Jewel box of Louis XIV - previously known as "d'Anne d'Autriche” - created by the goldsmiths Jakob Blanck and Jean Pitan, 1675-76. Remarkably never having been sold, through the subsequent reigns of kings and emperors, through revolutions, the box now resides in the collection of the Musée du Louvre.
This jewel box was naïvely presumed, because of its rather feminine floral decoration, to have been the property of the king's mother, Anne of Austria - her name still clings to it - or that of his wife, Queen Marie-Thérèse/María Teresa, Infanta of Spain and Portugal. But scholarship has now credited it to the king's own collection. The chest was likely used as a store for diamond buttons, hat clips, shoe buckles, epaulettes, and the like, intended to adorn his court costumes.
The box consists of a rectangular wooden base covered with blue silk satin. It is lavishly embellished, over its entire surface, by five plates of gold openwork comprised of foliate and floral motifs; the realistic treatment of the motifs allows the viewer to clearly distinguish precise representations of anemones, tulips, buttercups, daffodils, etc. The gold decoration was created using the lost-wax casting technique, then reworked, chiseled, burnished or matted, and includes some additions of filigree.
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