Panel with flaming torch, bow and quiver (one of a pair)

This pair of panels is believed to have come from a private residence in the Marais, Paris. Although the provenance cannot be substantiated, one of the panels is carved with a trophy of love symbols (a quiver with arrows, cupid’s bow, a flaming torch and roses) in a shaped cartouche composed of C-scrolls at the top (07.225.154a). A trophy of musical instruments consisting of a bagpipe (musette du cour), oboe (hautbois), a pair of castanets, and a book of music decorates the other (07.225.154b). A second similarly shaped cartouche with floral ornament embellishes the lower part of both panels while sprigs of ivy and olive branches winding around an upright molding decorate the sides. Originally part of a larger ensemble and stripped of its surface paint and possibly gilded details, the panels were later framed as individual works.


These pieces were part of the model collection of woodwork, paneling, and seat furniture of Maison Leys, a successful decorating business, located at the Place de la Madeleine in Paris. Since 1885 the business was directed by Georges Hoentschel who installed the collection in 1903 in a museum-like display at Boulevard Flandrin, Paris. Three years later, Hoentschel sold the collection to J. Pierpont Morgan who gave the panels with the rest of the decorator’s seventeenth and eighteenth century objects to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1907.