Art Institute of Chicago

Double Salt (one of a pair)

Martin-Guillaume Biennais (French, 1764-1843)

Date: c. 1794-1819
Medium: Gilt silver
Culture: Paris
Department: Applied Arts of Europe
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago

This pair of double salts is 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.

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