The French-fashioned ink-stand of tortoiseshell with arabesque boulle inlay, has its 'cut' corners guarded by recumbent Egyptian bronze Apis bulls derived from the celebrated antiquity in the Vatican's 'Room of the Animals'. They reflect the antique fashion popularised by G. B. Piranesi's Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini, Rome, 1769. Related caryatic bulls feature on a Piranesian bronze and marble centre-piece executed in 1811 by the Rome bronze-founders F. and L. Righetti (A. Gonzalez-Palacios, Il Gusto dei Principi, vol II, Milan, 1993, fig. 536).