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Snuffbox
Blerzy, Joseph-Etienne - Enlarge image
Snuffbox
- Place of origin:
Paris, France (marked)
- Date:
1786-1787 (marked)
- Artist/Maker:
Blerzy, Joseph-Etienne (maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
Enamelled gold
- Credit Line:
The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- Museum number:
LOAN:GILBERT.1030-2008
- Gallery location:
Gold, Silver & Mosaics, room 72, case 1, shelf 3
The central panel shows the hero Jason bidding farewell to his uncle King Pelias. Jason and his company of Argonauts embarked on a quest to find the Golden Fleece of the winged ram Chrysomallos in order to win back his throne from his uncle. An identical miniature survives in an earlier box by Charles Ouizille, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and in a Swiss box in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. It may therefore be that the miniatures were painted by a Swiss artist and exported to France.
Blerzy, whose mark survives on a large number of boxes, must have run one of the largest workshops in Paris in the late eighteenth century.
Sir Arthur Gilbert and his wife Rosalinde formed one of the world’s great decorative art collections, including silver, mosaics, enamelled portrait miniatures and gold boxes. Arthur Gilbert donated his extraordinary collection to Britain in 1996.
