Art Institute of Chicago

Dessert Knives (2)

Date: 1789/1820
Medium: Silver gilt and steel blades
Culture: Paris
Department: Applied Arts of Europe
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago

These knives 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.

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Object type: AAT300411548

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