Enthroned in silver: silver furniture created for baroque courts makes a dazzling exhibition at Versailles

Apollo, Feb, 2008 by Philippa Glanville

Echoing, vast, virtually bare of furniture, the state apartments at Versailles are normally an oppressive experience. But this winter these grandiose, painted interiors are far more expressive, and even informative. Dressed with a spectacular assemblage of princely silver furniture, an enfilade of six salons, each with a different theme, evokes the world of the baroque court, while, in an effective partnership between Frederic Beauclair and Jacques Garcia, the lighting, and screened windows recall the shadowy glamour of Louis XVI's soirees d'appartement. The curatorial team for this ambitious project is led by Beatrix Saule, director of the Centre de recherche at Versailles, and Catherine Arminjon, with Gerard Mabille, Nies Knud Liebgott, director of Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen and Lorenz Seelig from the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum.

Lent from Moscow, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Munich, Cassel, Windsor, private collections and, above all, Rosenborg Castle, these glittering objects--fire-dogs, sconces, screens, statues, buffet dishes of a prodigious size, tables, mirrors, stands and even thrones--were made between the 1640s and about 1750. Most came from the silversmiths of Augsburg, the acknowledged European centre for exuberant display silver, although some pieces were made in court workshops in Copenhagen, London, Hanover and Hamburg. A rare and early example of French workmanship preserved outside France is the filigree mirror, table and stands--painted blue at least since the mid-18th century--that Frederick III, king of Denmark, bought in Paris in 1669. They are probably by the cabinetmaker Pierre Golle and the silversmith Jean Perigon, who had been assembling a group of filigree objects for the French king, building on his mother's collection.

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Essays in the catalogue discuss the origin of silver furniture in 16th-century Spain, such as a table supplied in 1548 for the marriage of the Infanta Maria to the Emperor Maximilian II, and illustrate two surviving early Spanish tables. Silver firedogs crowned with cupids are cited by Shakespeare in A Winter's Tale and an inventory of the apartments of James I'S queen, Anne of Denmark, fists sconces and other furnishings of silver. Silver plaques laid onto ebony created a colour contrast popular for furniture in Denmark, England and France half a century before the accession of Louis XIV. But the exhibition's main focus is the silver furniture of Louis XIV and his contemporaries and its role in the creation of magnificence; little attention is given to the colour shift from silver to gold, and the arrival of ormolu and gilded furniture, around 1700.

Discoveries have emerged, notably David Schwestermuller's silver and gilt table of 1659 with the Judgment of Paris (Fig. 3), apparently rejected by the Emperor Leopold I as unsuitable for a diplomatic gift to the Sultan, and so kept by the Viennese silver dealer-agent, and sold in 1665 to Paul, Count Esterhazy. Suites of silver sconces and fire-dogs commissioned in Augsburg for Forchenstein, the Esterhazy castle near Vienna, are a striking element. But the Danish crown has pride of place at Versailles with striking objects, including one of the three engaging silver lions--symbolising Solomon's judgment--that guard the throne in Rosenborg Castle (Fig. 1).

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Most of these objects were made to dress the semi-public life of the ruler, such as the great buffet, largely assembled from the plate of Augustus the Strong, in the Salon de Venus. An unusual pair of tables for keeping food hot, again made for the Danish crown, are a reminder of the fashion at northern courts for dining a l'Hermitage, that is, in privacy, without servants; the dishes were set in a tray over charcoal presumably, although this detail is not explained.

All these objects, whether solid silver, as with William III's table and mirror of 1698-99, or silver on a wooden core, as with the furniture from Hanover, are rare, having survived continental revolutions, melts and sales. In December 1689 Louis XIV decided to sacrifice his silver furniture--treasures inherited from his mother, Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin as well as newly-commissioned objects. All were melted, to fund his wars against William of Orange.

Virtually nothing survives of Louis's commissions (which were widely imitated elsewhere in Europe), apart from designs by Charles Le Brun and others and tapestries, also after designs by Charles Le Brun, depicting the furniture devised for Versailles (Fig. 2). Somewhat concealed behind a massive screen protecting the Gobelins tapestry in the Salon D'Hercule, these drawings, borrowed from the Kraemer collection in Paris, the Cronstedt and Tessin-Harleman collections in Stockholm, the Louvre and the V&A, are well worth inspecting, as they are in excellent condition and considerably larger than the modest reproductions in art-history books. The epilogue, at the far end of the Galerie des Glaces, is a theatrical reconstruction of the Louis XIV's throne, its steps covered with a red carpet and flanked by silhouettes of silver-sprayed stands, candelabra, vases and perfume burners, arranged to striking effect, as Le Roi Soleil deployed them for receiving ambassadors until the melt of 1689.