CABINET DODIEU Val-de-Loire, circa 1560-1580 Walnut;... Lot 48

CABINET DODIEU Val-de-Loire, circa 1560-1580 Walnut; ebony and eggshell inlays Total height: 220 cm Upper body: H. 84 cm, W. 121 cm, D. 46 cm Lower body: H. 100 cm, W. 142 cm, D. 56 cm Restorations and maintenance Arms of the Dodieu family: shield with a band accompanied by two rampant lions, armed and lampassed Our cabinet with two bodies and a broken pediment borrows its decorative repertoire from the monumental vocabulary of the reign of Henry II. Its structure is similar to that of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a paragon of the Francilian cabinets of the Second Renaissance (fig. 1). The two pieces of furniture have in common the supporting columns with smooth shafts, the four leaves decorated with female figures, the scroll and arabesque ornaments; they share the same taste for rich inlays, black marble here, ebony here. The whole composition of ours is arranged around the roaring lion's nose sculpted in high relief. The pediment is embellished with a coat of arms. Our cabinetmaker played on the alternation of the straight lines of the architecture with the curves of the scrolls and the bodies of the sphinxes to highlight the sculpted coat of arms, housed under the central aedicula. The shield with the band accompanied by two rampant lions, armed and lampassed, which is by Dodieu, bears a helmet with two pennons in crest. It could be the arms of Louis Dodieu, Lord of Vély, member of the Parliament of Brittany (fig. 2). The decoration of the leaves is inspired by the Bellifontain repertoire. The panels, finely carved in flattened relief, are divided into three superimposed registers. Chimeras adorn the lower register on the upper body, mascarons on the lower body, while on both bodies the upper bands present nude women reclining in the middle of an agrarian landscape that evoke the allegorical suites engraved by Flemish and Dutch artists. The one in the lower right differs from the other three in its dynamic posture: pointing with her right hand to something over her left shoulder, she imposes a twisting movement on her whole body. The large figures in the middle register develop the theme of the Seasons, which is also found in the ovals of the Arconati-Visconti cabinet in the Louvre, where a man, on the other hand, is depicting Winter (fig. 3). Our allegories, with their arms loaded with horns of plenty and carrying in their other hands various bouquets of ears of grain or flowers, are more reminiscent of the figures of Summer and Autumn sculpted on the façade of the Carnavalet hotel by Jean Goujon's workshop (fig. 4), in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance (fig. 5). Our sculptor innovated by representing a woman for each of the seasons. The Dodieu family, who came from the nobility of Lyon, may have inherited their attraction to Italianate forms from that region. Jean Dodieu, elected consul of Lyon in 1500, passed on his coat of arms to this dynasty of great officers of the Crown (Armorial consulaire de la ville de Lyon preserved at the École nationale des Beaux-Arts, Masson 118, f. 5v). His descendant Claude Dodieu was a councillor and then a master of requests at the Parliament of Paris (Coat of arms of the Presidents and councillors of the Parliament of Paris, from the 14th century until 1721 in Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, ms. 2909, f. 194). He took part in the negotiations concerning the marriage of Henry VIII's daughter to Francis I and a proposed alliance against the Emperor Charles V for the release of the children of France in 1525 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Dupuy 41). He was appointed abbot of Saint-Riquier in 1534 and bishop of Rennes in 1541. He died on April 4, 1558 and was buried at the Célestins de Paris where the heart of Henri II was buried. It is probably to his eldest son Louis Dodieu that we must attribute the order of our cabinet. The latter inherited the seigneury of Vély and, like his father, took the parliamentary path. He was appointed Councillor of the Parliament of Rennes in 1558, then President in 1601. The production of such walnut cupboards, with two bodies and decoration of Seasons, remained very alive in Paris, until the beginning of the reign of Louis XIII. Notarized contracts between master carpenters and their clients, in which they are referred to as "cabinets", bear witness to this.