Among the last great projects of Louis XIV were church decorations, including the chapels of the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris and the château of Versailles. The ensembles produced during this period have long been celebrated as examples of a distinctive phase of the late Baroque in France in which the first stirrings of the Rococo style appear. During the French Revolution, the animosity toward the Catholic Church and the demand for valuable metals guaranteed the destruction of most large-scale ecclesiastical structures like altars and tombs that incorporated gilded metal ornaments. These two precious reliefs, almost certainly created as components in an early eighteenth-century church decoration, have fortunately survived.

The angels’ animated faces, tousled curls, delicate feathers, and even the form of the clouds are very close in style and quality to the gilded wood organ case designed by Pierre Lepautre and revised and completed under François-Antoine Vassé in 1710 for the chapel of Versailles. Collaboration between artists was standard for such objects. It is probable that for these reliefs an architect or sculptor provided an initial drawing. A sculptor then created a model from that drawing, or several sculptors modeled the elements independently. Afterward, specialists cast and gilded the pieces, although the sculptor might have finished the surface of the bronze himself.

Thanks to the gifts of Eleanore Elkins Rice, the Museum’s holdings include important gilded eighteenth-century French domestic objects like wall lights, firedogs, and furniture with gilded-bronze mounts, mostly dating after 1750. Our collections contain few such works of art from Louis XIV’s long reign. These two architectural reliefs are charming yet imposing survivors of that era when the artists working for the French crown established the standards of craftsmanship for the rest of the century. Dean Walker, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gifts in Honor of the 125th Anniversary (2002), p. 36.