At the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV, when the Palais du Louvre was destined to become the official residence of the new king - before being supplanted by Versailles - thirteen carpets were woven by the Manufacture de la Savonnerie between 1664 and 1666 for the Galerie d’Apollon (ill.1), followed by a further ninety-two carpets between 1668 and 1688 to cover the floor of the Grand Galerie linking the Louvre to the Palais des Tuileries (ill.2). These carpets, made under the direction of Charles Le Brun, are among the masterpieces of 17th-century decorative arts, with their remarkable craftsmanship and decorative inventiveness.
-
- 1. 10th or 11th carpet from the Galerie d’Apollon, Louvre
Paris, Mobilier National
Photo: I. Bideau - See the image in its page
-
- 2. 5th carpet from the Grande Galerie, Louvre
Paris, Mobilier National
Photo: I. Bideau - See the image in its page
Today, the Mobilier National holds the largest collection of this ensemble - some forty carpets - and has launched a research program with the aim of publishing, by 2026, the first general catalog of these carpets, now scattered around the world in public and private collections.
The Mobilier National inspectors in charge of the project (Mrs. Emmanuelle Federspiel and Mr. Antonin Macé de Lépinay) and Mr. Wolf Burchard, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and partner in the project, would like to thank anyone with knowledge of carpets or fragments of carpets that could belong to this corpus for contacting them.
Contacts :
Wolf Burchard
Emmanuelle Federspiel
Antonin Macé de Lépinay