French silversmith Thomas Germain, the son of…

French silversmith Thomas Germain, the son of distinguished silversmith Pierre Germain, had studied painting as a boy under Louis Boullogne the Younger.

He had been sent in about 1688 to Rome, where in 1691 he had become apprenticed to an Italian silversmith.

Soon employed as one of the artists on the altar of St. Ignatius for the Church of the Gesù, other commissions had followed, and from 1697 he was an independent silversmith.

He was by 1706 back in France, where until the 1720s he had been active on church commissions.

Among such works was a silver-gilt monstrance (vessel to contain the Host) for Notre Dame in Paris, commissioned in 1716.

He had become a master in the guild in 1720, and in 1722 had made a silver-gilt sun (destroyed in 1790) for the coronation of Louis XV.

Germain had been granted apartments in the Louvre in 1723, when he was a royal goldsmith.

From then until his death he is to be particularly active in making such objects as covered dishes, candlesticks, sconces, and plates for the king.

He also produces numerous objects for special occasions, such as gold rattles on the birth of royal children.

Although he is best known for flamboyantly elaborate objects in the Rococo style, some of his pieces are simple and elegant.

Germain also has foreign patrons, including the elector of Cologne, the king of Portugal, the queen of Spain, and the king and queen of Naples.

The Portuguese court is particularly important: during the forty-year period beginning in 1728, some three thousand silver works are believed to have been made by the Germain workshop for the palace in Lisbon.

For the tax-farmer Samuel-Jacques Bernard, he begins in 1729-31 an exceptionally fine surtout de table (table centerpiece), ornately decorated with cupids, hounds, and hunting horns.