Lot Essay
This bureau's 'cartonnier'-cabinet, with central tabernacle compartments flanked by a recessed nest of drawers, has its frieze and pilasters inlaid in première and contre-partie pewter arabesques in the Louis XIV manner popularised by Jean Bérain (d. 1711). Government is personified on the tabernacle door by a female figure seated on a laurel-festooned throne and supported by a lion, emblematic of Fortitude. She bears a sceptre above a globe, while an eagle bears a lambrequined canopy overhead. The accompanying 'tablet' displays a triumphal palm-and-laurel wreathed trophy incorportating the eye of Divine Wisdom framed by emblematical virtues of Good Government. Symbols of the Church are inlaid between laurel-enriched acanthus on the drawers to the left, while those to the right signify a flourishing State with the fasces of Good Government framed by Trade, represented by Mercury's emblems and aquatic cornucopiae, and accompanied by a trophy of the Cardinal Arts.
The central figure relates to that of a cornucopiae-festooned writing-cabinet exhibited by the Antwerp cabinet-maker Hendrik van Soest at a lottery held in the city's bourse in 1695, while the emblematical ornament on the main drawers and the central door is nearly identical to that on van Soest's design of 1700 in the Landeshauptarchiv, Koblenz, for a related seven foot high bureau-cabinet which was executed for the Elector Johann Hugo von Orsbeck. The Orsbeck pewter-inlaid tortoiseshell cabinet was formerly at Schloss Stolzenfells (R. Fabri, Meubles d'Appartat des Pays-Bas Meridionaux, Brussels, 1989 pp. 39-41 and 55). Versions of a slightly later type, which are generally lower and with to two drawers, were sold from the collection of the Earl of Rosebery, Sotheby's house sale, 18 May 1977, lot 922, and anonymously at Christie's New York, 30 April 1986, lot 203, while a version of circa 1700 very close in style to this cabinet, was sold anonymously at J.L.Picard, Paris, 11 April 1995, lot 116.
The central figure relates to that of a cornucopiae-festooned writing-cabinet exhibited by the Antwerp cabinet-maker Hendrik van Soest at a lottery held in the city's bourse in 1695, while the emblematical ornament on the main drawers and the central door is nearly identical to that on van Soest's design of 1700 in the Landeshauptarchiv, Koblenz, for a related seven foot high bureau-cabinet which was executed for the Elector Johann Hugo von Orsbeck. The Orsbeck pewter-inlaid tortoiseshell cabinet was formerly at Schloss Stolzenfells (R. Fabri, Meubles d'Appartat des Pays-Bas Meridionaux, Brussels, 1989 pp. 39-41 and 55). Versions of a slightly later type, which are generally lower and with to two drawers, were sold from the collection of the Earl of Rosebery, Sotheby's house sale, 18 May 1977, lot 922, and anonymously at Christie's New York, 30 April 1986, lot 203, while a version of circa 1700 very close in style to this cabinet, was sold anonymously at J.L.Picard, Paris, 11 April 1995, lot 116.