REICH GESCHNITZTES DEUX CORPS Renaissance, France,... Lot 1011

REICH GESCHNITZTES DEUX CORPS Renaissance, France, Burgundy or Rhône Valley c. 1600. Walnut richly and finely carved with lion heads, fruits and leaf festoons, partly held by hands, palmettes and rosettes, hunting scenes and eagles. Rectangular corpus with slightly projecting straight cornice on straight profiled frame and square feet. Front with double-door upper part over two drawers and double-door lower part. The four door panels with depictions of four emperors on horseback in front of city views. Inscribed Nero Augustus, Avi Vitellus Augustus, Tiberius Cesar, Claudius Caes. Iron mountings. 3 keys. 152 × 64 × 190 cm. Minor additions and missing parts. The cabinet stands in a series of several French built-up cabinets which take up the theme of ancient heroes, in many cases the Roman Caesars as well as other rulers. The theme goes back, among other things, to the strong reception at the time of Sueton's books on Lives of the Caesars (De vita Caesarum), which was translated several times in new editions in the second half of the 18th century and illustrated by series of engravings by Philppe Gall, Nicolas de Bruyn, Hubert Goltzius and others. It may be assumed that the depictions of the Caesars on this cabinet also go back to engravings. (Cf. Thirion Jacques. Les cavaliers de l'histoire ancienne dans le cécor du mobilier de la Renaissance. In: Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, 1967. pp. 171-185.) A cabinet very similar in decoration from the Bruno Perrier collection, attributed to a studio in Avignon circa 1610-20, was sold at auction by Ader Tajan Paris, 6 April 1992 under catalogue number 46. A cabinet from Lyon, which is much simpler in form and shows the motif of the rulers on the door cassettes in somewhat varied form, is in the Museum für angewandte Kunst Cologne. Cf. Edla Colsman. Furniture. Gothic to Art Nouveau. Cologne 1999. no. 54, p. 98. Other comparable cabinets in: Édith Mannoni. Mobilier Provençal. Paris 1995. p. 19 and 20.