With its 'herm' pilaster legs and veneered tablets of exotic specimen woods with marbled figuring banded by mosaic-ribbon inlay, this table is designed in the Louis XVI 'antique' manner. The ingenious sliding top, accompanying the bureau drawer, is inlaid with perspectival fretted ribbon and is centred by an oval mythological medallion depicting the lion's-pelt-draped Hercules resting after his labours upon a rockwork throne. The discarded plough at his feet almost certainly alludes to Hercules' successful capture of the oxen of Geryon, after slaying a two-headed dog, the giant, and Geryon himself. The characteristic geometric linearity, the use of exotic specimen and especially burr-wood veneers, as well as the deep, tablet-enriched frieze and the profile of the legs relates this writing-table to the oeuvre of the Turinese architect and intarsiati Ignazio Revelli (d.1836). A related writing-table with a similar, reversed oval medallion depicting Hercules, is illustrated in G. Morazzoni, Il Mobile NeoClassico Italiano, Milan 1955, tav. XCII