The Brioche

Chardin signed and dated this canvas in 1763, a Salon year. The booklet for that exhibition at the Louvre lists two of his pictures, one of fruit and the other the remains of a breakfast. The museum thinks this may have been one of them, but adds a question mark. A tall glazed brioche sits on a plate with a sprig of orange blossom planted in its top. Around it stand a lidded porcelain bowl, two peaches, a few biscuits, some cherries and a stoppered decanter. Its pendant, Grapes and Pomegranates, probably belonged with it to the Count of Saint-Florentin, one of Louis XV's ministers, and both came to the museum in 1869 with the bequest of Doctor Louis La Caze. In 1954 the paint was transferred onto a new canvas. It hangs in Room 928, among the painters Denis Diderot wrote about.