Sauceboat and Stand (one of a pair), from a Service Made for Pauline Bonaparte and Prince Camillo Borghese
Martin-Guillaume Biennais (Probably designed after Charles Percier (French, 1764-1838) and ; Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (French,…)
1794–1819
- Medium
- Gilded silver
- Classification
- Metalwork
- Dimensions
- 28.6 × 25.4 × 17.2 cm (11 1/4 × 10 × 6 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Paris
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Applied Arts of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Charles V. Hickox
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This sauceboat and stand is part of a vast service made for Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister Pauline on the occasion of her marriage to the Roman nobleman Camillo Borghese, Sixth Prince of Sulmona.
In the years after the French Revolution, architects and designers adopted the visual language of ancient Greece and Rome to express the new imperial order. Napoleon, hoping to promote Paris’s luxury trades, commissioned several silver dinner services as gifts to be sent abroad. The slender outlines and smooth surfaces of the vessels in the Borghese service contrast with the rich decoration.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
