Neo-renaissance Jewelry Box In Gilded Bronze, France, Second Empire

A rectangular gilt-bronze jewelry box with an architectural silhouette directly inherited from the canopies and canopies of the Italian Renaissance. The lid, with its four-sided hipped roof, evokes the dome of a canopy or miniature temple. The body of the box rests on a molded base with grooves and beaded friezes, and is organized into architectural facades: fluted pilasters delineate bays sheltering, beneath semicircular arches, figures in the round such as putti, mythological or allegorical characters, rendered with a casting delicacy that betrays the hand of a skilled Parisian workshop. The sloping sides of the lid are entirely decorated with arabesques, scrolling foliage, and engraved cartouches, enlivened by leaves, chimeras, and foliate motifs in high relief, while a frieze of gadroons and foliate scrolls provides the transition between the lid and the body. The corners are decorated with brackets in an ornamental style that draws heavily on 16th-century French and Italian motifs: fruit swags, cut leather, mascarons, egg-and-dart molding, and pearls. The warm and generous gilding highlights the chasing and lends the object the monumentality of a miniature building. The box is lined with purple velvet. Key and lock included.

Size: H 15cm x W 25cm x D 14cm

Parisian work, Second Empire.

Lit: This beautiful box is from the Parisian production of the Second Empire (1852–1870), a period which saw the apogee of the historicist gilt bronze art object, in the direct line of the great Parisian founders and gilders such as Barbedienne, Tahan or Christofle, who then produced for the upper middle class and the imperial court architectural boxes and cases combining mastery of casting, the finesse of chasing and the quality of mercury gilding.