The Instruments of Civil Music

Bellevue, on the hill above the Seine at Meudon, had been built for Madame de Pompadour, the king's favourite, and Louis XV later bought it back from her. In 1766 he had it refitted for Mesdames, his unmarried daughters, and their music room needed paintings for the spaces above its doors. Chardin delivered two ovals in 1767, and this is the peaceful one. A violin and its bow lie across the table with a hurdy-gurdy, a flute, a drum and a horn, the instruments of music for pleasure. Its companion gathers the trumpets and drums of the army.

The princesses took their music seriously. Beaumarchais, years before he wrote The Marriage of Figaro, had been engaged to teach them the harp. Both canvases were seized at the Revolution and resurfaced in 1853. They then stayed together in one family of Paris collectors, the Marcilles, until the family and the Friends of the Louvre gave them to the museum in 2010.