Royal Beds of the Renaissance as seen in the Archives of Louis XIV

Where beds are concerned, the French royal collections held some exceptional works at the time of the Renaissance, but because of their subsequent disappearance, during the eighteenth century, and because of deficiencies in the archival accounts and inventories, it is often difficult to have precise knowledge of them. However, descriptive documents written later, when the beds were still in existence, can help considerably in giving us an idea of what these beds looked like. The general inventory of crown furniture under Louis XIV, drawn up in 1673 and published by Jules Guiffrey at the end of the nineteenth century, describes a certain number of Renaissance beds or canopies and is of particular usefulness. The present article is followed by a revised publication of the bed descriptions, along with the history of the beds as it can be reconstructed using the inventories and archives of the crown's furniture repository, the Garde-Meuble.