Marie-Antoinette's Last Known Breast-Shaped Bowl Rediscovered After More than Two Centuries

Discovered by chance in a crate belonging to the Collection Galerie Meyer, it is the fourth and last known example of this exceptionally rare and extravagant model. A major rediscovery for the decorative arts, it brings to life once again the extravagance and refinement of Marie-Antoinette’s court. Estimated at €1,000,000–€2,000,000, the piece will be offered at auction by Coutau-Bégarie & Associés at Hôtel Drouot on Thursday, 26 November, under the hammer of auctioneer Alexandre de La Forest Divonne.

 

A porcelain breast-bowl, known as jatte-téton
Sèvres Royal Porcelain Manufactory, 1787
Estimate : €1,000,000 - €2,000,000

A legendary piece resurfaces

Discovered by chance during the inventory of the estate of the Galerie Claude Meyer, which brings together a collection assembled over three generations of art dealers, the piece was carefully wrapped in bubble wrap at the bottom of a crate filled with porcelain. First the tripod, then the porcelain breast-shaped bowl: as the packing materials were removed, the experts and auctioneer could hardly believe what they were seeing. Before their eyes emerged an exceptionally rare piece whose presence they had not suspected: the fourth and last known example of this breast-shaped bowl from the Sèvres Manufactory. This is how this masterpiece, commissioned by Louis XVI for Marie-Antoinette’s dairy at Rambouillet, has resurfaced after more than two centuries in private collections.

This breastshaped bowl, resting on a tripod adorned with goat heads, is one of the most celebrated and extravagant objects ever produced by the royal manufactory. Its reappearance is a major event for the art market and for the history of the Sèvres Manufactory. The jatte-téton, as it was known in the eighteenth century, consists of a hemispherical soft-paste porcelain bowl imitating the shape of a female breast, set on a triangular hard-paste porcelain tripod whose three supports are topped with sculpted goat heads in relief. The tripod is decorated in black and purple with foliate scrolls and egg-and-dart friezes in the Etruscan style, against an orange-toned ground known as fond grès. Beneath the tripod are the interlaced and crowned Ls of the Sèvres Manufactory, together with the date letter KK for 1787.
 

Description courte de l'oeuvre

The dairy at Rambouillet

Louis XVI acquired the Rambouillet estate in 1783 and commissioned the construction of an ornamental dairy to please Marie-Antoinette. Hubert Robert contributed to the design of the gardens and appears to have overseen the artistic coordination of the dairy. Jacques-Jean Thévenin was responsible for the construction, Pierre Julien for the sculpture, and Georges Jacob for the furniture, made after designs by Robert.

This garden folly combines Neoclassical architecture with pastoral imagery. To furnish this setting, the Comte d’Angiviller, Director of the King’s Buildings, commissioned a completely new type of porcelain service from the Sèvres Manufactory. Inspired by the antique vases in the Denon collection, recently acquired for the King, the service adopted classical forms and Etruscan decoration without any gilding — a radical aesthetic choice for Sèvres.

From the ancient Greek mastos to the breast-shaped bowl

The bowl’s shape draws directly on the mastós, a breast-shaped drinking cup used at Greek banquets (from the Greek mastós, meaning “breast”). Ancient examples may have been part of the Denon collection transferred to Sèvres in 1786. A persistent legend, for which no written source dating from before the twentieth century has been identified, claims that the bowl was moulded directly from Marie-Antoinette’s own breast. Specialists at Sèvres describe this tradition as a “myth” or a “romantic fantasy”.
 

Four breast-shaped bowls for the dairy

Four breast-shaped bowls were delivered for Rambouillet in 1787 and 1788. Three are now held in public collections: two at the National Museum of Ceramics in Sèvres (one with a pale blue ground and the other with a violet ground), and one at the Duca di Martina Museum in Naples (with a pale blue ground). The example to be offered at auction, with its ochre-orange ground described in the Sèvres Manufactory archives as fond grès, is the only one of the four original pieces to remain in private hands.

The heritage significance of the Dairy service was further confirmed in 2025, when the National Museum of Ceramics in Sèvres acquired two additional pieces: a milk jug and a sugar bowl. Both had been classified as National Treasures by the French Minister of Culture in March 2022. This acquisition underscores the exceptional importance of the ensemble.