Sniffed out from a snuff box ...Voltaire’s very erotic secret
FOR more than 100 years, an ornate snuff box designed to celebrate love and eroticism carried a historical secret. But thanks to a curator at a famous London gallery, the 18th Century artefact has given up that secret – two intimate portraits of French philosopher Voltaire and his married mistress Emilie du Chatelet, which were hidden inside. The curator discovered that by pressing on the lower panels of the box, a sliding mechanism was activated to reveal the pictures.
The box has been at the Wallace Collection since 1872. The artefact’s portraits will now go on display for the first time at the gallery in Marylebone in June to mark the 200th birthday of founder Sir Richard Wallace.
According to Dr Xavier Bray, director of The Wallace Collection, Sir Richard was unaware of its secret contents when he bought the snuff box from Empress Eugenie of France, wife of Napoleon III.
The box was made in about 1775 and is thought to be the work of Dresden goldsmith Johann Christian Neuber.
The portraits are believed to have been inserted in the box decades later in celebration of an affair that scandalised 18th Century France.
The curator only discovered the secret lever mechanism 200 years later.
Voltaire was 39 when, in 1733, he began his romance with aristocrat Emilie, who was 12 years his junior.
He ended the relationship in 1745 after he fell in love with his niece, Marie Louise Mignot.