Pictured here is one of the works on offer: a gilded lead bust of a child that is thought to represent the young Henri IV.
The 12½in (31cm) high bust, which is set on a wooden pedestal veneered with red-stained tortoiseshell decorated with gilt bronze acanthus leaves, is catalogued as France, 17th century, after a model attributed to Germaine Pilon.
Pilon was a well-known sculptor of the French Renaissance. The bust has a provenance by tradition to the former Russian imperial collections and was probably sold during the Russian post-revolutionary sales in the late 1920s.
It then belonged to the collector Henry-René d’Allemagne (1863-1950) and sold at the auction of his collection at Drouot in 1953. Subsequently it belonged to Nicolas Landau (1887-1979), Paris; Le Chevalier Joseph de Ghellinck d’Elseghem (1904-83), Brussels, and a private European collection.
Estimate €40,000-50,000.
