Fastes de cour au XVII^e siècle

A discovery: the precious contents of a portfolio acquired in 1854 by the Duke of Aumale, preserved in the Condé museum in Chantilly. Twenty-three exceptional drawings by Jacques Bellange (c.1575-1616) and a series of thirty-four prints with the line of Jean Berain (1640-1711), heightened with watercolor, gold and silver, evoke the pomp and circumstance courses of Lorraine and France in the seventeenth century. The richness, the variety, the fantasy and the extreme refinement of this set illustrate a real French specialty in the field of the spectacles. Complemented by drawings from the Edmond de Rothschild collection at the Louvre Museum and other institutions, these graphic works help to understand how this art exercised with so much talent in Nancy by Bellange was able to lead his compatriot Berain to excel later, under the reign of Louis XIV, in the clothes of the entertainments of the royal residences.