Commode
Jean Henri Riesener
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The front is formed by a single wide drawer across the top above two front doors, which open to reveal a cupboard divided by a shelf. The breakfront design is treated so as to give the illusion that the central section is superimposed over the front. The projecting central section on the doors is framed as a single panel with a gilt-bronze molding chased with water leaves, indented at the corners to accommodate four rosettes (modern replacements); the same framing on the flanking areas ends at the edges of the projecting panel as though it continued behind it. The drawer is similarly designed. Riesener employed the breakfront throughout his career and repeated this particular treatment of it with variations on a number of commodes, corner cupboards, and secretaries from about 1780 to 1790 (examples are in the Louvre, Versailles, Waddesdon Manor, the Wallace Collection, London, the Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu). The escutcheon mounts in the form of a female head framed by wreaths and bows, the apron mount with acanthus leaves and an acorn, the corner mounts of flowers modeled in high relief and tied by bows, and the mounts on the tapered legs with overlapping foliage are found on a number of other pieces by Riesener dating from the same decade. The use of the concave frieze is unusual in his work.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.