Lot Essay
The golden fire-dog 'chenets' are conceived in the Grecian fashion promoted by Rome-trained architects such as Jean Charles Delafosse (d.1789), and evoke the festive harvest season of Autumn with their display of Love's tazza-bearing bacchic youths. Borne on wave-scrolled and acanthus-wrapped trusses that issue from enflamed cassolettes, they are supported on altar-pedestals enriched with flowered Doric metopes.