Side table

Best known as Louis XlV’s court painter, Charles Le Brun was also a gifted designer of decorative arts.

Between 1683 and 1687, a number of Le Brun’s sketches for items of furniture were executed in solid silver and supplied to the Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors) at the Palace of Versailles.

In 1689, needing funds to pay his troops, Louis had these marvels of craftsmanship melted down; they yielded about 20,000 tons of silver bullion attesting to the immense quantity of these extraordinary items. Before they were destroyed however, elements of their shapes and decoration were adapted to less valuable materials such as gilt-bronze and wood.

With its winged caryatid figures, this gilded oak table which dates to ca. 1690, resembles one shown in an etching of the Galerie des Glaces, and it is likely a later and humbler version of a piece originally made of solid silver.