Set of Dessert Forks (10), from a Service Made for Pauline Bonaparte and Prince Camillo Borghese
c. 1794–1819
Martin-Guillaume Biennais French, 1764–1843 Pierre-Benoît Lorillon French, 1757–1816 Paris, France François-Dominique Naudin French, 1778-1841
Paris
These dessert forks 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.
Silver gilt