CIRCA 1816

The box, celebrating the 1815 peace treaty following Emperor Napolean's defeat by the Holy Alliance at Waterloo, displays a print of the commemorative obelisk erected that year by Francis I of Austria (d.1835) in the Franzensberg Gardens overlooking the Moravian Plain at Brünn near Vienna. The engraving, likely to have been made from a watercolour by Balthazar Wigand (d.1846), is framed by festive bas-relief bronze trophies of palms and laurels designed in the antique manner popularised by C.Percier and P.F.L. Fontaine's, Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, Paris, 1812; while its handles comprise entwined Apollonian serpents clasping sunflowered paterae. Such bronze reliefs were typical of the manufactures of the Vienna-trained sculptor Josef Ulrich Danhauser (d.1829), whose manufactory of bronze ornaments, founded in 1804, was granted an imperial licence to execute all forms of furniture in 1814. Amongst the leading Viennese retailers of such decorative boxes were Stephan Syré in the Kohlmarkt, and the Huguenot Nicolas Rozet, whose premises, established in 1770, made reference to Apollo's Mt. Parnassus role as leader of the Muses of Artistic Inspiration, being titled, 'The Nine Muses'.