French Inventories I: the Houses and Collections of the Marquis de Marigny

Alden R. Gordon The Getty Research Institute, 2003, ISBN 0 89236 694 X, $125

Abel-Francois Poisson de Vandieres, Marquis de Marigny, appears in many ways a more sympathetic figure than his sister, Madame de Pompadour. Less obviously acquisitive, he also refrained from interfering in foreign and military policy. Brought to court in 1745, Marigny was prepared by a tour of Italy for the post of directeur-general des batiments. Recalled from Italy in 1751 because of the ill-health of his predecessor, Lenormand de Tournehem, Marigny took over as directeur-general, retiring from the post in 1773. Holding such a position for twenty-two years, Marigny acquired considerable property. Although plagued by gout, he did not anticipate his early death and died intestate in May 1781. His estate was thus subject to an exceptionally thorough probate inventory.

The inventory of Marigny's estate, begun on 1 June 1781 and now in the Minutier Central des Notaires, forms the basis of Alden Gordon's monograph, being printed out in full in the latter part of the book. The introduction forms a short book on its own on the houses and collections of the Marquis de Marigny. Taking each house in turn, Gordon conducts the reader on a visit, assisted by ninety-two half-tone plates and by six plans printed on a fold-out sheet inside the rear cover. During his adult life Marigny lived in six different houses, the first being the Hotel de Marigny, dating from 1640, on the rue St Thomas-du-Louvre, which he occupied from 1752. The site of the house would today be between the Louvre's Richelieu wing and the north-east corner of the Pyramid. Up to 1773 the house also served as the headquarters of the Batiments du Roi, but in 1778 Marigny leased the much grander Hotel de Massiac, overlooking the Place des Victoires. In 1779 he let the hotel near the Louvre to the Swedish ambassador, selling him the furnishings in 1780. The interior of the Hotel de Marigny cannot thus be as closely described as those of the other properties, since it was not inventoried in 1781, although the picture hang can be reconstructed from a restorer's invoice of 1777.

The second Marigny property discussed is the Chateau de Marigny-en-Orxois, a mediaeval, with later additions, which still stands, sixteen kilometres north of Chateau Thierry, between Paris and Reims. The chateau was inherited by Marigny from his father in 1754 and in the same year its seigneurie was elevated into a marquisate, giving Marigny the title by which he is generally known.

The third of Marigny's properties was the Hotel de Marigny au Roule, a villa in the western Parisian suburb of that name. This was bought from the Duke of Orleans in 1759 and no longer exists. The early eighteenth century house was altered for Marigny in 1768-71 by Souffiot, who designed the new courtyard facade in an interesting Palladian variant of early neo classicism. Soon after wards, in 1773, Marigny decided to sell the lease and to spend more time at the fourth of his properties, the Chateau de Menars. This chateau, still standing on the north bank of the Loire, eight kilometres east of Blois, had been built in about 1645, enlarged in 1671 and further altered by Madame de Pompadour, from whom Marigny inherited it in 1764. Marigny spent more time at Menars than his sister had done, installing much of his sculpture collection in the gardens. The interior was luxuriously furnished, often with articles in the most up to date taste, such as marble vases by Augustin Bocciardi for the salle a manger d'ete in 1778. About that time, Marigny, whose gout no longer permitted him to ride or hunt, decided to move back entirely to the environs of Paris. No buyer was found for Menars and the chateau was inventoried in 1781, albeit depleted by Marigny's transfer of some of its finest objects back to his last two Parisian residences.

In his last three years Marigny worked at refurbishing his last two properties, the Hotel de Massiac, overlooking the Place des Victoires, and the Pavillon Le Pate Paris, to the south-east of the city. The Hotel de Massiac, built in 1635, a traditional hotel entre cour et jardin, also had a long wing flanking the garden, on the first floor of which Marigny had his picture gallery. This housed his Flemish, Dutch and French seventeenth and eighteenth-century paintings, as well as the major Boucher portraits of his sister. To the south of the gallery Marigny had his private apartment, including an arriere-cabinet panelled in mahogany. The Pavilion Le Pate-Paris, on the other hand, was a villa overlooking the Seine at Berry. Completed in the 1720s, the building seems to have been French in detail, but italianate in its massing as a single villa form; Marigny retained some of the earlier furnishings, such as mounted oriental porcelains and rocaille fire guards and fire irons.

Gordon's book is a tour-de-force in presenting such a vast quantity of information on Marigny. A slight criticism is that his use of the nomenclature of lighting appliances is uncertain, with inventory references to flambeaux (candlesticks) sometimes being referred to in the introduction as 'candelabra' and those to chandeliers (also candlesticks) as 'chandeliers'. The main index of proper names also shifts arbitrarily from English into French. But the book certainly provides the documentation for a complete assessment of Marigny as a collector and one looks forward to further volumes in the same series.

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