This serpentined commode, with its golden filigree or arabesque veneer of shell-inlaid brass embellished with nymph-masks and its sarcophagus-scrolled angles terminating in satyr-feet, relates to commode patterns invented by André-Charles Boulle (d. 1732) ébéniste, sculpteur, ciseleur et doreur du Roi and published in Mariette's folio of Boulle's engraved designs, 1707-30. The tablet inlaid in the top incorporates a vignette celebrating Venus's triumph and derives, in reverse, from an engraving published about 1700 by Jean Bérain (d. 1711), who became Louis XIV's official designer in 1674 on succeeding as Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi (illustrated in C. Gilbert, John Channon, London, 1993, fig. 134). The Nature Goddess, flanked by feather-dressed natives with musical instruments, is attended by apes and framed within a triumphal-arched cartouche and a flowered border incorporating her shell-badges, birds and insects together with nymph and satyr-nymph masks as appear on the drawers.

A commode of virtually indentical form, although with more elaborate horizontal divisions between the drawers, is in the collection of the Prince de Ligne at the château de Beloeil (S. de Ricci, Louis XIV et Régence, Paris, 1929, p.122), while a commode with the same tablet patterns on its top and drawers, previously in the collection of the Earls of Craven at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire was sold by the Executors of the late Lady de Trafford in these Rooms, 3 March 1994, lot 162. Another closely related commode, but with a huntress replacing Venus, was purchased in Paris in the early 19th Century by William Kirkpatrick (sold by Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Bredin, Christie's house sale at Donacomper, Ireland, 25 July 1977, lot 75)