CIRCA 1735, IN THE MANNER OF WILLIAM KENT

The pattern for this George II 'Roman'’ sideboard-table, relates to one invented by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and the artist/architect William Kent (d.1748) for the Earl'’s garden villa/casino at Chiswick, Middlesex (see H. Avray Tipping, English Homes, Period IV, Vol. I, 1920, p.328, fig. 406). The design, with harvesting youths bearing garlands of Jupiter'’s sacred oak, harmonises with the architecture of Chiswick'’s tmple- domed and lion-guarded banqueting hall. The lion, symbolising the festive wine-deity Bacchus, emerges from the tables' lambrequined cartouche that provides a key-stone for its triumphal-arched wine-cistern’ niche. The caryatic and acanthus-issuing youths'’ hermed brackets are tied to the table’s leg-pilasters, whose wave-scrolled and voluted trusses are imbricated with Venus' dolphin-scales and pearled libation-paterae. In place of a lion, Chiswick'’s four sideboard-tables feature heads of Venus, in harmony with those represented in the hall's cornice frieze in Kent'’s published room design (see W. Kent, The Designs of Inigo Jones with some Additional Designs by Lord Burlington and himself, 1727). The pattern for the present table legs correspond to those of a George II sideboard-table at Houghton, Norfolk (see M. Jourdain, The Work of William Kent, 1948, fig. 138).