Probate Inventories, Public Sales and the Parisian Art Market in the Seventeenth Century

In my recent book on collections and collectors in seventeenth-century France, I pointed out that a notably prosperous group of dealers did not emerge in Pans.1 This observation has since been confirmed by inventories, of which I was unaware, of Jean-Michel Picart following the death of his third wife (1680), and of Charles Hérault, drawn up after his death (1718). Picart and Hérault were the most famous artist dealers of their time. One of the reasons I gave for their lack of success was that part of the market probably eluded them.