The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan, is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection boasts over two million works of art, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The museum’s main building, covering a wide area in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is one of the world’s largest art museums. In addition to the Fifth Avenue location, there is a smaller second location called The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. The Cloisters houses an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe. The museum was founded in 1870 with the goal of bringing art and art education to the American people. Its permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. It also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art, and has encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes, and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries.
The Comtesse de Tessé (1713–1783) and her son René Mans de Froulay (1736–1814) acquired in ruins a residence at 1, quai Voltaire. Following a disastrous fire, the residence was rebuilt between 1765 and 1768, and a new mansion was constructed which is still standing today on the left bank of the Seine, near the Pont du Carrousel. The interior decoration of the rebuilt mansion was completed around April of 1772. The paneling with its refined carving in the Neoclassical style in the largest of the formal reception rooms in the mansion was the work of woodworker Nicolas Huyot, a maître menuisier, about whom little is known. The carving was done by the sculptor Pierre Fixon or his son Louis-Pierre, or perhaps the two in collaboration. The Fixons may have also created the plaster overdoor reliefs representative of the four seasons. The marble sculptor Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Le Franc, who had worked with Louis Le Tellier (ca. 1700–1785) on various other projects, was responsible for the blue turquin marble mantelpiece, which is original to the room.
The paneling in the reception room was curated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and acquired by the museum. The room was beautifully decorated with coffered triumphal arches executed in perspective, that framed the four mirrors and were crowned by laurel branches and floral wreaths. The Comtesse de Tessé called this room the Salle du Dais (Canopy Room) after the large tester or canopy that must have been mounted on the opposite wall to the windows. Underneath this crimson damask tent, which was enriched with gold-embroidered appliqués of the Tessé family coat of arms, the Comtesse or her son likely received their guests. The room was furnished with twenty-nine chairs all covered with different crimson fabrics, a small veneered bookcase, and a gilt-bronze cartel clock with movement by Voisin. Several family portraits and two tapestries of landscape scenes were hung on the side walls. The 1783 inventory of the hôtel did not list any curtains in the room, perhaps because none were hung in order not to obscure the lovely view from the three large windows of the Seine and the Louvre and Tuileries palaces across the water.
Posted by Billy Wilson Photography on 2023-01-16 19:50:52