Offered by Franck Baptiste Paris
Rare “half-moon” shaped console in gilded oak wood.
It features two uprights in the shape of terms ending in caryatids with busts of goddesses dressed and draped in the antique style.
The four faces of the pilasters finely carved with olive branches.
The uprights are connected together by a crosspiece at the top and a spacer at the bottom.
The crosspiece is richly decorated with a triple row of sculpture, a delicately openwork frieze of intertwined eggs, framed by a frieze of pearls and a frieze of eggs and darts.
In the lower part, a large spacer is connected to the end dice of the terms.
Hexagonal in shape, it is finely carved with a frieze of interlacing and a frieze of stripes of hearts on the front side and two olive branches on the upper parts.
In the center is placed a very beautiful cassolette which lets the sacred fire escape, in a "shuttle" shape, it displays a very beautiful antique decoration of base of palmettes, laurel tori and ram's heads.
The whole thing rests on four spinning top legs.
Original Turquin blue marble top, with a beautiful Greek cutout which follows the lines of the console.
Very good state of conservation, great finesse of the sculpture, very fresh original gilding.
Parisian work from the Louis XVI period around 1785-1790, probably by Georges Jacob or Jean Baptiste Claude Sené after a drawing by the ornamentalist Jean Louis Prieur.
Dimensions:
Width: 129.5 cm; Height: 88 cm; Depth: 48 cm
Our opinion :
The console that we are presenting is characteristic of the latest fashion in force in Paris during the reign of Louis XVI.
This pure neoclassical style, with antique figures, is found in particular on the orders placed by the royal family at the dawn of the revolution, in the years 1785-1789.
The most beautiful example is the living room furniture delivered by Jean Baptiste Sené for the interior cabinet of Queen Marie-Antoinette; it presents draped caryatids which support the armrests and terms with sculptures very similar to those of our console.
A royal console project by the ornamentalist Jean Louis Prieur (1732-1795) is kept at the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts (inv. 8529), it also features similar caryatids.
Only a restricted circle, made up of the king's family and his brothers the Counts of Provence and Artois, gave in to this ephemeral fashion which experienced great popularity before being stopped dead by the revolution.
This will not allow the usual progression of a new fashion which passes through the royal family, then through orders from followers from the elite of the Parisian nobility before a more massive diffusion throughout the kingdom.
Because of its very decorative character, this fashion will return once the turpitudes of the revolution have passed, with directoire or empire consoles with stricter shapes, dark woods and black marbles which will be light years away from the opulence of the the old regime and its profusion of sculptures.
The finesse of an openwork sculpture in very hard oak wood and the presence of iron plates designed to avoid any deformation, are characteristics that we will find on the most precious seats made by Georges Jacob and Jean Baptiste Claude SENÉ.
It is very likely that our console was made by one of its two craftsmen, before joining the workshop of Louis-François Chatard, the famous gilder of the furniture storage.
Our console which is in very good condition and particularly decorative and constitutes in our eyes a museum piece of the greatest rarity.
