A three-colour gold snuff box inset with an earlier enamel miniature of Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, by Jean Petitot senior, Paris, 1670, maker's mark of Pierre Mathis de Beaulieu, Paris, 1780

oval, inset with an enamel miniature of Turenne, by Jean Petitot (1607-1691), almost full face, wearing armour with a deep, lace-edged collar, the box chased in coloured golds on lid and sides with whirled rosettes nestling within husk and ribbon scrolls within an interlaced husk swag border on a sablé  ground, the base with an oval polished medallion chased with a classical urn, on a similar ground, charge and discharge marks of Henri Clavel, the rim numbered: 328, in citron morocco case, the lid gilt-stamped with the arms of Viscount Mahon, eldest son of Earl Stanhope, applied with collection labels and notes

Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato (1812-1870) , sale, Paris, 13-16 January 1863, lot 12, described as ' magnifique portrait du maréchal de Turenne, ... par Petitot, ... monté sur une très-belle boîte Louis XVI ...';
Baron Léopold Double (1812-1881), sale, Paris, 30 May-1 June 1881, lot 162, 18,200f to 'Janin succs';
La Tour d'Auvergne Lauraguais family

As well as being an object of beauty, the present snuff box derives considerable historic interest from its provenance. It is not known exactly when the box was acquired by the la Tour d'Auvergne Lauraguais family but it may have been at the sale of the collection of Baron Léopold Double following his death in Paris in 1881.  The Baron was a wonderfully eccentric figure, known as 'the last lover of Marie Antoinette', whose collection of 18^th century art was legendary at the time. No less than 14 salons in his hotel were filled with treasures, recreating an 18th century world, including among countless others a ceiling painted for Madame de Pompadour at Bellevue, the Sèvres Fontenoy vases and Marie Antoinette's diamond-studded clock. Prominent visitors to Paris such as Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia and his bride Maria Pavlovna flocked to admire the collection. It is said, furthermore, that when M. Double was taken ill and felt himself at death's door, 'the dying enthusiast entreated that some of his well-beloved treasures might be placed about his bedside'. Above all he requested his snuff boxes and his relics of Marie Antoinette saying, 'I suffer less looking at them'. The cure worked and M. Double survived another ten years.

It is probable that it was Baron Double who commissioned the case in which the box is now kept. Made from yellow morocco (the most expensive of colours), probably from an earlier book cover, it is stamped with the arms of a Viscount Mahon, eldest son of one of the Earls Stanhope. A hand-written label inside the box states erroneously that the arms are those of 'Pitt / comte de Chatham', probably a fancy of M. Double who also proudly affixed his own collection label twice to the case and once to the actual snuff box.

Double had acquired the box at the sale in 1863 of a number of snuff boxes belonging to Prince Anatole Demidoff, one of the best-known collectors of the 19^th century. It is not known where Prince Anatole purchased the box since he bought widely from sales and dealers. It is certain that he owned a number of boxes set with miniatures by Petitot, then very fashionable, as evinced by the long-term subscription project to illustrate the Louvre's collection of Petitot's works which was finally produced in 1864. Among the 73 lots of snuff boxes in Demidoff's 1863 sale, 11 were set with enamel miniatures by Petitot and his contemporaries and a similar proportion appeared in further sales in 1861 and 1880 (see exhibition catalogue, Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato (1812-70), Wallace Collection, 1994, Robert Wenley, pp. 77-82). In a widely-quoted letter conserved in the Chaumet archives, Demidoff had written from St Petersburg to the jeweller Fossin in Paris on 17/29 June 1852 about some boxes that he was commissioning, adding: '...I shall not bother here with the two enamel portraits by Petitot, as you have found antique boxes that are unquestionably preferable to modern boxes ...' (Rosalyne Hurel & Diana Scarisbrick, Chaumet - Two centuries of fine jewellery, Paris, 1998, p 51). These are so far unidentified among the boxes set with miniatures owned by Demidoff but the present box is unlikely to have been one of these marriages.

The box was made in 1780 by Pierre Mathis de Beaulieu, one of the leading Paris goldsmiths of his time, frequently patronised by Louis XVI. Following the king's accession in 1774, for the first time it had become fashionable to collect and to mount gold and enamel snuff boxes with the miniatures of Petitot which recalled the glorious days of France during the reign of Louis XIV (for an example of 1778, also formerly owned by Demidoff and now in the Louvre, set with a Petitot enamel of Louis XIV, see Serge Grandjean, Les tabatières du musée du Louvre, Paris, 1981, no.168). Indeed of the many royal figures, courtiers and ladies painted by Petitot, Turenne best symbolised the type of strong, straight-forward and successful army commander so lacking to Louis XVI. The Marshal was also later admired as exemplary by Napoleon I, who himself took a simple tortoiseshell box mounted with a Petitot enamel of Turenne to exile in St Helena. The Petitot enamel on the present box, however, was considered so fine that it was borrowed for engraving for the 1864 Louvre catalogue since the miniature in the Imperial collection was considered inferior. It is also pertinent that Mathis de Beaulieu created a luxurious box that was itself historicising since the chasing is in a style that one would associate far more readily with the mid-1760s rather than the neo-classicism of 1780. Even though enamels of this date are less fashionable today, it is to be hoped that the chance to examine such a very fine example of Petitot's work, rather than the commonly-seen contemporary copies, in such a magnificent setting, will excite 21^st century connoisseurs as much as it did their 18^th and 19^th century predecessors.

 

Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867, catalogue: Histoire du Travail et Monuments Historique, 2e partie, no. 4936

the miniature engraved in: Les Emaux de Petitot du Musée impérial du Louvre, gravé au burin par M.L. Ceroni, II, 1864, p. iii, when in the possession of M.L. Double;
the box described: J.L.L. Double, Un mobilier historique des xviie et xviiie siècles, Paris, 1865, p. 15 and Alph. Maze-Sencier, Le livre des collectionneurs, Paris, 1885, p. 215;
the box illustrated: Henry and Sidney Berry-Hill, Antique Gold Boxes, New York, 1953, ill. 35

 

Box and miniature both in exceptionally good, crisp condition. Outer case with some wear, and scuffing around fastening, consistent with age. A historic snuff box.
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