Image: Palace of Versailles
The Château de Versailles has acquired two exceptional glass coolers, the only two known buckets of their form, made for Louis XVI’s mythological service and added to the château’s collections. The acquisition was made possible by the Société des Amis de Versailles through a bequest from Françoise Lambert.
Made in 1784 and 1791, the two objects are glass-cooling buckets from the large service with a “beau bleu” ground, also known as the mythological service, commissioned by Louis XVI from the Royal Sèvres manufactory. Their four mythological scenes are ‘Dido and Aeneas’, ‘The Death of Adonis’, ‘The Birth of Adonis’ and ‘Psyche in the Underworld’. Oval in shape with lobed contours, the coolers have undulating rims and lateral handles shaped as acanthus leaves; their deep-blue ground is heightened by miniature-painted polychrome cartouches framed by foliage garlands, palms and gilded scrollwork.
The figurative decoration was painted by Pierre-André Le Guay the Younger, a figure painter at the Royal Sèvres manufactory from 1772 to 1817, while the two coolers also bear the marks of gilders Étienne-Henry Le Guay and Henry-François Vincent. Louis XVI conceived the mythological service from 1782, defining its composition and iconographic programme himself and drawing in particular on Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ and Fénelon’s ‘Adventures of Telemachus’.
The service was planned to comprise 422 pieces and to be delivered in stages through 1805, but the Revolution interrupted its production in 1792 after only 198 pieces had been made. The coolers’ history is exceptionally well documented by records held in the French National Archives and at the Sèvres manufactory, allowing research to trace their manufacture, decoration and delivery to the king.
The two coolers will join pieces of the mythological service already held by Versailles: three ice cups, a glass cooler, two plates and a mustard-tray platter deposited by the Louvre Museum. Most of the surviving service is held in the British royal collections.
