 13.7).
J. Vittet, Un temps d’exubérance, les arts décoratifs sous Louis XIII et la Régence, Cat. Expo. Grand-Palais, Paris, 2012, p. 180, fig. 2 ; p. 181, fig. 1 ; p. 104 ; p. 188.



Further details

A CARPET BY THE ROYAL MANUFACTURE OF SAVONNERIE, ATELIER DE CHAILLOT, CIRCA 1650-1655

This majestic carpet, crafted at the Savonnerie manufactory in the 1650s, combines Persian influences with Dutch and French ornamental motifs, embodying the dawn of the Great Century in France.

As early as 1604, Henri IV, seeking to limit imports of carpets from Persia and the Levant while encouraging French manufacturing, introduced Pierre Dupont, a tapestry maker, into the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, where he perfected a technique emulating carpets in the façon de Turquie et du Levant’ (in the manner of Turkey and the Levant). A few years later, in 1627, Simon Lourdet, his most skilled pupil, founded a workshop in a former soap factory on the hill of Chaillot, with the support of Marie de’ Medici. A year on, Dupont and Lourdet formed a partnership to secure the privileges granted by the King. They obtained exclusive rights to manufacture ‘all kinds of carpets, other furnishings and items from the Levant, be they in gold, silver, silk, foil or wool’, under a patent of eighteen years. This led to the establishment of the Savonnerie manufactory, comprising two separate workshops: one housed in the Louvre, and the other in Chaillot, which likely produced this monumental carpet.

Inspired by Persian designs, the earliest carpets produced by the Savonnerie typically showcased vibrant backgrounds, similar to the one sold at Drouot in Paris on 23 June 2000, no. 161 (illustrated in Cat. Exhib. D. Alcouffe, Un temps d’exubérance, Les arts décoratifs sous Louis XIII et Anne d’Autriche, p. 179). Its yellow and red background is embellished with large, stylised flowers influenced by Persian designs.

Gradually, the backgrounds became darker and the flowers more natural. Letters dated 1652 exchanged between Christine of France, Duchess of Savoy, known as Madame Royale, and a fellow member of her embassy in Paris named Forestier, actually mention ‘great and extremely natural array of floral motifs’. During the period, Queen Maria Theresa acquired a carpet designed by Simon Lourdet in 1661, of which a virtually identical weave is preserved in the collections of the Mobilier National (Cat. Exhib. D. Alcouffe, Un temps d’exubérance, Les arts décoratifs sous Louis XIII et Anne d’Autriche, p. 180). In 1684, it was inventoried as follows by the Garde-Meuble Royal: ’ Another brown carpet designed by the Savonnerie featuring a large central flower bouquet set within an oval floral border, tied with four blue ribbons. Two vases adorned with yellow gadroons overflowing with flowers, from which scrolls emerge, filling the top and bottom of the carpet, all enclosed within a broad brown border…’ (J. Guiffrey, Inventory general of the furniture of the Crown under Louis XIV (1663–1715), 1886, vol. I, p. 410, no. 237. Two carpets similar to ours, produced by the Chaillot workshop, precisely match this description: one dating approximately 1650–1660, currently housed in the Château de Vaux-le Vicomte, and the other, from around 1640–1650, sold at Christie’s in Paris on 27 November 2019, lot 216.

Carpets from this period share a number of common features, such as black, navy blue or brown backgrounds, a profusion of naturalistic and identifiable flowers surrounded by wide borders embellished with the same floral motifs, creating a millefleur (thousand flowers) effect. Our carpet most certainly belongs to this collection from the 1650s, and possibly predates the one commissioned by Queen Maria Theresa, which already featured new foliage and number motifs. While the cartoon painter of this carpet is not known, the sources of inspiration are quite clear, blending the designs of oriental carpets – Persian, Indian and Turkish – with the European taste for flowers and still lifes. This could be the work of artist Georges Baussonet, for example, several of whose preparatory drawings dating from around 1610–1620 are preserved in the Reims municipal library. His name has also been suggested for similar carpets, such as the one housed in the Louvre (OA 6256), produced by the Chaillot workshop around 1640–1650 as well as another in Waddesdon Manor (illustrated in Cat. Exhib. D. Alcouffe, Un temps d’exubérance, Les arts décoratifs sous Louis XIII et Anne d’Autriche, p. 181, fig. 1) as well as the one sold at Christie’s in New York on 26 October 2001, lot 48. These carpets, like our own, were most certainly inspired by flower engravings by French ornamentalists such as Gédéon Légaré, who produced etchings of floral ornaments preserved in the Louvre (ill. p. 34), François Lefebvre, some of whose engravings are exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the etcher Balthazar Moncornet, known for his highly naturalistic floral designs for goldsmiths, prolonging the ‘pea pod’ style.

However, these three carpets, and possibly ours, may also have been inspired by French and Flemish still life paintings of that period. Sarah B. Sherill compares the design of the central basket of flowers on these three carpets with the Corbeille de fleurs (Basket of flowers) by the school of Jacques Linard, dated c. 1627, preserved in the Louvre (S. Sherrill, Tapis d’Occident, New York, 1996, p. 65).

The 17th-century fascination with exoticism likely influenced some of the motifs on this carpet; among them is the tulip, whose bulbs were imported from the Netherlands at exorbitant prices and became the subject of speculative bubbles in the 1630s. A similar carpet, created by the Chaillot workshop and housed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (1976.155.111), showcases similar tulip motifs alongside blue and white porcelain vases, reflecting the period’s fascination with Chinese porcelain, which was imported to Europe by ships of the East India Company. Peonies, symbolising eternity in China, may also have been a source of inspiration.

A little later, in the 1660s, interlacing patterns, cartouches, wide scrolls, and Baroque motifs began to emerge, gradually moving away from the naturalistic thousand flowers design of our carpet. Among these creations, similar to ours but posterior given the new motifs featured, are another carpet preserved at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (1983.268), dated 1660–1665, a carpet produced in the Chaillot workshop, dated 1665–1667, kept at the Paul Getty Museum (no. 70.DC.63) and another, dated around 1664–1665, which was sold at Christie’s in Paris on 27 November 2018, lot 507.

A carpet similar to ours was valued between 2,100 and 2,600 pounds in the 17th century, with the commissioning process taking approximately a year, according to a letter between Catherine of France, known as Madame Royale, and her daughter, the Duchess of Bavaria, in 1652 (Turin, Archivio di Stato, Lettere Ministri Francia, 58, file. 3). These carpets were thus the focus of extremely luxurious orders, reserved for members of the Court or the privileged elite: ‘people of status’. Access to these prestigious carpets was exclusively afforded to the King, the Queen, Cardinal Mazarin, the Princess of Condé and a select few aristocratic connoisseurs such as the Marquess of Effiat and the Duc of Nemours. The inventory compiled following Pierre Dupont’s death in 1640 lists four carpets belonging to the King in his Louvre workshop, one of which resembles ours, featuring a central design of ‘a basket of various flowers’. According to the inventory of Cardinal Mazarin’s collections from 1653, he owned ‘a large black-backed Savonnerie carpet (…) featuring a prominent frieze filled with flowers, pots, and baskets of flowers, flanked by two small borders – one adorned with white shells and the other with blue rosettes and green leaves…’ (H. d’Orléans, Duc of Aumale, Inventory of the furniture owned by Cardinal Mazarin: drawn up in 1653, and published according to the original, preserved in the Condé archives, 1861, p. 170). Two carpets comparable to ours aforementioned, housed in the Louvre and the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, might fit this description. Lastly, Queen Marie-Thérèse of Austria was another patron of this kind of piece, and the description drawn up by the Garde-Meuble Royal in 1684 mentions some aforesaid carpets similar to ours, such as the one found at Vaux-le-Vicomte and the one sold at Christie’s in Paris on 27 November 2019, lot 216.

These carpets, originally the object of prestigious commissions, continue to find their way into renowned collections centuries later. The two carpets comparable to ours which are housed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York were part of the collection owned by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, while the one located at Waddesdon Manor comes from the collection belonging to James A. de Rothschild. Lastly, another carpet similar to ours, sold at Christie’s in London on 4 July 2018, lot 8, came from the collection of Léon Fould (1839–1924), heir to a dynasty of Parisian bankers.

This style of carpet has been the object of such fascination over the centuries that it is still reproduced today, in the manner of the Chaillot manufacture. A carpet with a similar design and imitating ours, produced in the Savonnerie style last century, was sold at Christie’s in Paris from 10 to 23 November 2022, lot 149.
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