An important silver table cross from the reign of Louis XIV
Crucifix with a fully sculpted Corpus Christi on a curved and tiered oval base with a finely proportioned baluster shaft. The three cross terminals set with large fleur de lys motifs. With the INRI plaque set above the athletic figure of Christ, who is depicted crucified with three nails and standing in contrapposto on a slanted pedestal. He wears a drapery fastened with two cords about his waist and holds his head rolled back. H 70, W 29 cm, weight 2,755 g.
Paris, marks of Guillaume II Loir, 1675/76.
This extraordinary crucifix was almost certainly intended for an altar in one of the royal palaces. A piece of this design, with sculptural fleur-de-lys terminals, can also be found on a 1715 engraving depicting the chamber in which King Louis XIV passed away. The elegant Corpus Christi was based on a model by François Girardon (1628 - 1715). The important sculptor, whose appearance is known to us through a portrait by court painter Hyacinthe Rigaud, was heavily involved in the furnishing and sculptural decoration of the Palace and Park of Versailles. It was he who invented this form of depicting Christ elegantly standing (not hanging) in contrapposto on a sloping support, dressed in a drapery fastened with two cords and raising his eyes towards heaven shortly before his death.
Master goldsmith Guillaume II Loir was born in Paris in 1625, he was the son of the silversmith Nicolas Loir. He registered his own hallmark on 18 November 1650, and in 1653 he became master and governor of the Brotherhood of Saint Anne and Saint Marcel. Record has survived of a payment of 579 livres made to him in 1665 by the Treasurer of Silver for silver items to furnish a chapel in white silver in Louis XIV's birthplace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
It seems almost impossible that an object as important as the cross presented here would have been spared from the great smelting campaign of 1689. The smelting down of his silverware, the last items of which were still being produced in 1686, was the personal sacrifice made by Louis XIV to help finance the Nine Years' War. The items melted down included tables, armchairs, candlesticks, mirrors, orange pots, vases, and even the balustrade of the Salon de Mercure as all the prestigious silver and vermeil objects were returned to the foundries, and Versailles was robbed of much of its splendour. A contemporary historian describes the total volume of this campaign as amounting to around 25,000 kg of silver, at a value of 2.5 million livres. Very few objects were spared from this destruction - including, miraculously - this crucifix.
Literature
Cf. Bimbenet-Privat, Les orfèvres et L´orfèvrerie de Paris au XVIIe, Bd. I Les Hommes, Paris 2002, p. 42. For more on the history of silver during the reign of Louis XIV see cat. Les Grands Orfèvres de Louis XIII à Charles X, Paris 1965, p. 39 ff.