Boy with a Spinning-Top

The boy is Auguste-Gabriel Godefroy, son of a Paris jeweller Chardin knew. He has pushed his books, papers and a quill pen to one side of the desk and set a top spinning, and he leans in to watch it, entirely still. Chardin painted him in 1738, at a time when educated Paris was starting to think of childhood as something worth attending to in itself rather than as small, unfinished adulthood. Instead of posing the boy with the usual symbols of learning, Chardin caught the ordinary spell of a game. The child grew up to become controller-general of the French navy. The drawer below him hangs slightly open, a quiet reminder of the lessons waiting on the other side of the toy.