Bedeutendes Bureau Plat

Height: 80 cm. Width: 162 cm. Depth: 82 cm. Attributed to François Lieutaud, for the merchant Noël Gérard. Paris, around 1725 - 1730. Interior of the drawers in walnut, body in fir wood. This rare, demountable writing desk has ebony veneer and ebonized wood inlaid with brass threads. It has three drawers at the front: two elongated drawers on the sides and a large, trapezoidal drawer in the middle. Each drawer has a bronze frame with plant friezes; the side drawers have handles with laurel wreaths, acanthus roses and keyhole decorations in the shape of lion heads; the central drawer has an openwork palmette as a keyhole decoration. The back is decorated with an identical pattern simulating three drawers. The four curved legs end in acanthus-shaped sabots and are fitted with corner fittings and distinctive masquerons at the upper ends. The curved drawer sides are highlighted with double brass inlay, forming "C" shapes, decorated with bronze godrons with floral friezes that follow the cut of the drawers and act as a divider to the center drawer. The central part of the sides is decorated with an important bronze figure symbolizing astronomy, showing a goddess leaning on a star-studded sphere and holding a compass in her hand. The top is covered in brown gold-punched leather and framed by a bronze strip with double tendrils. The desk can be completely dismantled thanks to an ingenious system. The original bronzes were probably originally only lacquered, as in Munich, and are now fire-gilded. Our desk is part of a small corpus of around ten pieces with identical bronze decor and shape. Two of these desks are in German collections and are stamped "FL" for François Lieutaud, dated around the same time and have almost never been moved. The first, which is kept in the Ansbach Residence, was delivered in 1729 for the Margraves of Brandenburg; the second, which is mentioned in the first inventory of the Munich Residence Palace in 1759, was probably ordered when Charles VII inherited Bavaria after the death of his father in 1726. In addition to the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, this model also attracted high dignitaries from the Kingdom of France. The desk in the library of the Arsenal and two other desks with the stamps of the National Assembly came from national collections and were probably sold during the Revolution. The success of this model is due to two main reasons: firstly, the personality of François Lieutaud, who became the most respected ébénist in the kingdom after the death of André Charles Boulle in 1719. He was granted the rare privilege of casting his own bronzes by King Louis XIV; he therefore made his own wax models and kept the molds. He created some of the most beautiful furniture in the kingdom and it is therefore understandable that he received many commissions. Secondly, the creativity he shows in this desk, with powerful bronzes and a light line that is the quintessence of the Régence style. Some innovative details, such as the absence of a frame in the middle, the shape of the drawers or the key system, testify to the exceptional nature of this model. A desk of this type, which is kept in the Toledo Museum of Art and bears the stamp "NG", shows that Lieutaud marketed this type of desk through Noël Gérard. Gérard was both a cabinetmaker and a dealer and worked under the name "au cabinet d'Allemagne" from 1719 to 1722 before taking over the "magasin général", which was the center of the luxury goods trade in Paris until his death in 1736. His clientele included many crowned heads and princes of the Holy Roman Empire, which supports this hypothesis, as does the key system, which allowed for easy disassembly and thus facilitated long-distance delivery. The body of the ten or so desks is quite homogeneous in shape and decoration and ranges in size from five king's paws (162 cm) to six and a half (211 cm). Each desk is unique; some lack the bronze frames of the drawers, others have them only as slatted hinges. Our desk is one of the richly decorated ones and is stylistically similar to the desk of Emperor Charles VII, which is kept in Munich. The beauty and stylistic purity of our desk undoubtedly places it on the podium of the most beautiful French desks of the 18th century. With a body of around ten examples, half of which are kept in renowned museums, it is extremely rare on the market. Comparison