One of the distinctive art forms of the French Renaissance, enamel painting flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the city of Limoges, in southwest-central France. The production of enamel—essentially powdered glass on a metal substrate—required highly specialized skills, with artists of the Limoges workshops marshaling a variety of materials and techniques to achieve the desired colors, opacities, and other effects. The objects displayed in these cases represent the handful of dominant workshops that operated over generations to satisfy the demand for Limoges enamels across Europe. This includes the workshop of Suzanne de Court, who is the only known female head of a workshop active in Limoges.
Like all of these objects, the saltcellars indicate the wealth and status of their owners. Technical analysis of the Orpheus saltcellars, signed by Suzanne de Court, suggests that they were rarely, if ever, used to hold salt, then a very costly luxury. They were perhaps used primarily for display.
The subjects depicted on the objects displayed here represent the interests of their patrons: chiefly religious and mythological subjects as well as portraits, which were typically made at a small scale. The ambitious plaque of the Triumph of the Eucharist and the Catholic Faith, by Léonard Limousin, combines religious subject matter with a rare group portrait of the powerful Guise family.
Portrait of a Man
As in many of Limousin’s portraits, the sitter is posed behind a parapet or table before a solid blue background. Dressed in black with a black cap, he is shown with a meticulously rendered beard. Limousin seldom includes hands in his portraits, perhaps because they can be distracting, as are those here, with the sitter's entwined fingers clasping an oddly folded piece of paper.
Source: Wardropper, Ian and Julia Day. Limoges Enamels at The Frick Collection. New York: The Frick Collection/D Giles Limited, 2015.
Irisson sale, March 14 et seq., 1850, Paris, Lot 150. Hollingworth Magniac, London. His sale, July 2 et seq., 1892, Christie’s, Lot 395, sold to Goldschmidt for ₤231. Charles Mannheim, Paris (1898). J. Pierpont Morgan, London and New York. Duveen. Frick, 1916.
Source: Enamels, Rugs and Silver in The Frick Collection. Volume VIII. New York: The Frick Collection, 1977.
