An Italian silver coffee pot from the Borghese service, by Giovacchino Belli, Roma, circa 1820

Wannenes Genoa, 18 November 2013, lot 187

Camille Borghese (1775–1832) came from one of Rome's oldest and most influential families. Seduced by the ideas of the French Revolution, Camille took up arms in 1798. An acquaintance of Joachim Murat, one of Bonaparte's leading generals, he met the First Consul in 1803, who welcomed him enthusiastically. Napoleon wanted to forge alliances with influential European families and decided to marry Pauline, his second sister, to this Roman prince. The union was not a happy one, but it enabled Camille to replenish the family coffers, notably by selling the emperor the fabulous family art collection, most of which is now housed in the Louvre Museum.

The Borghese family, who were passionate about art, commissioned large sets of tableware from the best silversmiths of their time. Marc-Antoine, Camille's father, commissioned Luigi Valadier to create an important tableware set in 1784, considered the most important private commission of the best Roman silversmith of the 18th century. The set is in the neoclassical style, inspired by the discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum a few years earlier. A few years later, Camille and his wife Pauline commissioned Martin-Guillaume Biennais to create a magnificent vermeil service in the purest Empire style, based on designs by Charles Percier (1764-1838) and Pierre-François Fontaine (1762-1853), the Emperor's official ornamentalists. The motifs were based on ancient models that Percier and Fontaine had discovered during their stay in Rome and published in Recueil de décorations intérieures in 1801-1802, which became the bible of the Empire style. This service was completed by Camille with commissions to Italian silversmiths in the 1820s, such as the Scheggi brothers in Florence, Pietro Paolo Spagna and Giovacchino Belli in Rome.

Our coffee pot is probably a later silver addition to the original service made in France.