Lot Essay
The arms are the Imperial arms of France with the initial "M" for Madame Mère", the mother of Napoleon I.
Born in Corsica in 1750, Letizia Ramolino married at the age of 14 Carlo Maria Bonaparte. During the Corsican uprisings of the 1760's, the Bonapartes eventually sided with the French and, following the death of her husband, she moved to France in 1793.
With the rise to power of her son Napoleon, she demanded and received imperial accord. She was eventually declared "Son Altesse Impériale, Madame, Mère de l'Empereur" and was awarded increasingly large pensions by her son, rising to an enormous one million francs a year by 1808. First living in the Grand Trianon, she later moved to a hotel on the rue du Mont-Blanc; then she bought the Hotel de Brienne in rue St. Dominique for 600,000 francs. She decorated her houses with a vast quantity of furniture, tapestries, antiques and other objects, including the magnificent silver-gilt service which she commissioned from Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot in 1806.
Despite her extravagant reputation Madame Mère was renowned at court for her frugality. Evidently the harsh life she had led in Corsica and her distrust of the empire itself had imbued in her the need to prepare for any possible outcome and indeed the discreet investments she had made enabled her, after the downfall of Napoleon, to keep herself and her family in the style to which they had become accustomed. Upon Napoleon's abdication following Waterloo, Madame Mère had moved to Rome where she remained until her death in 1836.
The archives of Maison Odiot indicate that the service, of which the present examples form part, was delivered on 11th November 1806.
Born in Corsica in 1750, Letizia Ramolino married at the age of 14 Carlo Maria Bonaparte. During the Corsican uprisings of the 1760's, the Bonapartes eventually sided with the French and, following the death of her husband, she moved to France in 1793.
With the rise to power of her son Napoleon, she demanded and received imperial accord. She was eventually declared "Son Altesse Impériale, Madame, Mère de l'Empereur" and was awarded increasingly large pensions by her son, rising to an enormous one million francs a year by 1808. First living in the Grand Trianon, she later moved to a hotel on the rue du Mont-Blanc; then she bought the Hotel de Brienne in rue St. Dominique for 600,000 francs. She decorated her houses with a vast quantity of furniture, tapestries, antiques and other objects, including the magnificent silver-gilt service which she commissioned from Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot in 1806.
Despite her extravagant reputation Madame Mère was renowned at court for her frugality. Evidently the harsh life she had led in Corsica and her distrust of the empire itself had imbued in her the need to prepare for any possible outcome and indeed the discreet investments she had made enabled her, after the downfall of Napoleon, to keep herself and her family in the style to which they had become accustomed. Upon Napoleon's abdication following Waterloo, Madame Mère had moved to Rome where she remained until her death in 1836.
The archives of Maison Odiot indicate that the service, of which the present examples form part, was delivered on 11th November 1806.