Wall elevation, designed in the Louis XV picturesque style, for a bed alcove for Empress Catherine II, 'Catherine the Great', of Russia (d.1796) and likely to have been executed soon after her succession in 1762. The bed, richly curtained and with tassled-lambrequin drapery, is set in a serpentine-arched recess with scrolls and flower-garlands and displaying the Empress' ensigned EII cypher. The bed's foot-board, as well as the flanking pilasters, doors and their architraves, are enriched with flowers and acanthus- scrolled cartouches incorporating Venus' scallop-shell badge. The overdoors centered by flower-wreathed, garlanded and flower- filled trumpet vases; and the pilasters centered by oval portrait medallions. The latter closely follow a design by the Parisian architect Charles-Etienne Briseaux (d.1754), published in his L'Art de batir des maisons de campagne, 1743. It was engraved by Pierre Edme Babel, who was active as a wood carver before his appointment as Directeur Garde of the Academie de Saint-Luc in 1755