MAZARIN desk, circa 1700
Attributed to RENAUD GAUDRON
82 cm high ; 118 cm wide ; 69 cm deep

A Mazarin shaped desk with eight legs in marquetry on an ebony base, the front opening to seven drawers and a door. It is decorated throughout with floral and scroll motifs, the centre inlaid with a flowering vase on a scroll platform flanked by further scrolls and geometric motifs interspersed with sphinxes, musicians playing tambourines and trumpets, rustic masks and putti with pewter inlays, The sides are also inlaid, above a frieze drawer and a toggle cupboard door inlaid with a sprig of ivory flowers, flanked by two rows of three drawers with gilded escutcheons, separated by canted uprights, on tapered square legs joined by two wavy cross braces. It rests on toupie feet.

This type of marquetry appears from the 1670s on several types of furniture in fashion at that time. These include chests, cabinets and desks known as Mazarin, notably made by the cabinetmaker Pierre Gole.

Renaud Gaudron (died 1727), cabinetmaker to the Crown from 1686.
Son of Aubertin Gaudron, master cabinetmaker in Paris and ordinary cabinetmaker to the Duchess Palatine, and Suzanne Valet, Renaud, also known as Gaudron the Younger, was born around 1653, the last of eleven children.  With his eldest son Nicolas (around 1651-1702), he completed his training as a cabinetmaker in his father’s workshop, becoming a master before 1684 and replacing his father as ordinary cabinetmaker to Elisabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria, Duchess of Orleans, then entering the service of the Garde Meuble Royal, sometimes associating his brother, who lived in Versailles, with his work.