Jacques Caffieri

Jacques Caffieri (1678–1755) was a French sculptor, working for the most part in bronze.

Jacques Caffiéri was the fifth son of Philippe Caffieri (1634-1716), the founder of this family of artists. Jacques was received a maître fondeur-ciseleur by 1715, the date of his first known work, a design for a pall for the Corporation des Fondeurs-Ciseleurs, one of two Parisian guilds that oversaw works cast in metal, from full-scale sculptures to gilt-bronze furniture mounts, wall-lights and candlesticks. As fondeurs-ciseleurs, "casters and finishers", the renown of the Caffieri family has centred on Jacques, though later it is not easy to distinguish between Jacques' work and that of Jacques' son, the younger Philippe (1714–1777).

Caffieri was attached as fondeur-ciseleur to the Bâtiments du Roi in 1736. A large proportion of his brilliant achievement as a designer and chaser in bronze and other metals was executed for the crown at Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly, Compiègne, Choisy and the Château de La Muette, and the crown, ever in his debt, still owed him money at his death. Philippe and his son Jacques undoubtedly worked together in the Appartement du Dauphin at Versailles, and although much of their contribution has disappeared, the gilt-bronze decorations of the marble chimney-piece still remain. They belong to the best of full-blown Rococo style; vigorous and graceful in design, they are executed with splendid skill.

After the elder Philippe's death in 1716, Jacques continued to work for the crown, but had many private clients. From the Caffieri workshop in rue des Canettes came an amazing amount of work, chiefly in the shape of those gilt-bronze furniture mounts which adorned furniture by the best ébénistes of Paris. Little of his achievement was ordinary; an astonishingly large proportion of it is famous. In the Wallace Collection, London, is the royal commode delivered by Antoine-Robert Gaudreau, ébéniste du Roi, in 1739 for Louis XV's bedchamber at Versailles: it is richly mounted with an integrated series of corner mounts, chutes and sabots, and the drawer-fronts and a single composition into which the handles are fully integrated. It must have been the result of close cooperation between Caffiéri and Gaudreau, who was responsible for the veneered carcase. In 1747 Caffiéri supplied gilt-bronze mounts for the marble chimneypiece in the Dauphin's bedroom at Versailles. Caffieri also produced gilt-bronze cases for clocks, both mantel clocks and the cartel clocks that combined clock and bracket in one unified design, to be mounted on a wall. A detailed inventory of the Caffieri workshop made in 1747 enables scholars to identify some unsigned clockcases from the workshop: a fully Rococo cartel clock with a movement by Julien Le Roy is at the Getty Museum: it is inscribed fait par Caffiery in a cartouche below the dial.

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