Warming Dish, from a Service Made for Pauline Bonaparte and Prince Camillo Borghese
Martin-Guillaume Biennais
1794–1819
- Medium
- Gilded silver and gilded copper
- Dimensions
- 27.9 × 20.3 cm (11 × 8 in.); 27.4 × 27.4 × 25.1 cm (10 3/4 × 10 3/4 × 9 7/8 in.)
- Genre
- dish (vessel)
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Styles
Tags
metalworkBorghese Serviceeuropean decorative artsrepousséchasingsilverdiningnapoleonicappliqué (technique)dish (vessel)Napoleonempireinorganic materialnonferrous metalsilver giltmetalworkingvermeilNeoclassicismgildingmetal
About
These objects for the dining table are part of a vast service made for Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister Pauline on the occasion of her marriage to the Roman nobleman Camillo Borghese, Sixth Prince of Sulmona. In the years after the French Revolution, architects and designers adopted the visual language of ancient Greece and Rome to express the new imperial order. Napoleon, hoping to promote Paris’s luxury trades, commissioned several silver dinner services as gifts to be sent abroad. The slender outlines and smooth surfaces of the vessels in the Borghese service contrast with the rich decoration.
