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299 - [Art – Bouches-du-Rhône]
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Estimate €1,000 - €2,000
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Description
[Art – Bouches-du-Rhône] Unpublished archives of the Marquis d’Arlatan de Lauris and his art dealership during the Revolution A collection of manuscripts, correspondence and miscellaneous documents His work as a lawyer 22 briefs, pleadings and handwritten notes relating to cases defended during the year 1787, including the Thomas Coq case concerning theft; the double life led by François Falconiery in Toulon and Aix; domestic violence; a prostitution case; etc. His family 32 letters (L.A.S.), 1794–1795, sent clandestinely to Boniface Alexandre d’Arlatan de Lauris, who had emigrated to Italy, including letters from his mother Marie-Madeleine de Gallifet, his sister Désirée and other relatives. The authors take care never to sign the letters or mention any names, due to the authorities’ surveillance of correspondence Establishment and bankruptcy of a trading company dealing in luxury goods and works of art in Italy, 1795–1797 A rare collection of over 95 handwritten documents (correspondence, memoirs, receipts, accounts, etc.) This archive documents the clandestine lives, financial strategies and artistic networks of the French nobility who emigrated to Italy during the French Revolution. In particular, it traces the fate of the Marquis Boniface Martin-Joseph-Alexandre d’Arlatan de Lauris, who was forced to flee the Reign of Terror and the collapse of his privileges. Stripped of his legal income and facing a death threat should he return to France, the marquis reinvented himself in hiding under the pseudonym ‘Alexandre Laroche’. To survive, he joined forces with a friend from Provence, Louis L’Hermite, a former priest operating under the identity of a fake English merchant, Luigi Smith. Together, they operated in the heart of northern Italy (Venice, Milan, Padua) and the Kingdom of Naples, navigating between spies of the Directory, military blockades and an Italian aristocracy in crisis. This exceptional documentary collection traces the creation, the turmoil and the liquidation of the art and luxury goods trading company founded on 8 May 1795 by the two French émigrés with concealed identities. The use of false identities (“Alexandre Laroche” and “Luigi Smith”) was vital at the time. Had he been captured by French troops with false account books and links to enemy diplomats (such as the British Consul John Udny), the marquis would have been tried as a counter-revolutionary agent and guillotined. This British cover allowed them to move freely and to smuggle out wealth via neutral ports such as Livorno. From the spring of 1795 onwards, the archives reveal the establishment of a complex network extending across northern Italy, illustrated in particular by the involvement of Luigi Arduin in Padua, who was responsible for managing a farm specialising in the experimental cultivation of solano, a dye plant used for dyeing silk and secretly exported to England. The company’s main activity, however, centred on building up a substantial stock of works of art sold off at bargain prices by ruined Italian families; an inventory reveals the presence of major masterpieces: 84 paintings restored by Giuseppe Pellegrini (“the Wandering Painter”) in Milan and Naples, canvases attributed to Poussin (such as “The Presentation to the Eternal Father”), to Titian (“The Rest on the Flight into Egypt”), and also to Giovanni Bellini, Paolo Veronese, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Giulio Romano and Luca Giordano, as well as a collection of prints and seal engravings, including a cameo of Polyphemus and prestigious intaglios. Enclosed: over 55 handwritten invoices and receipts from bakers, goldsmiths, chemists, painters, bootmakers, coopers, grocers, bricklayers, furniture dealers, stationers, etc., for the year 1846, drawn up in the name of Frédéric Eugène de Benault de Lubières d’Albe (1804–1876), husband of Louise Joséphine Désirée d’Arlatan. FIND THE FULL AND DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THIS LOT IN OUR ONLINE AUCTION CATALOGUE
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About the sale ARCHIVES, BOOKS & MANUSCRIPTS
Auction location
Auction time 10/08/2026 at 2:00 PM
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