Panel (one of a pair)

Carved with a trophy of religious attributes, the subtly curved surface of this panel and its pair (07.225.108.1) suggest their original placement in the corners of a room in an ecclesiastical setting. Suspended from a tasseled ribbon, fastened with a knot near the top of the panel, the upper part of this trophy includes a chalice for the Eucharistic wine, crossed with a ciborium, a lidded vessel used for the distribution of hosts. Held by a baby angel, a rocaille frame displays a female portrait seen in profile above a cloud which is surrounded by wheatears and grapevines, symbols of the Eucharist. The lower part of the panel is embellished with two crossed ewers, a cruet intended to hold wine and water during religious services.


This panel and its pair 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.