6 Dishes, Model By François-thomas Germain For The King Of Portugal, Silver

Sumptuous series of six Transition style plates in sterling silver of the first title, engraved with laurel branches and decorated with scrolls, flowers and foliage. They are hallmarked with the Portuguese guarantee mark and the boutique brand of the jeweler Mergulhao in Lisbon. There are traces of vermeil. They probably date from the twentieth century. Interesting detail: they are the exact replica of the plates that the flamboyant Parisian goldsmith Francois-Thomas Germain made in 1759 for the King of Portugal and which are today in the National Museum in Lisbon. The Portuguese rulers were very good clients of the Germain dynasty of goldsmiths. It is thanks to their sumptuous orders and those of Catherine II of Russia , who survived revolutions and other wars, that we can today try to imagine what was th immensetreasure of gold and silver at display in the royal château of Versaiilles before the devastating French Revolution . The Hermitage museum in Saint-Pétersburg has a preparatory drawing of these dishes which also indicates the price of the fabrication : seventy-five pounds excluding the price of the precious metal. His dazzling success with the European reigning houses did not prevent our "ordinary goldsmith (but megalomaniac and spendthrift all the same) of the king" from causing one of the biggest bankruptcies of the reign of Louis XV and from being ejected from the Louvre by the intendant. The plates weigh 3000 grams for the six.