Lot Essay
This elegant bombé commode was executed in the Danish rococo style of the 1760s and is closely related to the oeuvre of the successful cabinet-maker Mathias Ortmann, who worked in Copenhagen between 1733 and 1757. A similar commode, bearing Ortmann's workshop stamp, is in the Kunstindustrimuseet in Copenhagen and is illustrated in H. Kreisel G. Himmelheber, Die Kunst des Deutschen Möbels, München, 1970, Vol. II, fig. 853. A pair of related commodes, of similar outline, drawer-arrangement, and with the same characteristic parcel-gilt decoration, was part of the elegant furnishings of the Prinsens Palae, the residence of Statsminister Ove Hoegh Guldberg (1731-1808), and appear in a painting by Wilhelm Haffner (1782). (T. Clemmensen, Danske interiortegninger fra rococo til klunketid, Copenhagen, 1951, p. 20).