The celebrated politician Claude-Antoine-Gabriel, duc de Choiseuil, was a leading figure in the Chambre du Paris during the Restauration. An ardent supporter of Louis XVI, he frequently endangered himself in pursuit of the Royalist cause and indeed, was arrested for assisting in Louis XVI's flight in 1791. A governor of the Louvre, Choiseuil maintained his Royalist links right up to the end of his life, becoming aide-de-camp to King Louis-Philippe upon that monarch's succession.

The altar-tripod stand's columnar shaft is supported by voluted and foliated brackets, that are bound at the neck by a flowered ribbon-band. Its Grecian stepped plinth is supported in the arabesque style by 'bacchic' lion feet emerging from voluted acanthus scrolls, as found on antique bronze candelabra.

This ornament is typical of the robust antique style of the 1820's popularised by fondeur-ciseleurs such as Thomire et Cie and Denière that evolved from C.Percier and P.Fontaine's, Receuil de Decorations Interieures, 1801

The Florentine slab, with its vases all Etrusca in the antique manner, relates to the oeuvre of the 'designer and arranger of stones' Antonio Cioci, who succeeded Giusseppe Zocchi in 1771 (see A.M.Giusti, 'Pietre Dure', London 1992, pls. 58-60). This style was in turn popularised in the first two decades of the 19th Century by Carlo Carlieri and it is probable that this slab dates from Carlieri's tenure at the Grand Ducal workshop (see Giusti, op.cit. fig. 37).