Bulletin du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles (Feb 2022)
Vélins de Paris et vélins de Vienne
Abstract
The Library of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris and the Österreichische NationalBibliothek in Vienna both hold more than seven hundred amazingly similar 17th-century paintings on vellum of plants and birds. The Parisian paintings, commissioned by Gaston d'Orléans from the miniaturist Nicolas Robert and then bequeathed to Louis XIV, are the first in a collection that continued until the twentieth century; the Viennese pieces were copied from the royal collection for Colbert by Robert and three other miniaturists, before being sold in 1728 by the Count of Seignelay. After evoking the birth of the Parisian collection, we are interested in the career and working conditions of the painters chosen to execute the copies for Colbert, under the authority of his librarians, and then in the transfer of the Colbertine collection to Prince Eugene of Savoy by the bookseller Pierre-Jean Mariette. The systematic examination of the Viennese collection has revealed the material and intellectual modifications made by Mariette to its presentation. The comparison of the inventories drawn up on both sides at the time has also made it possible to highlight the differences between the two collections, particularly the gaps in both; in so doing, it has unexpectedly revealed the extent of the reclassifications that took place in the nineteenth century in the Museum's collection, the complete study of which has yet to be done.
