A RESTAURATION GILTWOOD BED

This impressive bed, with its elegant swan-supported headboard and fruiting-finial footboard, is closely modeled on the bed supplied to the Empress Josephine by François-Honoré Georges Jacob-Desmalter (1770-1841) for her bedroom at Malmaison. Josephine replaced the decoration of 1800 by Percier and Fontaine following her divorce in 1810, and the lush redecoration of the room by Louis Berthault in the form of a sixteen-sided tent bolstered her position as Empress, however precarious it was. Although this bed varies in the details of the decoration, the grandeur of the design closely follows the Malmaison example.