Lot Essay
These remarkable throne chairs, of exaggerated form with richly cast mounts of antique scrolling rinceau foliage and paterae, typify the individual and bold interpretation of the international neoclassical vocabulary by South German cabinet-makers and designers in the 1770's and 1780's based in cities such as Augsburg and Wurzburg. Designs for closely related chairs by Jean-Francois de Neufforge appear in his Recueil élémentaire d'architecture, 1768. The large scale paterae heading the legs derive from the ceiling of the sun God Apollo's temple in Palmyra which had been published by Robert Woods in his widely available Ruins of Palmyra, 1753, while similar scrolling foliage appears in the influential designer Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Diversi Maniere di adornare cammini, 1769, p. 31. Related suites of seat furniture in the Wurzburg Residenz by Balthasar Herrman and Johann Peter Wagner are illustrated in H. Kriesel, Die Kunst des Deutschen Möbels, 1973, vol. III, figs. 211-212, while a design for a settee with similar inset oval back, boldy scrolling arms and tapering reeded legs headed with paterae, by Karl August Grossman, Augsburg, is illustrated op. cit., fig. 248. A pair of giltwood side chairs of similar inspiration, originally at Schloss Regensburg, was offered in these Rooms, 21 November 1984, lot 206- an armchair from the suite is illustrated in Kriesel op. cit., fig. 217.