# Cabinet > Unknown maker, Burgundy, possibly the circle of Hugues Sambin - 1580, with minor additions in the late 1850s > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-burgundian-workshop-circle-of-hugues-sambin/burgundian-renaissance-cabinet-getty/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown maker, Burgundy, possibly the circle of Hugues Sambin - **Date:** 1580, with minor additions in the late 1850s - **Medium:** Walnut, oak, paint and iron, with a linen-and-silk lining - **Dimensions:** 307.7 x 153.4 x 57.2 cm (121 1/8 x 60 3/8 x 22 1/2 in.) - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** French Renaissance (Mannerist), Burgundy - **Current location:** J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A large walnut-and-oak cabinet, painted and iron-mounted, built in Burgundy in 1580 and dismissed for roughly thirty years as a nineteenth-century fake. J. Paul Getty bought it in 1971 for 1,700 dollars, against his own curators' advice, because its suspiciously pristine, wax-coated surface looked exactly like the many Renaissance Revival pastiches sold to American collectors a century earlier; fifty years before that it had reportedly carried an asking price of 46,640 dollars. A 2001 French exhibition on the Burgundian architect and designer Hugues Sambin sent a Getty curator to Ecouen, and the reexamination that followed, tree-ring dating the structural oak to 1574-75, radiocarbon dating the walnut and its silk-and-linen lining to 1400-1600, and matching sixteenth-century tool marks across both woods, overturned the fake verdict entirely.The provenance behind that verdict is unusually rich for a piece of furniture: a possible 1596 mention in a Besancon nobleman's estate inventory, the celebrated Debruge-Dumenil and Prince Soltykoff collections of the Paris art world's golden age of medieval and Renaissance connoisseurship, the 7th Duke of Marlborough's Blenheim Palace, Baron Achille Seilliere's private museum at the Chateau de Mello, and half a century in the hands of Duveen Brothers before the entire remaining Duveen inventory passed to the Norton Simon Foundation in one of the largest dealer-stock sales in American art-market history. This record checks every link in that chain against sources independent of the Getty's own catalogue, and corrects two dates the Getty's own database appears to have gotten wrong along the way: a Soltykoff family conflation, and an acquisition window for Baron Seilliere that his own death date rules out.Who actually carved it remains unknown. The Getty's own last word is honest about that, and this record follows it: Hugues Sambin is a plausible name, supported by real archival and stylistic circumstance, not a proven one. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1580** Unknown maker or workshop, Burgundy `[documented]` (manufacture) The date 1580 is painted on one of the cabinet's panels. Dendrochronology of the structural oak, carried out as part of the Getty Museum's 2001-2006 reexamination, dated the felling of the tree to late 1574 or early 1575 in Burgundy, a result the Museum states is consistent with the painted date once seasoning and construction time are allowed for. Minor additions were made to the cabinet in the late 1850s; see the note on the following link for the ownership window this falls within. - **-1596** Possibly Fernand Gauthiot, lord of d'Ancier, Besancon `[unknown]` (possible early ownership) A post-mortem household inventory of Gauthiot d'Ancier's estate, taken 1 April to 12 May 1596, describes two French Renaissance cabinets. One is identified with a cabinet now in the Musee du Temps, Besancon, independently dated to 1581. The Getty's own materials state the other 'may be the Getty cabinet,' based on close stylistic comparison between the two objects, not on an inventory description specific enough to name this cabinet outright. Graded as argued rather than documented for that reason. - **-1850** Louis-Fidel Debruge-Dumenil (1778-1838), Paris, and his heirs after his death `[documented]` (collection and sale) Debruge-Dumenil assembled one of the largest and most admired collections of medieval and Renaissance decorative art formed in nineteenth-century Paris, catalogued by his son-in-law Jules Labarte. He died in 1838; his heirs sold the collection twelve years later at the Hotel des Ventes Mobilieres, Paris, in a sale running 23 January to 12 March 1850. This cabinet was sold in the tenth session, 2 February 1850, as lot 1500, to Prince Soltykoff. - **1850-1861** Prince Pierre (Peter/Petr) Soltykoff (1804-1889), Paris `[documented]` (collection and sale) Soltykoff, a Russian-born collector resident in Paris from around 1840, built one of the era's landmark collections of medieval and Renaissance decorative art, dispersed at the Hotel Drouot beginning 8 April 1861; a significant portion of that sale is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This cabinet was sold as lot 275 to John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough. Minor additions recorded on the object's own date field as being made in the late 1850s fall entirely within this ownership window, since no other owner in the documented chain held the object during that decade; what was specifically added is not documented in the sources consulted. Note also that the Getty Museum's own linked-data record mislabels this owner's dates as 1806-1859, which are in fact the dates of a different family member, Alexey (Alexis) Saltykov; this record instead follows the 1804-1889 dates independently confirmed by the RKD, the National Gallery of Art's provenance files and the British Museum's authority record. - **1861-1873** John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough (1822-1883), Blenheim Palace `[documented]` (purchase and later sale) Bought at the 1861 Soltykoff sale. The Getty's own record states only that the Duke 'subsequently sold' the cabinet to Baron Achille Seilliere, without a date. Since Seilliere is independently documented as having died on 14 May 1873, and the 1890 sale catalogue of Seilliere's collection explicitly describes it as coming from the collection of the late Baron Seilliere, the transfer to Seilliere must have occurred within this window, not in the mid-1880s as a naive reading of the chain's sequence might suggest; the 7th Duke's own well-documented liquidation of the Marlborough Gems (1875) and the Sunderland Library (1881) under mounting financial pressure both post-date the latest possible year for this specific sale, so this transaction does not appear to belong to that later, better-known Blenheim financial crisis. - **1861-1873-1890** Baron Francois-Florentin-Achille Seilliere (1813-1873), Chateau de Mello, Oise `[documented]` (collection and posthumous sale) Banker, railway and Credit Foncier administrator, and book collector, who filled the Chateau de Mello with decorative art on a scale contemporaries described as a private museum. He died in 1873. His collection, including this cabinet, was sold seventeen years later by his heirs at the Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, catalogued by the dealer C. Mannheim as coming 'from the important collection of the late Baron Achille Seilliere,' 5-10 May 1890; this cabinet appears at pages 80-81, lot 540, illustrated. - **1890-1916** Davis Brothers, London `[documented]` (dealer ownership and sale) Sold to Duveen Brothers, Inc. on 14 June 1916, per the Getty's own record. This record has not been able to independently confirm the specific history of a London dealership trading as Davis Brothers in this period; a documented dealer, Charles Davis, is recorded selling other furniture to Duveen Brothers in 1910, but no source consulted confirms whether this is the same firm. - **1916-1964** Duveen Brothers, Inc., New York `[documented]` (dealer ownership and bulk sale) Held for close to half a century by the most influential decorative-arts dealership of the period, founded by Joseph Joel and Henry J. Duveen and built to its peak under Joseph Duveen's leadership (1909-1939). Sold on 18 April 1964 as part of the sale of the entire remaining Duveen Brothers inventory, roughly 800 objects together with the firm's New York gallery building and its library and archive, to the Norton Simon Foundation for a negotiated 4,000,000 dollars. - **1964-1971** The Norton Simon Foundation, Fullerton/Pasadena, California `[documented]` (bulk acquisition and dispersal sale) One of roughly 800 objects acquired in the wholesale 1964 purchase of the remaining Duveen Brothers inventory. Sold seven years later, 7 May 1971, as lot 193 at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, to J. Paul Getty for the museum that bears his name, for 1,700 dollars, a sale carried out as part of a broader 1970s dispersal by which the Foundation recouped part of its original 4,000,000-dollar outlay. - **1971-present** J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles `[documented]` (acquisition) Bought by J. Paul Getty in person, against the stated advice of his own curatorial staff, who believed the cabinet was a nineteenth-century fake given its suspiciously pristine, wax-coated surface. The object was not exhibited for roughly three decades until a 2001 reexamination, triggered by a Getty curator's visit to a Sambin exhibition in France, produced dendrochronology, radiocarbon and tool-mark evidence supporting the 1580 date. The cabinet is now accession number 71.DA.89 and was the subject of the Getty's own exhibition 'A Renaissance Cabinet Rediscovered,' 22 November 2005 to 5 August 2007. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1850-02-02** Unnamed Paris auctioneer, - Estimate: Not published in sources consulted - Hammer: Not published in sources consulted - With premium: Not published in sources consulted - Debruge-Dumenil collection sale, Hotel des Ventes Mobilieres, Paris, tenth session of a sale running 23 January to 12 March 1850. This cabinet was lot 1500, bought by Prince Soltykoff. Only the lot number is documented in the sources consulted; no price is given. - **1861-04-08** Hotel Drouot, - Estimate: Not published in sources consulted - Hammer: Not published in sources consulted - With premium: Not published in sources consulted - Prince Soltykoff collection sale, Paris, beginning 8 April 1861. This cabinet was lot 275, bought by the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Only the lot number is documented in the sources consulted; no price is given. - **1890-05-09** Galerie Georges Petit, - Estimate: Not published in sources consulted - Hammer: Not published in sources consulted - With premium: Not published in sources consulted - Posthumous sale of the collection of the late Baron Achille Seilliere, catalogued by the dealer C. Mannheim, Paris, running 5-10 May 1890. This cabinet appears at pages 80-81, lot 540, illustrated. Only the lot number and catalogue location are documented in the sources consulted; no price is given. - **1971-05-07** Parke-Bernet Galleries, - Estimate: Not published in sources consulted - Hammer: USD 1,700 - With premium: Not published in sources consulted - Sale of the cabinet from the Norton Simon Foundation, New York, lot 193, bought by J. Paul Getty for the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty's own exhibition materials state the price Getty paid as 1,700 dollars without specifying whether this figure is a hammer price or an all-in price; 1971-era Parke-Bernet sales of this kind typically did not carry a separate published buyer's premium of the modern kind, so this record treats 1,700 dollars as the effective purchase price rather than assuming an unstated premium on top of it. By comparison, an asking price of 46,640 dollars is recorded for the cabinet around 1921, roughly fifty years earlier, while it was in the Duveen Brothers inventory; using the published US CPI, 46,640 dollars in 1921 corresponds to approximately 870,000 dollars in 2026 purchasing power, and 1,700 dollars in 1971 corresponds to approximately 13,800 dollars in 2026 purchasing power. Both modern-equivalent figures are CPI-method approximations, not appraisals, and are given to illustrate the scale of the price collapse caused by thirty years of authenticity doubt, not as precise valuations. ## Open questions - Who actually built this cabinet? The Getty Museum's own position is that the maker 'has yet to be established'; the connection to Hugues Sambin is explicitly a proposal, not a documented attribution. - What, specifically, was added or altered to the cabinet in the late 1850s, and on whose instruction? No source consulted describes the content of these additions, though the date falls entirely within Prince Soltykoff's 1850-1861 ownership. - In what year did the cabinet pass from the 7th Duke of Marlborough to Baron Achille Seilliere? It must fall between 1861 (Marlborough's purchase) and 1873 (Seilliere's death), which rules out a mid-1880s date sometimes assumed from the sequence of the chain, but no source consulted gives the precise year. - Was the London firm recorded as 'Davis Brothers,' which sold the cabinet to Duveen Brothers in 1916, the same business as the documented dealer Charles Davis, who sold other furniture to Duveen in 1910? No source consulted makes this connection explicitly. - What happened to the cabinet's original top panel depicting Saint Jerome? The Getty's own description states the panel was originally part of the cabinet and does not appear to be present today, without explaining when or why it was removed. - What does the full text of Hinton and Heginbotham's 2006 Burlington Magazine article add beyond what the Getty's own public exhibition materials state? That article was not directly accessible during the preparation of this record and represents the single most detailed technical account of the reexamination. - Does the Getty's own internal database ever correct its apparent conflation of Prince Pierre Soltykoff (1804-1889), the actual owner of this cabinet, with Alexey (Alexis) Saltykov (1806-1859), a different member of the same family independently documented as a travel writer and collector in his own right? ## Sources - [1] J. Paul Getty Museum, 'Cabinet' (accession 71.DA.89), Linked Art / CIDOC-CRM JSON-LD collection record, fetched directly from the Museum's own linked-data API, including its provenance, production, dimension, rights and bibliography fields. - [2] J. Paul Getty Museum, 'Cabinet,' Museum Collection object page, permalink 103RKD. - [3] J. Paul Getty Museum, exhibition 'A Renaissance Cabinet Rediscovered,' Getty Center, 22 November 2005 - 5 August 2007, full exhibition text describing the purchase, the doubts, and the dendrochronology, radiocarbon and tool-mark reexamination. - [4] Wikipedia, 'Hugues Sambin,' for his biography, his 1572 pattern book and his documented architectural commissions. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Erlande-Brandenburg et al., 'Hugues Sambin: Un createur au XVIe siecle' (2001), cited directly in the Getty's own bibliography for this object but not independently accessed for this record. - [5] Robin Halwas Rare Books, catalogue description of an album of etched furniture designs by Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau, gathered circa 1580, describing their function as pattern repertories rather than literal working drawings. - [6] AGORHA (Institut national d'histoire de l'art), biographical record for 'Debruge-Dumenil, Louis Fidel (07/12/1778 - 06/12/1838), Paris.' - [7] National Gallery of Art, Washington, provenance authority record for 'Louis Fidel Debruge Dumenil.' - [8] RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History), artist/collector record for 'Petr Soltykoff,' giving his dates as circa 1804-1889. - [9] National Gallery of Art, Washington, provenance authority record for 'Prince Petr Soltykoff.' - [10] Blenheim Palace (official heritage site), 'The 7th Duke,' on his financial difficulties and the sales of the Marlborough Gems (1875) and the Sunderland Library (1881). - [11] Internet Archive, 'Catalogue of the collection of pictures from Blenheim Palace... sold by auction by Messrs. Christie, Manson & Woods, June 26, 1886,' consulted for the date of the major Blenheim picture dispersal, three years after the 7th Duke's death. - [12] Bibliotheque nationale de France (Gallica), 'Catalogue des objets d'art et de riche ameublement, porcelaines de Sevres, de Saxe et de Chine..., provenant de l'importante collection de feu M. le baron Achille Seilliere,' sale catalogue by the dealer Mannheim, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1890. - [13] Wikidata, authority record for 'Florentin-Achille Seilliere,' giving his dates as 1813-1873. - [14] Norton Simon Museum, 'About Norton Simon,' on the 1964 purchase of the remaining Duveen Brothers inventory. - [15] Norton Simon Museum, exhibition page 'Lock, Stock and Barrel: Norton Simon's Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery,' on the terms and scale of the 1964 acquisition and its subsequent 1970s dispersal. - [16] Sara Campbell, 'Lock, Stock, & Barrel: Norton Simon & the House of Duveen' (Pasadena: Norton Simon Museum, 2014), pp. 25, 48, fig. 17, no. D227, and 'Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best' (New Haven and London: The Norton Simon Foundation with Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 111, 461, no. D227, both cited via the Getty Museum's own bibliography for this object; not independently accessed for this record. - [17] in2013dollars.com, US Consumer Price Index inflation calculators for 1921 and 1971, based on published US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data, used to convert the circa-1921 asking price and the 1971 purchase price into approximate 2026 purchasing power. - [18] Wikimedia Commons, file information and license metadata for 'File:Joseph Duveen photo by George Charles Beresford.jpg,' verified as public domain. - [19] Wikimedia Commons, file information and license metadata for 'File:Blenheim Palace from the Air - geograph.org.uk - 620690.jpg,' verified as CC BY-SA 2.0, photographer Martin Addison. - [20] Wikimedia Commons, file information and license metadata for 'File:Hugues Sambin - Oeuvre de la diversite des termes dont on use en architecture.jpg,' verified as CC BY-SA 4.0, photograph by user Francois de Dijon of a public-domain 1572 printed book. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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