29/3/23 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs - Pursuing an active acquisition policy (see news items of 2/3/23 and 22/11/21), the graphic arts cabinet of the Musée des Arts décoratifs has acquired a new 17th century drawing. The beautiful sheet - which fetched 13,860 euros (including fees) on 22 March at Christie’s thanks to the generosity of several patrons, Lionel Sauvage, Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt and Jean Bonna - is a preparatory study for a tabernacle. The front view, beautifully executed in pen and wash, is accompanied by a sectional view and a scale.
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- 1. France, 17th century
Project for a tabernacle, 1666
Pen and brown ink, brown and grey wash - 38 x 27 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo: Christie’s - See the image in its page
As Bénédicte Gady [1], curator in charge of the Department of Graphic Arts, states in her detailed notice, the scale being probably in feet and inches, the planned tabernacle, topped by a sun monstrance, was to be nearly three metres wide and three and a half metres high. Intended to be placed against a wall, probably above an altar table, it would have offered a half-rotunda projection in which the Eucharistic reserve was inscribed, surrounded by a two-step base. The tabernacle takes the form of a single-storey structure with three openings, punctuated by pilasters and lined with a colonnade. Six thuriferous angels are placed on either side of the sun monstrance, above a frieze. The frame at the centre of which is placed the host marked with a cross is flanked by an angel and an eagle supporting a canopy decorated with cherubic heads and Marian stars. Two figures of an ox and a lion must have been in the background, completing the symbolic representation of the four evangelists.
Although the inscriptions in brown ink below the right front view precisely indicate the date 22 February 1666, only the initial ’B’ identifies the artist. This is followed by an illegible signature of the commissioner or notary. As the museum’s note indicates, the drawing must have accompanied a contract - notarial or private - from which it has been detached, but which the precision of the date will perhaps make it possible to find. The attribution could thus be clarified. The very beautiful sheet joins a small corpus of drawings for church furniture in the 17th century collection that follow the same legal typology, such as Charles Le Brun’s tabernacle project for the Carmelite church in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Paris in 1654 and Germain Pilon’s design for the organ in the Eglise des Invalides in 1679. The short note from the auction house cites another contemporary example held by the Graphic Arts Department of the Louvre Museum, the project for Architectural and sculpted tabernacle: the Trinity by the Dijon sculptor Jean Dubois in an album of one hundred and sixty-eight drawings.