Commissioned in the 1780s by the Duchess of Mazarin for the grand salon of her Parisian mansion, this is one of the very few pieces of eighteenth-century furniture made entirely in hard stone—in this case, a rare North African marble known in France as bleu turquin. Several significant artists in ancien-régime France collaborated to create this extraordinary object. The marble itself was supplied by and carved by Jacques Adan, after a design by the architect Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin, working under François-Joseph Bélanger. The gilt bronze is the work of Pierre Gouthière, celebrated chaser and gilder to the French court. His unmatched skills in this era are demonstrated in the fine head at the center, with its astounding effects of hair braided and free, as well as in the impeccable leaves and fruits that flicker along the table as if they were freshly picked and not made of metal. Gouthière treats the gold in different ways to create matte and shiny effects; the fruit, for example, was burnished to shine amid the matte foliage. The table was still in Gouthière’s workshop when his patron, the Duchess of Mazarin, died in 1781. It is unclear what happened to the table after this, and for whom Gouthière completed the intricate gilding and chasing on it. He was not paid for the work, a repeated misfortune that contributed to his financial ruin.
Side Table
This table was in the workshop of Gouthière (with the gilding yet to be completed), when the Duchess of Mazarin died on March 17,1781. What subsequently happened to it and for whom Gouthière finished it is not known, but it remains one of the artist’s masterpieces. The mask at the center of the entablature is one of the most beautiful faces ever created in gilt bronze. Its fine and perfectly regular features follow the classical canon then in fashion but are animated by a lively gaze, with eyes that look to the right under slightly lowered eyelids and a mouth that expresses a pensive self-confidence. Is it a young man or a beautiful woman? Gouthière’s invoice merely refers to a “head.” Bacchus immediately springs to mind, surrounded by ivy leaves, a living allegory of the Roman god’s eternal youth, and placed between two thyrsi; however, the braids and pearls suggest a female. Either way, the figure is deep in thought. The hair—a tour de force in itself—is wavy, rolled into curls and plaited into braids that intermingle with a pearl necklace and two ivy branches; this variety of texture was created in the original clay model and magnificently reworked during the chasing process. The ivy leaves, which curl around the two thyrsi that terminate in pinecones, are so naturalistic that they seem to be real specimens dipped in gold. They have a refinement, a daring design (with some leaves overlaying others), and a lightness achieved through dégraissage (a technique in which metal edges are thinned). The whole is matte gilded, with the exception of the fruit, which is burnished to play on the contrast between matte and shiny effects.
This work was included in the exhibition Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court.
Duchesse de Mazarin, Paris (d. 1781). Russian private collection (?). Alfred Morrison (d. 1897). Asher Wertheimer, London, c. 1893. Comte Boni de Castellane, Paris (1895). Charles Wertheimer, London. J. Pierpont Morgan, London and New York, 1900, bought from Wertheimer. Duveen. Frick, 1915.
Source: Furniture in The Frick Collection: French 18th- & 19th-Century Furniture (Pt. 2) & Gilt Bronzes. Volume VI. New York: The Frick Collection, 1992.
