In the 1720s and 1730s, King João V of Portugal (1689-1750) commissioned furniture and ornamental objects from French court artists in order to decorate his palaces. Knowledge of many of these pieces – genuine jewels made according to the renewed artistic formulas emerging in the French cultural and artistic context of the first half
of the 18th century – remains sparse, due to the lack of scientific investment in this domain. Retrieving precious primary sources, conserved in the National Library of France and in the Torre do Tombo of Lisbon (Portugal), the main objective of the present work is to make known the context in which these orders were shipped, analysing the contexts of French artistic production at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the Duke of Orléans’ government and the beginning of the era of Louis XV. Likewise, by adopting an analytical and comparative approach to the processes of evolution and continuity/discontinuity of the artistic formulas that characterise several of the pieces of furniture designed in these three contexts, this investment is also shown to be essential to the field of the art market where similar artistic objects are included.
