Casket by Pierre Mangot
Pierre Mangot · 1532-1533
A wooden box completely sheathed in small plaques of mother-of-pearl, shimmering white and pink, and caged in silver-gilt. The mounts are miniature architecture: little columns at the corners, friezes along the edges, busts in medallions, and ball feet gripped by claws. Set into the metal are engraved gems, garnets, rough emeralds and plaques of painted enamel. Look at the maker's mark stamped in the silver: a crowned fleur-de-lis with a Gothic letter M for Pierre Mangot, and the Paris warden's mark for fifteen thirty-two to thirty-three. Mangot was goldsmith to Francis the First, and the mother-of-pearl plaques are of the kind imported from Gujarat in western India, so the casket unites a Paris court workshop and the trade routes of the Portuguese.
The casket's owners read like a history of collecting. It belonged to William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, was sold in London in eighteen twenty-seven, passed to the Earl of Carnarvon, was sold again in nineteen eighteen, and then belonged to the American press baron William Randolph Hearst. After a sale in nineteen sixty-two it stayed in an English private collection until the Louvre acquired it in two thousand with the help of several donors.
Did You Know? Its owners included the eccentric William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey and the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
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