All lots
Pax in blue, white, green and turquoise polychrome painted enamel with gold highlights. It has a curved shape and is adorned at the top with a gilded button with white half-pearls. Around the rim is painted a frieze of intersecting scrolls with palmettes inside
the circles, bevelled framing with a green background around the central miniature. The
piétement is in doucine with a blue background on which are placed fleur-de-lys in tapestry decoration.
Miniature under glass fixed in a metal frame representing the Crucifixion with Mary and
St John. The back is black enamelled and supports a handle.
Northern Italy, Venice, between 1485 and 1515.
H. : 20.1 cm - L. : 14.9 cm
(minor accidents and restorations)
Provenance: Private collection, Italy
collection Lair-Dubreuil et Henri Leman, Hôtel Douot, Paris (sale after death of the collection
of M. le Professeur Gilbert), 29 November - 1 December 1927, lot 103
A corpus of eleven baisers de paix has been referenced by Madame Françoise Barbe, conservateur en
chef du patrimoine au département des objets d'art du musée du Louvre and published in a
ouvrage published in 2018.
According to Madame Barbe's inventory, ten of them are with a curved upper part and
a flared base. Some are surmounted by a cross, an enamelled button or other decorative ornament. The central representation is sometimes in the form of a painted miniature protected by glass (6), sometimes enamelled (2), in engraved glass (1) or a painting under glass (1). The subjects depicted are the Annunciation (1), the Virgin and Child (1), Christ on the Cross (5),
Christ of Sorrows (4).
The Kiss of Peace shown here is reproduced in Madame Françoise Barbe's work under
number 288, p 190.
An identical pax, with the same decoration is preserved in the Louvre Museum, from
the Alessandro Castellani collection, inv OA 2631.
Consulted work: F. Barbe, I. Viron and L. Caselli under the direction of, I rami smaltati detti veneziani
del Rinascimento italiano . 2 . Corpus delle opere nelle collezioni pubbliche e private - Les cuivres émaillés dits
vénitiens de la Renaissance italienne . 2 . Corpus of works in public and private collections, Milan, 2018, pp
