Philippe Millot French, Paris or Dijon, 1619 | Double Sided Case for Miniatures

This superb and very rare double sided miniature case is decorated with the finest engraving of the period. Exceptionally it is signed PM by the master French engraver Philippe Millot and dated 1619. The same monogram, alongside the artists name and similar mythological depictions, as well as the ferme-S motif (suggesting fidelity), appears on a print dated 12 September 1610 in the Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna (MAK; inv. no. Kl1-611). The decoration on the locket includes Cupid holding Jupiter's thunderbolt and the figures of Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Neptune, subjected to the bolts of love, all within within very finely executed Renaissance scrollwork, and also includes the following poem dated 1619:

Ces amour tout divin enflame

Par la sagesse et le travail

Les coeurs purs a celeste flame

Terrassant lamour animal

Amour des elemens le Maistre

Soubs le nom seinct de Dieulx faict voir

Que tout ce que ton voit en estre

Subsiste de par son Pouvoir

1619

A reference in the online French national archives MC/ET/XI/150 dated 1647 is likely related to the engraver, recording Philippe Millot, master engraver of Dijon, staying in Paris at the premises of Pierre Belon, clock maker to the Queen, Anne of Austria. The present lot would have been a luxe object for the displaying of portrait miniatures and was undoubtedly owned by a leading member of the French Court.

RELATED LITERATURE

D. Guilmard, Les Maistres Ornemanistes, 1880, p.38, no.9; P. Führing and M. Bimbenet-Privat, 'Le style cosses de pois', Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 2002, vol.144, p.11