Allegory of Music, Arts and Science

In 1765 Chardin, then in his mid-sixties and celebrated as France's finest painter of humble still life, was handed a royal commission. He was to paint overdoors for the château of Choisy, one of the king's country houses, on the theme of the arts and sciences. Instead of gods and allegorical figures, the expected way to honour such subjects, Chardin did what he always did. He painted the things themselves, laid out on a ledge. Books, a vase, drawings, compasses and rulers, a small marble statue, brushes and a palette, the ordinary tools with which art and learning are actually made. He gives a stack of paper and a plaster cast the same grave attention a history painter would give a battle. One of the three pictures from the series has since been lost.