L'Enseigne de Gersaint

1720

Oil on canvas, 64 1/4 × 120 1/2 in. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin

Painted as a shop sign for a Paris art dealer, it shows the old reign being packed away: a portrait of the late Louis XIV goes into a crate at the left.

Look at

Two halves, each a shallow box of wall and counter, meet near the central door, where a vertical seam runs through the picture.
Several figures turn their backs; the woman in pink is a column of silk that steers the viewer's eye into the shop.
The walls are paintings within the painting, stacked in rows of small gold frames to the ceiling.

Made in the autumn of 1720 for Gersaint's shop on the Pont Notre-Dame; it hung about two weeks and, as Gersaint recalled in 1744, caught the eye of every passer-by.
Bought by Frederick the Great in 1746.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain