CIRCA 1775

This impressive commode, with its distinctive inlay of severe geometric parquetry and architectural capricci influenced by the work of the celebrated Roman engraver and designer Giovanni Battista Piranesi, belongs to a group of secretaires and commodes executed in the 1770s with similar marquetry subjects. According to Geoffrey de Bellaigue, the pictorial and architectural marquetry panels on these pieces appear to have been made by one or a group of specialty marqueteurs who supplied furniture to Parisian marchands-merciers and ébénistes, including Jacques van Oostenrik, dit Dautriche, Pierre Denizot, Léonard Boudin, Pierre Roussel, Pierre Macret, Martin Ohneberg, Nicolas Petit, Charles Topino, Christophe Wolff and André Louis Gilbert. (See G. de Bellaigue, 'Engravings and the French Eighteenth Century Marqueteur', Burlington Magazine, May 1965, pp. 240 - 250 and July 1965, pp. 356 - 363, and 'Ruins in Marquetry', Apollo, January, 1968, pp.12-16).
Interestingly the proportions and dimensions of this commode are almost identical to an important group of demilune commodes by Charles Topino (maître in 1773), including a pair in the collection of Enid Haupt, New York, subsequently sold Christie's, London, 7 July 2011, lot 47 (£289,250).