From the curio cabinet of the brothers Israel Desneuxand Christophe Desneux to the collections of Francois de la Noue : a clarification regarding the history of the "Desneau de la Noue" drawings

Abstract

The Department of Drawings at the Louvre Museum possesses a fine collection of drawings of the School of Fontainebleau and of Italian Mannerists. These all bear on the back the stamp of the "Desneux De La Noue" collection, one of the oldest recorded in France. Since Mariette, who believed that the stamp was that of a single collector, these "Desneux De La Noue" drawings have aroused intense interest among historians, in particular Edmond Bonnafee and Antoine Schnapper. The latter has recently shown that, rather than being a question of a single collector, two persons were in fact involved: Messrs Desneux and de La Noue, probably related to each other. Backed up by unpublished archival documents, we have succeeded in establishing with certainty the identity of the collectors and in clarifying the history of the drawings. The prestigious collection stamp in fact refers to three people: on the one hand, the brothers Israel and Christophe Desneux who, in the early 17th century, jointly built up a large curio cabinet, and, on the other, Francois de La Noue (the originator of the stamp), nephew of the Desneux brothers who probably acquired the drawings following the death of Israel in 1635 rather than that of Christophe in 1631.