s said
to have been the first who brought intarsia into France, under the name
of "marqueterie," having been for some time in the Netherlands. His
title was "menuisier et faiseur de Cabinets et tableaux en marqueterie
de bois." He was lodged in the Louvre in 1644 (when Louis XIV. was six
years old), "en honneur de la longue et belle pratique de son art dans
les Pays Bas." His daughter married Pierre Boulle, who in 1619 was
turner and joiner to the King, probably both to Louis XIII. and Henry
IV. In 1621 Paul Boulle was born, and five years later Jacques. The
family was settled at Charenton-le-Pont, near Paris, the principal town
of the Huguenots for eighty years. Here, in 1649, Pierre Boulle was
buried, the father of seven children. The earlier seventeenth century
designs show picturesque landscapes or broken ruins or figures, _motifs_
which recur a century later, as in the beautiful panel signed "Follet"
in the Cabinet by Claude Charles Saunier in the Wallace collection. The
colours are occasionally stained, and ebony and ivory are favourite
materials. It is impossible to fix the exact time when copper and
tortoiseshell came into use in France. Some of the cabinets in which
they appear are certainly of the period of Louis XIII. It was probably
imported either from Spain or Flanders; it became very fashionable
about the middle of the seventeenth century, and ended by entirely
absorbing the official orders of the Court of Louis XIV. With this work
the name of Boulle is indissolubly associated. Pierre Boulle was lodged
in the Louvre about 1642. In 1636 he is on the list for 400 livres
annually. Jean Boulle died in the Louvre in 1680. He was the father of
Andre Charles probably, who was born in November, 1642, and the nephew
of Pierre. Andre Charles Boulle in 1672 succeeded to the lodging of Jean
Mace in the same building, and seven years later by a second brevet to
the "demilogement," formerly occupied by Guillaume Petit "to allow him
to finish the works executed for His Majesty's service." It is told of
him by a contemporary that the talented boy wanted to be a painter, but
his father would not allow it, and insisted upon his keeping to
handicraft. He was a man of most varied talent; when he was first
granted apartments in the Louvre it was as "joiner, marqueteur, gilder,
and chiseller," and in the decree of Louis XIV., by which he was
appointed the first art-joiner to the King, he is called "architect,
sculptor, and engr