An Italian parcel-gilt sauce ladle from the Marc Antonio Borghese service, by Luigi Valadier, 1767-1769

Marc Antonio Borghese (1730-1800);

Don Camille Borghese, Prince of Sulmona and of Rossana (1775-1832);

Sotheby’s Paris, 13 May 2014, lot 144

Luigi Valadier was the most famous Italian goldsmith of the 18th century. His French name was given to him by his father, who left his native Provence to settle in Rome around 1720. Luigi was born in Rome in 1726. In 1754, he became his father's apprentice. He married the daughter of the sculptor Filiberto della Valle in 1756. He became a silversmith in 1760 and worked until 1785, the year of his death.

He quickly received commissions from private collectors and religious institutions, creating pieces in gilded bronze with semi-precious stones as well as silverware. One of his most important commissions was for Prince Marc Antoine Borghese, the richest prince in Rome at the time. It was a large silver table service for around sixty people, made between 1767 and 1769. Valadier supplied other services in the 1770s and 1780s. Around 1783-1784, the archives reveal that some of the sets were silver-gilded, as is the case with our sauce spoon, and it seems that all the cutlery was decorated with the head of Medusa. Unfortunately, these sets did not survive the prince's financial difficulties in 1798, when he was forced to sell or melt them down.

For a similar spoon illustrated in Valadier's design for sauce boats, see Artémis, Valadier, 1991 ,on the cover. For a ladle of the same model, see op.cit, no. 73b, p. 136 and A. Gonzales-Palacios, I Valadier, Milan, 2019, p. 262, illus III.10.