PARIS.- The Louvre has opened a special presentation devoted to a major promised donation from collector Michel Lacoste, bringing together 100 pieces of French silverwork from the 16th to the 18th century.

Titled “The Michel Lacoste Donation to the Louvre Museum: French Silverwork from Mangot to Puiforcat,” the exhibition is on view in the museum’s Sully Wing, Room 605, through January 11, 2027. For more than six months, visitors will be able to see the Lacoste pieces displayed together alongside the Louvre’s own holdings of silver and ceramics.

The donation, formalized in November 2025, reflects decades of collecting by Lacoste, the youngest son of French tennis legend René Lacoste, whose nickname “the Crocodile” became the emblem of the famous sportswear brand founded in 1933. Because Michel Lacoste is a Swiss national, the gift was structured as a deferred donation of existing property, meaning the works will become property of the French State upon his death.

For now, the Louvre is giving the public a rare opportunity to see the collection as a whole.

The 100 works represent roughly a quarter of the silver collection assembled by Lacoste since the 2000s. Chosen in close consultation with the Louvre’s Department of Decorative Arts, the pieces were selected to complement and enrich the museum’s existing holdings, particularly in the area of 17th-century French silverwork. Nearly a quarter of the donation consists of Parisian and provincial works from that century, a field in which examples have become increasingly scarce on the art market.

The display also introduces important names not yet represented in the Louvre’s collection, including Jean-Baptiste Chéret, Pierre-François Bonnestrenne, and Joseph-Théodore Vancombert. Other pieces deepen the museum’s representation of celebrated masters such as Nicolas Delaunay, Claude II Ballin, François-Thomas Germain, and Jacques-Nicolas Roëttiers.





To make room for the donation, the Louvre has reworked the existing presentation in Room 605. Some objects have been temporarily removed, while others from storage have been added to create visual and historical dialogues with Lacoste’s pieces. A colorful scenographic design helps visitors immediately identify the works from the donation and see them in relation to the museum’s permanent collection.

One of the most notable aspects of Lacoste’s choices is the attention given to provincial centers of French silverwork in the 17th and 18th centuries. While many of these works drew inspiration from Parisian models, they also reveal local originality, technical confidence, and a refined sense of form.

Lacoste’s passion for silverwork began with a catalogue. As a young man, he was given the sale catalogue of the famed Puiforcat collection by his maternal grandmother. The auction, planned for 1955, never took place because the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos acquired most of the works and later donated them to the Louvre with reservation of usufruct. That gift transformed the museum’s holdings in French silverwork at a time when the collection was still relatively limited.

Captivated by the Puiforcat collection and by the figure of Louis-Victor Puiforcat as a collector, Lacoste began visiting auction houses, meeting specialized dealers, and building relationships with experts and art historians. His first major acquisitions came during the celebrated sales of the David David-Weill collection in the 1970s. Although he sold part of that early collection in 1999, he soon began collecting again.

With this donation, Lacoste is now sharing a lifelong passion with the public and helping secure the future of a group of works that speak to the elegance, technical brilliance, and historical depth of French silverwork.

The choice of the Louvre feels especially fitting. The museum already holds much of the Puiforcat collection that first inspired Lacoste, and with this new donation, that story of collecting, transmission, and public heritage comes full circle.