The Instruments of Military Music

This oval was made to fit above a door, and Chardin filled it with the instruments of an army. A large brass kettledrum hung with an embroidered red banner takes up the middle of the table, a side drum stands behind it and a trumpet with blue cords and tassels lies across the top. In front are drumsticks, a wooden wind instrument, sheets of music and a second embroidered banner trailing over the edge. Kettledrums and trumpets were the music of the cavalry, played on horseback, while drums set the pace of the infantry. Heaped up like this, the instruments make a trophy, the pile of arms and flags that French decorators carved over doorways and gates, built here from things that make music.

Its companion holds the instruments of peacetime music, and the two were shown together at the Salon of 1767. Diderot found both well composed and said he preferred this one, with the kettledrums. He thought the fresh colours looked a little hard and raw, and predicted that once time had softened them, the people who said Chardin used to paint better would change their minds.