A NAPOLEON III EBONISED AND BRASS MOUNTED SIDE CABINET

The cabinet, with Pompeian columnar corners, displays a flowered tablet with boulle-fashioned brass inlay framing a bas-relief of a vestal sacrificing at an altar. It is surmounted by a frieze tablet of an heroic subject in the late 18th century fashion popularised by the artist Jean-Guillaume Moitte (d.1810). The Roman acanthus bas-relief cartouche displayed on it's lambrequined apron corresponds to a pattern adopted in the 1770's by the court-maker and revived on the boulle-inspired furniture manufactured in the mid-19th century by ebenistes such as Mathieu Befort.