BED OF REST in mahogany, mahogany veneer,... - Lot 232 - Osenat

BED OF REST in mahogany, mahogany veneer, with slightly overturned bedsides called "en crosse" adorned with a double turned baluster detached carved with water leaves, the "board" carved with a medallion with a mascaron with a medusa head, in the frame of a rhombus with small rosettes and umbrella patterns at the ends and in the lower part of the laminae patterns reminiscent of the borders of ancient armor. The "flasks" are decorated with winged ghosts with a scroll in their gules ending in a succession of palmettes. The right front molded belt has a central rounded recess decorated with a Gorgon mask. It rests on four hocked legs ending in lion claws. Attributed to Molitor 1800-1807 The frame upholstery H: 90 W: 210 D: 80 cm (restorations, small accidents and wear) The architecture and the carved decoration of this bed of rest are inspired by Antiquity and characteristic of the production of Bernard Molitor from the end of the 18th century. The decorative repertoire, the lightness of the lines, the great finesse of execution, are perhaps the result of a collaboration between Molitor and the carpenter Demay. The latter was one of Molitor's suppliers in 1796, and a curved armchair stamped Demay (inv.MB 289), kept at the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, has winged griffin motifs similar to those of Molitor. Over the centuries, "returns to antiquity" have periodically multiplied, but the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 1750s, as well as the publications of the works of Count Caylus in France, Piranesi in Italy, James Stuart in England and Winckelman in Germany, have accentuated the interest in the civilizations and decorations of ancient Rome. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc and the architects Charles Percier and Pierre-Léonard Fontaine were true ambassadors of this stylistic evolution: "One would flatter oneself in vain to find forms preferable to those that the ancients have transmitted to us "1 is one of the five essential points recounted in the preface of the "Collection of Interior Decorations", a true spiritual manifesto. Bernard Molitor benefits from the in-depth study of Ulrich Leben 2. In his work listing the resting beds, only two are stamped3 1 -Percier and Fontaine, Recueil de décorations intérieures, 1812, in préliminaire p. 13. 2 - Ulrich Leben, Molitor, Ebéniste de Louis XVI à Louis XVIII, Paris, 1992, pp. 173-174. 3 - Op. cit. P: 204.