SÈVRES Plateau of the lunch "Heads of Madonnas... - Lot 113 - Osenat

Lot 113
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Estimation :
80000 - 120000 EUR
SÈVRES Plateau of the lunch "Heads of Madonnas... - Lot 113 - Osenat
SÈVRES Plateau of the lunch "Heads of Madonnas after Raphael" 2nd size in hard porcelain realized by the manufacture of Sèvres in 1813, painted in the center of the Virgin to the Chair or Madonna della Seggiola or Sedia in a circular medallion on a gold bottom surrounded by the inscription: LA MADONE DE RAPHAEL LA MADONA DELLA SEDIA and surrounded by a rosette formed of foliage, arcades and flowers burnished to effect, the edge decorated in grisaille on the gold background of griffins facing each other around candelabra, rosettes and foliage scrolls. Signed in the painting on the left: Victoire Jaquotot 1813. On the reverse side the mark with the vignette of the imperial manufacture of Sevres in red: crowned eagle Manufacture Impériale SEVRES. The inscription in gold: By Me JAQUOTOT According to the TABLEAU dU MUSEE NAPOLEON N°1129 The mark in gold TZ for the year 1813 and the date and mark of gilder April 26 BT Dps for the gilder Charles Marie Pierre Boitel, the painting of the ornaments by Jean Claude Antoine Deperais. Number in ink : 1229. Empire period, year 1813. Length : 37 cm. Width : 33 cm. Very good condition Provenance : Delivered to the Palais des Tuileries to be offered as a present for the year 1814 and kept by the Empress Marie-Louise. Former collection of the marshal Louise Lannes, duchess of Montebello (1782-1856), lady-in-waiting of the Empress Marie-Louise. This tray is the main piece of the lunch Heads of Madonnas after Raphael made by the Sèvres factory in 1813. Alexandre Brongniart entrusted the painting of this ambitious cabaret to Marie-Victoire Jaquotot. The miniaturist had already shown her talent for painting on porcelain the heads adorning the cabarets of famous women as well as the cups made from 1809 onwards, decorated with the portrait of Jeanne d'Aragon or the Genius of Poetry after the painting and drawing by Raphael kept in the Musée Napoléon (the future Musée du Louvre), or even on a spindle vase decorated with a portrait of Raphael after his self-portrait1 . The choice of Madonnas after Raphael was not exclusively determined by Victoire Jaquot's talent for reproducing the works of the Italian master, but undoubtedly also by the symbol of power represented by France's possession of these paintings under the Empire. For the centerpiece, after some hesitation with La Belle Jardinière, the choice fell on La Madonna della Sedia. This tondo was painted by Raphael in Rome in 1514, probably commissioned by Pope Leo X. It entered the Medici collections and was kept in the Pitti Palace in Florence until the end of the 18th century. In March 1799, French troops occupied Tuscany, causing Grand Duke Ferdinand III to flee to Vienna. Among the 506 paintings taken in Italy between 1797 and 1814, La Vierge à la Chaise, seized in Florence in March or April 1799, arrived in Paris in January 18002. It was presented at the Louvre during the exhibition opened on 28 Ventôse An VIII (19 March 1800), then listed under no. 1129 in the inventory of the Musée Napoléon. The choice of the painting for the centre of the cabaret stage was therefore not only based on a masterpiece by Raphael but also on the glorious image of a war capture. The Madonna della Seggliola was returned to Italy by France in 1815 following Napoleon's second abdication. During a final visit to the paintings in the Louvre in March 1814, Stendhal insisted to Dominique Vivant-Denon that Raphael's Madonna should escape restitution and follow Marie-Louise to Rambouillet3. Baron Denon refused to listen to this suggestion and La Madonna della Sedia left France on 24 October 1815 with 248 other paintings, transported in 41 carriages escorted by Prussian soldiers. Raphael's Madonna in the Chair is now in the Pitti Palace in Florence. From the end of the 18th century, the copying of paintings on porcelain was seen as a way of "transmitting to posterity the masterpieces of those men who had illustrated the arts".4 The success of the Têtes de Madones luncheon encouraged Alexandre Brongniart to continue along the same path, and the tray can be seen as a prelude to the reproduction of paintings on porcelain plates. He was aware of the effects that time could have on the paintings of the old masters, as photography did not yet exist, and he wanted to produce imperishable replicas. The administrator of Sèvres wrote in 1835: "The copy on porcelain of remarkable paintings must be one of the attributions of the Manufacture ... Among the most essential services that one of the branches of the ceramic art, the porcelain, can render to the arts of the drawing, it is the most complete transmission in all the reports and the most inalterable of the masterpieces of painting "5. The documents preserved in the archives of the Manufacture of Sèvres specify the composition and the program of this lunch of the Heads of Madonnas according to
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