A mahogany and ebonised gueridon with lion paw feet - Consulat

This circular guéridon features a black marble top above a mahogany frieze underligned with gilt bronze mounts. It rests on three elegantly curved legs terminating in lion pax feet, sculpted with faun heads. The legs are joined by a lower stretcher shelf in matching marble and end in brass casters.

This piece exemplifies the popularity of furniture inspired by Antiquity that flourished in France during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its tripod base with lion’s paw feet, ebonized to simulate bronze, recalls Roman tripods with animal legs unearthed at Herculaneum and Pompeii. Such antique motifs were widely circulated through engravings in works such as Voyage Pittoresque ou Description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicile by Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non (1782), Choix des costumes civils et militaires des peuples de l’antiquité, leurs instruments de musique, leurs meubles by Xavier Willemin (1802), and Fragments d’architecture, sculptures et peinture dans le style antique by Pierre-Nicolas and Cécile Beauvallet (1804).

Before being interpreted by Parisian cabinetmakers, these antique models had already gained prominence in the historical painting of the latter half of the 18th century, appealing to the taste of antiquomanes. As early as 1769, Jean-Baptiste Greuze placed a tripod guéridon with animal feet prominently in his painting The Emperor Severus Reproaches His Son Caracalla for Plotting His Assassination. Similarly, in The Seller of Cupids exhibited at the 1778 Salon, Joseph-Marie Vien imagined and precisely rendered a table with lion’s paw legs.

Around 1795, the artist Louis Gauffier, active in Florence, frequently included such antique-inspired guéridons in his portraits and compositions. A comparable model appears in a wash drawing of Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, and in his 1796 portrait of the Miot de Melito family, where a guéridon with lion’s paw legs is directly reminiscent of the engravings by Abbé de Saint-Non.