Animated Painting of St. Ouen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Title: Animated Painting of Saint-Ouen

Date: 1759

Culture: French

Medium: Wood, glass, leather, tin, iron alloy, brass

Dimensions: 23 5/8 × 5 11/16 × 27 9/16 in., 38.4 lb. (60 × 14.5 × 70 cm, 17.4 kg)

Classifications: Wood, Metalwork

Credit Line: Musée des Arts et Métiers–CNAM, Paris

This idyllic image of Saint-Ouen is a tableau animé (animated painting); the format was fashionable among French aristocrats of the eighteenth century. The painting was likely a jewel in the collection of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV. Her coat of arms, a tower, adorns the original carved, gilded, and silvered frame, a splendid work of art in its own right. Applied figures in the fore- and middle ground—laundresses, anglers, and boats—can move across the surface of the painting, powered by a hidden mechanism


Text from: www3.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/771725