Flat Desk Inlaid With Rosewood And Amaranth

Flat desk inlaid with rosewood and amaranth resting on four large sheathed legs decorated with garlands of laurel and flowers at the four corners. It opens in a belt with three lockable drawers decorated with Greek friezes. The top of the desk is covered in leather and surrounded by a gilded bronze ingot mold. Two writing tablets open on either side of the piece of furniture. In the taste of Philippe Claude Montigny First half of the 19th century Usual restorations H. 75 x W. 145 x D. 81 cm This flat desk with majestic dimensions can be compared to the production of the cabinetmaker Philippe-Claude Montigny, who left many neoclassical offices like ours. Philippe-Claude Montigny, son of a privileged worker from the Faubourg Saint Antoine, was made a master himself in 1766. He first worked in his youth on the restoration of numerous pieces of furniture in Boulle marquetry, when it was once again becoming a the fashion. He notably restored the Crown medals. But he also became known for his Greek taste, brought back into fashion by the discovery of the sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii in 1738 and 1748. As Cochin argued in his "petition to the goldsmiths", published in 1756 to his Returning from a trip to Italy, the flamboyant Rocaille, all its curves and counter-curves, was beginning to tire the eye, even to go out of fashion. Its detractors called for a return of “great taste”, with straight lines and imposing forms highlighted under Louis XIV. The office of Lallive de Jully (1758), visible at the Condé museum in Chantilly, is considered today as the manifesto of this neo-Greek taste, still in its infancy, but very quickly adopted by a learned elite thirsting for renewal. We therefore encounter the appearance of an ornamental vocabulary which takes up the classic style as it is presented on our flat desk: scalloped garlands, ribbons, sheathed feet... Our office is particularly close to one of Montigny's offices, past on sale at Sotheby's on July 4, 2012 in London under number 22. We can firstly observe the same general structure of the piece of furniture, with on the front the recess between the side drawers and the central drawer. We also find the same Greek friezes. The Count of Salverte also presents, in the appendix to his dictionary of 18th century cabinetmakers, their works and their brands (edition François de Nobele, 1962), a desk with a disturbing similarity to ours (Plate XLIX), coming from the The former collection of Madame la Baronne de Caix, then the famous Cognacq collection.