decorative furnishings and objets d’art in the louvre from louis xiv to marie-antoinette
1960s, even as fine collections in specific fields such as precious metalwork and porcelain were constituted. Little by little, the works accumulated in the former rooms, which had not been designed to accommodate such expansion and diversification. Furthermore, the two parallel galleries along rue de Rivoli displaying snuffboxes and precious metalwork, plus the series of rooms overlooking the Cour Carrée, no longer met the requirements of the collection nor the understandable expectations of museum-goers. The thirty-three rooms newly refurbished under the guidance of Marc Bascou and Jacques Garcia, with the aid of the Department of Decorative Arts, and, in particular, of Frédéric Dassas and Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, as well as Fabrice Ouziel, correspond to those that, until 2005, occupied the second floor of the north wing of the Cour Carrée, minus the space required to install two large stairways on either side of the Marengo Pavilion plus a third at the east end, all necessitated by new safety norms for public buildings. They also include, however, the Conseil
d’État chambers and the Beauvais Pavilion, where part of the collection had taken refuge in 2005, but which were closed in turn in 2009; they have been restored thanks to support from Montres Breguet, the Breguet watch firm. Finally, the room where the Deborah tapestry and Louis XIV’s gold coffer were installed in 1993, linking the second-floor rooms of the former finance ministry offices to the second floor of the Cour Carrée, was incorporated into the project, thereby offering museum-goers who arrive from the Richelieu wing a magnificent introduction to the Louis XIV and Régence rooms, thanks to its wood paneling, Boulle furniture, and set of tapestries showing the Emblems of the Navy. The spacious Conseil d’État chambers with their nineteenth-century painted ceilings now host a homogeneous display of masterpieces from the major royal manufactories and crown workshops during the reign of Louis XIV, headed by Charles Le Brun from 1667 onward, as well as furniture by André-Charles Boulle and by Charles Cressent during the Régence period. The large room in the Beauvais Pavilion,
Fig. 11. Showcases displaying Rouen pottery in the department’s new rooms.
26
see entry 55