With its distinctive essentially rectilinear carcass, softened by serpentine lines and supplemented with highly sculptural trusses at the angles, and executed entirely in giltwood, this commode is a quintessential product of a South German workshop of the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Commodes produced in the 1730s and 40s after the designs of François de Cuvilliès, Joseph Effner and their contemporaries in Bavaria who were heavily influenced by late Louis XIV and Régence styles tend to be more restrained in form with less bombé shapes and with a stronger emphasis on the carved and incised decoration. Although cabinet makers in the south at this time fitted their veneered pieces with ormolu mounts in the French taste, or juxtaposed exotic parquetry with carved giltwood, the signature “Munich look” of the period is characterized by highlighting a white body with gilt or silvered carving or, as in this case, executing a piece fully in gilt gesso and giltwood.

Similarly to console tables, the carved angles of these commodes were often figural featuring human heads, as seen on a pair of white-painted and giltwood commodes in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (inv. no. 72.DA.63) and a single commode in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (object no. 28.154), all after designs by Cuvilliès. Alternatively, the angles were composed of scrollwork or vegetal motifs, as it is the case on our commode. Examples with similar scrollwork angles include one illustrated H. Kreisel, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels: Spätbarock und Rokoko, Munich, 1970, fig. 439 and two by anonymous makers from the Bernheimer Collection, see A. Feulner and P. Remington, "Examples of South German Woodwork in the Metropolitan Museum," Metropolitan Museum Studies, May, 1930, Vol. 2, No. 2 (May, 1930), pp. 152-170, p. 160, figs. 8 and 9.

François de Cuvilliès (1695-1768) served his apprenticeship under the architect Joseph Effner (1687-1745), who himself had been trained in Paris by Germain Boffrand (1667-1754). From 1720 to 1724, he studied architecture under Jacques-François Blondel in Paris. Upon his return, he was appointed architect to Maximilian II, Elector of Bavaria. While in exile in Paris from 1705 to 1715, the Elector had developed a passion for French art and consequently he sent many of his artists to Paris for training and established a workshop for French furniture at his court. This workshop employed eighty craftsmen and produced furniture in the French style, for which Joseph Effner provided designs inspired by the works of André-Charles Boulle and Charles Cressent.

Cuvilliès’s work at the Munich Residence and the Amalienburg Pavilion in the parks of Schloss Nymphenburg reflects his talent for interpreting the French Rococo style in a more exuberant and dynamic spirit. Indeed, while drawing inspiration from French models, he succeeded in creating a much more opulent style. Beginning in 1738, he published drawings of woodwork, furniture, and objets d’art that were distributed throughout Europe. His Livre des differents desseins de Commodes, published in 1742–1745, features models with two drawers avec traverse carved with foliage motifs, flanked by strongly projecting side panels, and fitted with a richly ornamented apron. These characteristics are found on our commode, which appears to have lost its apron. However, its foliage decoration on a lattice background and its carved side panels still strongly suggest a connection to the French Régence style.