Léonard Limosin or workshop

Private collection, United Kingdom;

By descent to the present owner

This beautiful enamel forms part of a corpus of plaques depicting the Sibyls and Prophets by the celebrated Limoges enameller Leonard Limosin. Several sets in different formats are known, notably a set of twenty-one oblong plaques in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (see Verdier, op. cit.) and one of twenty in the Musée national de la Renaissance in Écouen (inv. nos. Ec.306-325), which show the figures in full length. These designs were also adapted into a square format with half figures framed by wreaths, as exemplified by the present plaque.

A near-identical plaque of the Cumaean Sibyl is found among a set of twelve square plaques depicting the Sibyls in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1854,0605.1), and another depicting the same subject, with again only minor differences, is housed in Écouen (inv. no. ECL18392, paired with the Erythraean Sibyl). Stylistically the present plaque compares very closely to the two plaques in Écouen as well as the two Sibyls in the Musée des arts decoratifs, Paris (inv. nos. 38071 and 38072) catalogued by Blanc, op. cit., as autograph. The latter are, however, at 15cm., larger than the present plaque and therefore unlikely to form part of the same set. It is possible that the present plaque may have originated with other single plaques of Sibyls recorded in public and private collections, such as the three examples sold in the Bernal sale (London, 1855, lot 1508) which seem correspond to it in size. The LL monogram borne by the present work appears also in some of the Sibyls in the British Museum; Blanc (op. cit.) has argued however that despite the signature, the British Museum plaques were probably painted by Limosin’s workshop.

RELATED LITERATURE

P. Verdier, The Walters Art Gallery. Catalogue of the Painted Enamels of the Renaissance, Baltimore, 1967, nos. 83-103; M. Blanc, Émaux peints de Limoges, XVe-XVIIIe siècle: La collection du musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, 2011, no. 168