Snuff Box (Tabatière) (1777–78): Art, History and Details

Snuff Box (Tabatière) (1777–78) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is François Chazeray (French).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This box is decorated with figures of antiquity associated with love: winged cupids, dancing nymphs, and representations of the Greek goddess of love. These scenes are inspired by antique cameos, intricately carved gemstones crafted in ancient Greece and Rome. This interest in ancient iconography, symmetry, and classical compositions of gods and goddesses was characteristic of 18th-century neoclassicism.

Object facts

• Title: Snuff Box (Tabatière)
• Date: 1777–78
• Creator attribution: François Chazeray (French)
• Culture: France
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: gold and enamel
• Dimensions: Overall: 2.9 x 3.9 cm (1 1/8 x 1 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1958.124

A detail from the museum

Decorated with allegorical scenes of love, it is likely that this box was a present between lovers.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Edward B. Greene

Further reading listed by the museum

• Norton, Richard, and Martin Norton. A History of Gold Snuff Boxes. London: Messrs. S.J. Phillips, 1938.
• Milliken, William M. The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 45, no. 3 (March 1958): 35-94.
• Milliken, William M. "Annual Report Issue for the Year 1957." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 45, no. 6 (June 1958): 159-90.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.