The splendour of ancien régime court culture dominates research in this month’s Burlington Magazine. In 1696 the 1st Duke of Devonshire acquired two magnificent beds that had belonged to Mary II, one of which was made by Louis XIV’s upholsterer, Simon Delobel; Lucy Wood and Olivia Fryman publish their analysis of the documents and fragments of rich hangings that allow us to study this important, although now dismantled, state furniture.
In 1715, the last year of Louis XIV’s life, he sent a magnificent gift of Spanish stallions and embroidered trappings, along with flintlock pistols, to Augustus the Strong of Saxony-Poland. Stefano Rinaldi’s article considers the political context for this munificence and indentifies all the craftsmen who contributed.
Rosalind Savill’s latest research is a salutary reminder that scholars should be open to revising their opinions. Savill revisits two porcelain trays she previously dismissed as fakes. The trays are set into tables in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; now confirmed as Sèvres, they are shown to feature very rare and intimate representations of the family of the Marquis de Courteille, Louis XV’s representative at the factory.
Books reviewed include major maiolica catalogues assessed by Timothy Wilson and John Mallet, a study of American Grand Tourists by Clare Hornsby, and a survey of Surrealist Sorcery by Michael Richardson. Exhibition catalogues on William Blake, Goya and Gustave Moreau are all discussed in detail, as are exhibitions on Henry VIII’s Queens, by Karen Hearn, and André Masson, by Brandon Taylor.
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