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Waddesdon is the only house complete and open to the public in which the distinctive and influential gout Rothschild of the late 19th century can still be seen intact. On a hilltop overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, it was built between 1877 and 1883

by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild (1839-98) to show off his works of art and to entertain the fashionable world (Fig. 1). (1) Famed for its French porcelain, furniture and textiles, British 18th-century portraits, 17th-century Northern genre paintings and princely treasures from the renaissance, the collection also encompasses important works on paper, from Old Master and decorative drawings to printed ephemera.

The house was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957 by James de Rothschild. It is now managed by a Rothschild family trust under the chairmanship of Jacob, 4th Lord Rothschild. He is a collector in the family tradition and under his leadership the collections are being enlarged by remarkable acquisitions, from a silver service commissioned in the 1770s by George III for use in Hanover to Sarah Lucas's over-life-size painted bronze and concrete sculpture of a horse and cart, Perceval (2006). This article announces the recent acquisition of four 18th-century paintings. Each transforms the collection while at the same time enriching themes that already run through it, from childhood games to diplomatic display and the theatre of state.

A BALL AND A CONCERT BY GIOVANNI PAOLO PANINI

Panini's paired canvases depict a spectacular event in the theatre of state: the celebrations staged by the French ambassador to Rome, the duc de Nivernais, on the birth of a new heir to the French throne--Louis XV's grandson, Louis-Joseph-Xavier, duc de Bourgogne (1751-61). (2) The paintings (Figs 2 and 3) depict two highlights of a four-day fate that encompassed religious thanksgiving and extravagant partying. (3) The celebration began with a mass and a sung Te Deum in S Luigi dei Francesci on the morning of Monday 22 November 1751. Panini designed a temporary decoration for the high altar. There was a procession and horse races in the Corso and refreshments at the French Academy in Palazzo Mancini. Decoration of the Corso and Piazza Farnese, and three nights of illuminations, stamped French jubilation on to the city streets. Buildings were lit up with lanterns and torches. Fountains of red and white wine flanked the main door of Palazzo Farnese, whose Gran Salone on the piano nobile was the setting for the concert and ball depicted by Panini.

Palazzo Farnese was owned by the King of the Two Sicilies (Carlo In di Borbone, King of Naples and Sicily, 1735-59). He was brother-in-law of the Dauphine of France, Marie-Josephe de Saxe, and so uncle by marriage of the new baby. His palace was used because access to the Nivernais palace was difficult. In the 17th century Agostino and Annibale Carracci had decorated many of the principal rooms in Palazzo Farnese, but they never fulfilled their plans to paint the Gran Salone, so during the 18th century this space was regularly transformed with ephemeral decorations for entertainments.

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Panini designed the setting for the celebration, probably assisted by his son Giuseppe. The Waddesdon paintings closely match contemporary accounts of the decor, which included pilasters of light lapis lazuli inlaid with gold, the arms of France supported by winged and trumpeting figures, mirrors in gilded frames below painted scenes of putti holding lilies, a frieze with swags of roses held up by more putti--all topped with layers of elaborate arches and a 'woven' (tessuto) ceiling with festoons of naturalistically coloured roses. The paintings express the animating tension between the clear (if fictive) blue daylight in the ceiling, the illusory sunburst on the stage, the sheen of the gilding and painted panels and the flickering flames of the candles. Spectators remarked upon the brilliance of the lighting, inside and outside the palace: there were 39 glass chandeliers and, according to an eyewitness, 150 five-branched torches. Beyond his patron's requirements, Panini must also have been motivated by a desire to record his own splendid embellishment of the palace.

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A cantata by Rinaldo di Capua, La Pace universale ('Universal Peace'), was performed on the Monday evening. Panini's painting shows the cardinals of Rome seated in the front row, their skullcaps represented by little red circles within circles of hair. The carpet that separates them from the performers might have been made at the French royal carpet manufactory, the Savonnerie. French diplomats placed great emphasis on French luxury goods and showed them off to stimulate trade, although in this instance the gaze of those members of the audience who are not chatting to each other or reading the libretto is directed upwards. Contemporary descriptions of the event catalogue the gods, goddesses and allegorical figures that peopled the stage and glowing heights above it. Seated in the painted clouds of the backcloth was the Genius of France, dressed in blue and holding a crown and sceptre, flanked by Peace (with a laurel branch), Fidelity (guarding a flame), Royal Authority, Justice (holding the fasces of ancient Roman magistrates) and Abundance (with her cornucopia). In the earthly register two singers and three musicians represented (left to right) Jupiter, Apollo, Rome, France and Virtue. In Panini's rendition, the figure on the far right looks more like Mars than Virtue, one of a handful of inconsistencies between the paintings and eye-witness accounts.

The figures to some extent repeat the arrangement in Panini's painting of a performance in the Teatro Argentino in Rome to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin to the Dauphine in 1747 (Musee du Louvre, Paris), commissioned by Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, charge d'affaires at the French embassy in Rome. Panini based some of the hundreds of figures in the Waddesdon paintings on drawings he had made several years earlier for the 1747 picture. A sketchbook in the British Museum contains studies he reused for some of the men on the rows of red chairs and women seated in boxes, musicians (Fig. 4) and servants with refreshments. As well as these studies from life, Panini used portraiture to enforce the authenticity of his pictorial record, although the portraits themselves were not necessarily based on the artist's own observation. (4) In the Waddesdon Ball, the figure in the central lower box may be Cardinal York. The lay figures to his left may be James III and his wife, Maria Sobieska, but it is not clear. The Waddesdon paintings do not emphasise the recognisable faces, but instead subsume rather more generic physiognomies into the overall effect of a crowd pulsing under a viewer's restless eye. Indeed, the paintings may have been produced before the concert and ball rather than intended as a record of what they looked like. David Marshall has suggested that they served as modelli for the actual events, painted to evoke the effect of the decorations, performance and assembly. (5) The acquisition of the Waddesdon paintings prompts further research into their status and function.

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According to contemporary accounts, there was a ball after the cantata, but this was not the one shown in the second Waddesdon painting, which evokes a more elaborate fancy-dress event held on the evening of Wednesday 24 November. Giovanni Refinni recorded the clothes in fascinated detail. (6) Several women wore military-style outfits; the wife of the Venetian ambassador a Tyrolean peasant dress. The masquerade costumes were enriched with silver lace and jewels, gold brocade and rare furs. In the painting, the duc de Nivernais is about to begin the opening dance with the wife of the Venetian ambassador. In the foreground, red-coated servants are moving among the guests with food and drink on silver salvers. Several figures are dressed as characters from the commedia dell'arte and might have stepped out of a fete galante by Watteau. Seated on the floor in the bottom corners are men in ragged clothes, evoking the city outside the palace.

In Britain, Panini is more familiar as a painter of Roman views for Grand Tourists and capricci of antiquities. These newly-acquired paintings are magnificent examples of another genre he made his own: the depiction of court and civic festivities, adopted from print culture and elevated into large and crowded oil paintings flail of bustle, glitter and modernity. They expand our understanding of Panini's role in the creation of France's image abroad and complete a spectacular series of paintings made for the French enclave in Rome that encompasses theatrical and sacred interiors and ephemeral festival decoration manipulated by a master of spatial illusionism. (7) Panini's brother-in-law Nicolas Vleughels (1668-1737), director of the French Academy in Rome, probably first brought him to the attention of the French. In 1729 Panini was commissioned by Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, French ambassador to Rome, to paint the preparations for a fete in Piazza Navona and the cardinal visiting St Peter's basilica to mark the birth of the Dauphin in 1729 (both Musee du Louvre, Paris) and the already-mentioned performance in the Teatro Argentina to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin and Dauphine, parents of the baby in whose honour the duc de Nivernais's largesse was so lavishly extended. Had the little duc de Bourgogne lived, he would have succeeded his grandfather as King of France. However, he died when he was 10 and his younger brother became Louis XVI.

LOUIS XVI BY ANTOINE-FRANCOIS CALLET

Callet's portrait of Louis XVI was also born of diplomatic display. (8) It was sent to London with Jean-Baltazar, comte d'Adhemar, the French ambassador following the end of the American War of Independence in 1783. The embassy, in Piccadilly, was a showcase for French luxury arts, including Sevres porcelain, Gobelins tapestries and Boulle furniture. Callet's portrait hung in the throne room, where all official business was conducted. It was not just an image of the king but embodied his virtual presence. Rather as the ambassador, the representative of the monarch, was the human symbol of royal authority, the portrait and the throne in front of it were a manifestation of power.

This painting is one of at least 15 repetitions of Callet's portrait of the king commissioned by the French foreign minister, the comte de Vergennes, in 1779. Callet had begun work on the prime version of the portrait the year before. He modelled the composition on Hyacinthe Rigaud's celebrated 1701 portrait of Louis XIV (Muste du Louvre. Paris). This iconographic continuity emphasised the five generations of unbroken royal lineage and bathed the weaker Louis XVI in the glory of his forebear.

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The conventional trappings of baroque princely portraiture, such as the column and billowing canopy, imbue the painting with grandeur and add to the king's stature. The monarch is depicted as the sole source of justice in politically turbulent times. The Main de Justice (Hand of Justice) is prominent beside him and the figure of Justice and bundled fasces of Roman magistrates decorate the gilded throne behind him. He holds the sceptre of Henri IV (1589-1610), founder of the Bourbon dynasty, and wears the sword known as the Joyeuse, traditionally associated with Charlemagne, with the chains of the two highest chivalric orders, from which the cross of the Saint-Esprit is suspended. Beneath his mantle of state, embroidered with fleurs-de-lys and lined with ermine, he wears court dress of Louis XIV, including shoes with red heels (talons rouges), which could be worn only by the highest ranks of the aristocracy.

Unlike most other surviving examples of Callet's portrait, this one retains the neoclassical frame carved for it by Francois Buteux (1732-88). Buteux supplied several frames for versions of Callet's state portrait intended for French diplomatic missions abroad. The decoration of each one reflected the political relationship of the recipient nation with France at the time. At the very top sits the crown of France, with the crossed Main de Justice and sceptre below. The shield is carved with the arms of France and Navarre, from which the Order of the Saint-Esprit is suspended. The trophy of arms with the flag of Louis XIV with its emblematic sunburst represents the might of France. The arms are lowered, laid aside in peace. This emphasis on peaceful rapprochement was important. The ensemble of painting and frame was made for display in London in 1783, when France wanted to restore good relations with Britain following the American War of Independence, in which France had supported the newly emerging nation.

BOY BUILDING A HOUSE Or CARDS BY JEAN-SIMEON CHARDIN

When he was furnishing Waddesdon Manor, Ferdinand Rothschild bemoaned the difficulty of getting hold of really good French paintings. He surely would have applauded the acquisition of an early masterpiece by one of the greatest of all French painters, Chardin's Boy Building a House of Cards (Fig. 9). (9) Its self-contained stillness contrasts with the splendour of its new setting, yet it resonates with existing aspects of the collection, from games and the representation of childhood to the influence of Northern genre painting on French art.

A child playing--with cards, bubbles, spinning-top or shuttlecock--was a favourite subject of Chardin's. Such scenes, with their intimations of the transitory nature of human life, were derived from 16th- and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish vanitas, but display a delight in childhood for its own sake, absent from those. Nicolas Lancret's Allegory of Air (c. 1730) at Waddesdon is another painting in which the card house is emblematic of childhood and the vanity of human ambitions. Chardin depicted a young adolescent building a house of cards on at least four occasions. The fragile paper edifice embodies the fleeting nature of childhood; the cards the role of chance. The jack in the drawer in the Waddesdon painting hints at rascalry. The prominent ace of hearts might represent the precariousness of love. Another version is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (c. 1735; Fig. 6). A rather painterly and romantic treatment of the subject is in the Musee du Louvre, Paris (c. 1737; Fig. 7). The boy in the crisp variation in the National Gallery, London (c. 1737; Fig. 8), is the son of a friend of the artist, the furniture dealer and cabinetmaker Jean-Jacques Le Noir. These paintings show Chardin exploring the possibilities of composition, colour, tone and mood in a subject, the act of placing a card, that allowed him to create different conjunctions of touch and sight. In the boys' facial expressions he embodied to different degrees absorption, alertness, and musing. Subtle differences in age and clothing hint at distinctions between idleness and leisure. In contrast with Master Le Noir's gentility, the aprons worn by the Waddesdon and Washington boys suggest they may be servants supposed to be clearing up after a gaming party.

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The Waddesdon painting has a more elaborate setting than the others. The red curtain with its golden tassel adds a note of opulence. A screen is just visible on the right of the boy; the artist himself probably painted it out (since it is not present in prints after the picture, and the signature is askew in relation to it). Chardin's sparer treatments of the subject concentrated the solitary self-absorption of the child. In the Waddesdon painting the window, and the curtain drawn aside to reveal it, acknowledge the existence of the world outside and dramatise the spectator's presence. The drawer jutting into the viewer's space teases us with its spatial illusionism. The painting is intimate, yet monumental; sombre, but luminous. Against the strong verticals and horizontals of the wall, cord, table and card house, the viewer's attention is caught by the invisible diagonal that links the boy's eye to the card that he is trying to balance with his right hand.

This was probably one of the paintings that Chardin showed to his colleagues at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1735, when he put his name forward for the position of officier de l'Academie. (10) Probably shown at the Paris Salon of 1737, it may have been intended as a pendant to Woman Taking Tea (1735, but not exhibited until the Salon of 1739, Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, Glasgow), with which it has compositional affinities and was associated in the 1765 sale. (11) Prints after the painting were made soon after its creation. Pierre Filloeuil's engraving amplifies its moralising note with a little verse about how old men should not mock the young since their schemes can be quite as insubstantial. A series of four etchings by Antoine Marcenay de Ghuy draws out the Rembrandtesque melancholy that several contemporary viewers found in Chardin's genre paintings. (12)

18th- and 19th-century commentators often discussed Chardin's genre paintings and still-lifes in terms of 17th-century Netherlandish works, so it is appropriate that Boy Building a House of Cards joins a collection rich in such works, by Gerrit Dou, Gerard Ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu, several with distinguished French 18th-century provenances. It also prompts a reassessment of the belief that the Rothschilds did not buy works by Chardin: research will focus in particular on a group of Chardins owned by Henri de Rothschild (1872-19471, most of which were burnt in a fire during World War II.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Anne Dulau Anna Grundberg, Alastair Laing, Edouard Kopp, Opher Mansour, Pippa Shirley and Christoph Martin Vogtherr for help in the preparation of this article. David Marshall's assistance with the Paninis was particularly generous. He sent me copies of hard-to-find texts and offered many comments upon which I have gratefully drawn. The section on the Callet is based on a leaflet produced for visitors to Waddesdon, written by Selma Schwartz and Pippa Shirley, partly based on work by Sarah Medlam and Christian Baulez.

(1) See APOLLO, vol. CXXXIX, No. 386 (April 1994) and APOLLO, Vol.CLXVI, No 545, July/August 2007, which were devoted to Waddesdon Manor and the Rothschild Collection; Michael Hall, Waddesdon Manor: The Heritage of a Rothschild House, New York, 2002; Ferdinand de Rothschild, 'Bric-a-Brac. A Rothschild's Memoir of Collecting', APOLLO, vol. CLXVI, no. 545,July/August 2007, pp. 50-77.

(2) Commissioned by Louis-Jules-Bourbon Mazarini-Mancini, duc de Nivernais (1716-981; by descent; acquired 2007 by a Rothschild Family Trust. Bibliography: Ferdinando Arid, 'Due inedifi di straordinario interesse di Gian Paolo Panini, commissionati dall'Ambasciatore francese a Roma nel 1751', Strenna Piacentina, 2005, pp. 113-117 (ill. pp. 92-95, plates 74-77).

(3) The principal sources are: Giovanni Reffini, Descrizione della festa, Rome. 1751 ; Diario Ordinario, no. 5361, 27 November 1751, Rome, 1751; F. Clementi, II Carnevale Romano nelle Crontache Contemporanee, Parte 1. Dalle Origini al. Sec. XVII. Parte II, Sec. XVIII-XLX, Citta di Castello, 1938, pp. 89-99; M. Fagiolo, Corpus delle Feste a Roma. 2. II Settecento e L'Ottocento, Rome, 1997, p. 150. I am grateful to David Marshall for sending mc copies.

(4) See Bent Sorensen, "Panini and Ghezzi: the portraits in the Louvrc "Musical performance at the Teatro Argentina'", The Burlington Magazine, vol CXLIV, no 1193 (August 2002), pp. 467-74.

(5) Correspondence with the author, May 2008.

(6) Reffini, op. cit, cited in Clementi, op. cit., Part 2, pp. 95-96. The costumes and refreshments are discussed in David Marshall, 'Carvnevale, Conversazione, and Villeggiatura: Villa Life in the Eighteenth Century', Melbourne Art Journal, no. 6 2003, pp. 35-64, at pp. 49-51.

(7) See Michael Kiene, 'Pannini', exh. cat., Paris, Musee du Louvre, Paris, 1992, 'Fetes et ceremonies a Rome', pp. 29-61, cat. nos. 4, 6, 37.

(8) Provenance:Jean-Baltazar, comte d'Adhemar, 1783; William, 3rd Viscount Courtenay and 9th Earl of Devon, recorded in the Music Room, Powderham Casde, 1803; by descent; acquired by a Rothschild Family Trust in 2006. Bibliography: Sarah Medlam, 'Callet's portrait of Louis XVI: A picture frame as diplomatic tool' in The Journal of the Furniture Histo01 Society, vol. XLIII, 2007, pp. 143-154; Christian Baulez, article forthcoming in The Burlington Magazine on d'Adhemar's collection.

(9) Exhibitions; possibly Paris, Salon of 1737; London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 'French Art of the 18th century', 1913 (cat. 1914), no. 43 (not illustrated); Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1985, 'The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting', no. 152. Provenance: Victor-Amedee, prince de Carignan (died 1741), Paris; ?his widow (died 17661; sale of pictures from his collection, and those of Cardinal Mazarin, Prestage's, I London, 26 February 1765, lot 37, purchased for 16 [pounds sterling] by Robinson; William Fauquier (1708 881, his posthumous sale, Christie's, London, 30 January 1789, lot 75, 5.15s. [pounds sterling] to Mr Stevens; George Simon, 2nd Earl Harcourt (1736-1809), in the :Eating Room at Nuneham Courtenay by 1797; by descent at Nuneham Courtenay until taken to Stanton Harcourt in 1948 by the 2nd Viscount Harcourt (1908-79); acquired 2007 by a Rothschild Family Trust. Select bibliography: David Carrit, 'Mr. Fauquier's Chardins', The Burlington Magazine, no. 858, vol. CXVI (September 19741, pp. 502-09; Pierre Rosenberg, "Chardin 1699 1779', exh. cat., Galeries nafionales du Grand Palais, Paris; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1979, under no. 64; 'The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1985, no. 152; Pierre Rosenberg, 'Chardin', exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Kunstmuseum et Kunsthalle, Diisseldorf; Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Metropofitan Museum, New ek3di, 1999 2000, under no. 46 and 47.

(10) Mercure de France, June 1735, pp. 1383-86.

(11) Christoph Martin Vogtherr, 'New Beginnings in French Genre Painting: de Troy, Chardin, Boucher' in Boucher & Chardin: Masters of Modern Manners, exh. cat., Wallace Collection, London and The Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, 2008, p. 33.

(12) See Katie Scott, 'Chardin multiplie', in Pierre Rosenberg: 'Chardin', exh. cat., 1999-2000, op. cit., (French ed.), pp. 61-75.

Juliet Carey is Curator of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture at Waddesdon Manor. For information on visiting Waddesdon, go to www.waddesdon.org.uk