Soft-paste Sèvres porcelain tray, dark blue ground with gilded decoration. Irregular oval outline which projects at the four cardinal points, forming C-shaped laurel motifs in white and gold, which partly frame fan-shaped acanthus plumes in shallow relief. Painted in polychrome in an oval reserve with a moonlit figure scene illustrating the discovery of portraiture. In the scene a woman in white, who leans on the shoulder of her seated companion, traces the outline of his profile cast in shadow on the wall by the light of a candle. He is dressed in green and on his knees is a loosely folded orange cloak. Lying at their feet is a pole arm, and hanging on a pillar a harp. Laid out on a table covered with a green cloth with a gold fringe are a tazza, a ewer and a basket of fruit. They are gazing out onto a moonlit lakeside scene. Insects in pairs decorate the well of the tray round the reserve.

Text adapted from French Porcelain: In the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 2009