This lady's fall-front secretaire bonheur-du-jour, with its galleried cornice and corner-shelves, derives from a French prototype of the 1770's. With its restrained antique ornament and superbly figured mahogany facade (comprising a single veneer panel) it typifies the style created by David Roentgen (d.1807) of Neuweid, following the opening of his Paris establishment in 1780 and appointment as Ebèniste Mecanicien to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. With its flower-festooned bas-relief medallion, framed by fluted pilasters above hermed feet, it relates to his celebrated Apollo desk (1783), acquired by Empress Catherine II of Russia (d.1796), and other furniture sent to St. Petersburg at this time, such as the desk, bearing a medallion of Plato (1786) (see J.M. Greber, Abraham and David Roentgen, Munich, 1980, vol. 2, figs. 656 and 670). Its poetic medallion, which celebrates virtuous study and depicts a youthful genius gaining inspiration from ancient authors while a cockerel heralds the dawn, features on a Doric-style desk commissioned by the Empress in 1784 (ill. op. cit. 658). A closely related secretaire, lacking a medallion but with the patera-enriched frieze, pearl-wreathed fall, and mille-raies-striated tablets, is displayed at Pavlovsk Palace, near St. Petersburg (ill. fig. op. cit. 527). This secretaire, was manufactured at a time that Roentgen was recognised as the leading cabinet-maker mechanic of his century, and very likely formed part of the enormous commission for his furniture made by Catherine the Great in the mid 1780's.