French Giltwood Console - Louis XVI style before Louis XVI

Very rare and sumptuous "à la grecque" console in carved and gilt wood, of semi-circular form

The belt :
First of all, it presents the visual of a magisterial openwork decorated with a double frieze of Greek inscribed in the structure of the belt. The fineness of the carved decoration of this frame: a first entourage carved with ropes followed by a light flat, before a surroundings of perlettes, contrasts with the geometrical Greek supported by billets and the lightness of its openings. Underneath the marble, the overflowing perimeter is quarter-round. The junction with the lateral parts shows the powerful sculpture of a stylized lion muffle and the fleece of its collar, which protrudes vertically and rhythmically.

The amounts :
We are surprised by the aerial grace, the elegance, the purity, and the majesty of their arched design. They refined slightly before joining the base by a large connecting dice with flower of helianthe. Their decoration is a play of very fine sculptures of piastres in front, surrounded by two ribbon suites. On the sides, rows of fine pearls and pearls alternating with calm spaces form a decoration of great refinement.

The base: Semicircular.
The pearl entablature base supports a magnificent tripartite sculpture of thick, curved acanthus foliage in line with the uprights. This decoration receives the facade of the pedestal whose sculpture of fine flowers in interlaced braids meets the delicate decor of the uprights. It can be noted that all the sculptures are arranged according to a vertical central axis (symmetry).

- White marble veined with cavet of origin
- Good state of conservation
- Provisional takeovers with gilding

Dimensions:
Height: 88 cm
Width: 114 cm
Depth: 54 cm

This console is rare.

It is a historical witness to the evolution of the decorative arts "of a new French style": the Louis XVI style before Louis XVI.

It was designed in the time of Louis XV in opposition to the excesses of the curves and countercurves of the invading rocaille style.
It was therefore addressed to the avant-garde elite of the Decorative Arts after the discovery of the antiquities of Herculaneum "creating" neoclassicism: the new Louis XVI style.


The so-called "Greek movement", an avant-garde movement.

Under the impetus of modernists, architects, merchants and merchants, anxious to break away from a style that had become excessively overburdened and to advocate a more reasonable and balanced taste, Antiquity was proposed as a necessary reform of art.

When Madame Pompadour commissioned her brother, the future Marquis de Marigny, in the company of the architect Soufflot, the abbé Leblanc (amateur and art critic) and the painter Nicolas Cochin in Italy, their journey lasted more than 21 month. The resumption of excavations of the site of Herculaneum revealed to them a civilization as much by the architecture as by the art in general. This journey will be decisive for the evolution of taste in France '. Cochin wrote his book, the precursor of the origin of neoclassicism, on "The Observation on the Antiquities of Herculaneum, with some reflections on the painting and sculpture of the ancients," as well as his campaign published in 1754 in the Mercure or " Supplication to goldsmiths, chisellers, and woodcarvers ", a veritable manifestation of the rockery style.

Another key figure is the Count of Caylus, a freethinker, a great man of letters, an antiquary, a traveler, an "archeologist" and engraver who published his collection of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman and Roman antiquities between 1752 and 1765 Gauloises: a considerable success.

Let us also quote Count Lalive de Jully. When, in 1764, the "Historical Catalog" of this amateur's collection appeared, an important collection of works from French and foreign schools was discovered, but also a cabinet decorated with singularity, furnished with a new style in the antique at Greek taste. Indeed, as his portrait executed by Jean-Baptiste Greuze shows, he is discovered posing in front of a desk with unusual lines for his time, deliberately breaking with the fashionable rocaille style and still strongly rigorous at that time. This office, now exposed to the Château de Chantilly, introduces Greek taste, clean lines and architectural rigor.

It is the Louis XVI style before Louis XVI.