A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany Commode

Object Description

A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze Mounted Mahogany Commode, After The Model By Joseph Stöckel and Guillaume Benneman.

Decorated overall with berried scrolling foliage, the eared rectangular white marble top above egg-and-dart moulding and three frieze drawers centred by a lion mask, over a pair of panelled doors centred by a roundel cast in relief with a Satyress and Cupid. The interior is fitted with six drawers flanked with loop handles. The front corners with fluted columnar uprights with stiff-leaf acanthus capitals. The sides have corresponding roundels of woodland nymphs and bacchic putti. On tapering frond-cast legs and pine cone feet.

France, Circa 1880.

Object History

This magnificent commode is a fine 19th century example of a very famous model of which a pair were made by Guillaume Benneman, adapted from a design by Joseph Stöckel, and supplied to Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1786. Guillaume Benneman was one of Marie-Antoinette’s preferred makers. He created splendid furniture during the final years of the Ancien Régime for the Château de Versailles, the Palais des Tuileries and the Château Saint-Cloud for prestigious clients including Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and the comte de Provence. The pair of commodes he created for Marie-Antoinette, the inspiration for the present example, was part of a series of eight which were ultimately transformed through a complex and costly process from a group of four begun by Joseph Stöckel. The pair at Fontainebleau were originally destined for Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom at the Château de Compiègne, and later placed in her salon des jeux at the Château de Fontainebleau, a splendid room of superlative neo-classical design with wall panels painted with delicate arabesques. The pair at Fontainebleau have jasperware roundels to the front and Sèvres floral plaques to the sides.

Object Details