ABSTRACT
As an iconic object in the Islamic Art Department in the Louvre Museum and undisputed masterpiece of Mamluk metalware production, the so-called “Baptistère de Saint Louis” has generated considerable commentary during recent decades, through studies which have focused on stylistic and iconographic analysis aiming at defining a more precise dating and attribution to a specific patron. More recently, some initial inquiries have been conducted about its historiography and how this prestigious object found his way into the French royal treasury. This paper presents an overview of the different mentions of the Baptistère in French historical writings through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from brief statements to the more comprehensive publication in Aubin-Louis Millin’s Antiquités nationales, published in 1791, which coined the present appellation, the “Baptistère de Saint Louis”. It examines how this object was described and considered, and how this “rediscovery” took place in a specific national historical moment, as well as in the context of French Orientalism and concern for heritage and archaeology in the late eighteenth century. In so doing, it emphasises the special status of the Baptistère, which was positioned between Oriental exotica and national emblem.
