Hôtel de Nointel. Watteau-Audran : sous le signe de Momus

• Main Author: Christelle Inizan
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication 2013-02-01
• Series: In Situ : Revue de Patrimoines
• Subjects: ornemental art; ceiling; monkeys; eighteenth century; regency
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/insitu/10193

House of Polytechnicians – ancient Hotel of Nointel – currently serves as a prestigous reception venue in Paris. Although these decorations of the eighteenth century were quite transformed or pastiched in the nineteenth century, the building still has an authentic decor, with a ceiling decor of decorated monkeys painted by Antoine Watteau and Claude Audran III adorning a small room on the first floor of the main residence, located in the courtyard. A recent study led to a reconsideration of the ornamentation of the room as a whole. The attempt to reconstruct the layout of the wall panels made by Watteau and his confrontation with the existing ceiling allowed the identification of the room’s overall iconography: symbols of the Regiment de la Calotte, known especially to book lovers and historians, wich can be assumed to have belonged only to the world of publishing.