Meiffren Conte (Marseilles c. 1630-1705)

The present work, crowded with precious objects ranging from the silver incense burner to the rare sea shells, is a version, with differences, of the painting in the Musée de L'art et Industrie, Saint Etienne (see M. Faré, Le Grand Siècle de la Nature Morte en France: Le XVIIe Siècle, 1974, p. 226) in which the red drapery of the present work is replaced with a green one. That painting is discussed at length by Y. Allemand, Musée de Saint Etienne, Deux peintures du XVIIIe Siècle, La Revue du Louvre, no. 40-5, 1968, p. 229-30. Conte used several of the objects seen in the present work on a number of occasions; the sideboard dish, for example, reappears in a painting in the Heim-Gairac collection, Paris (Faré, op. cit., pp. 226-7), and the silver ewer in a painting in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (ibid., p. 224).