Fireplace screen with Chinoiserie

Originally mounted as a screen to cover a fireplace during warm weather, in this exotic painting the artist has transformed the hearth into a miniature stage. Three fanciful Chinese characters hold aloft a circular screen on which is depicted the mythological story of Zeus showering Danaë with gold. A pair of figures, painted in grisaille on the side wall, incise their names on a tree trunk, a motif symbolizing eternal love.

In 1700, Jacques Vigoureux-Duplessis, a painter-cartoonist at the Beauvais tapestry works, produced this fireplace screen, designed to mask a hearth in summer. It was not only a fine manifesto of ironic virtuosity, but also prefigured the great era of whimsy to come. The three Chinese men on the screen, straight out of the theater, laughingly lift a tondo featuring Danaë, in a spirit of libertinage echoed by the imitation antique relief.

Screen decoration called for light hearted, trompe-l’oeil technique. But here, the accumulation of artifices - curtain, stage, erotic tondo - gives it a particularly risqu� atmosphere. Something quite different from the “grand manner” now had its place in French art.

The fireplace screen is the earliest recorded work of Vigoureux-Duplessis, an artist who was associated with decorative projects for the Paris Opera, the Royal Academy of Music, and the Beauvais Tapestry Manufactory.