sandstone and iron structure, carrying both railway and road, and replacing the one carried away by floods in 1875. The town contains two Evangelical churches, a castle, formerly a convent and now used as a town hall, and several schools. There is a harbour with quays and a dockyard, also rolling mills and saw-mills, ironworks and sandstone quarries. Other industries are the manufacture of furniture, beer, soap, carriages and bricks. The most important shipping station on the Elbe in Saxony, Riesa is the lading-place for goods to and from Bavaria, and a mart for herrings, petroleum, wood, coal and grain. A constant passenger steamboat communication is maintained with Meissen and Dresden; and, owing to the artillery practice ranges at Zeithain, on the right bank of the Elbe, Riesa has: become of recent years one of the chief depots of the Saxon army. Riesa received municipal rights in 1632, and after a period of decay was again raised to the rank of a town in 1859.
RIESENER, JEAN HENRI (1734–1806), French cabinet-maker of the Louis XVI. period, was born at Gladbach near Cologne. At an early age he went to Paris, where he entered the workshop in the Arsenal of Jean François Oeben (q.v.). When that great
master died, Riesener became foreman of the works; two years later he married Mme. Oeben, and in 1768 was admitted “maitremenuisier-ébéniste.” His wife died in 1776, and in 1782 he espoused, as his second wife, Anne Grezel, daughter of a bourgeois of Paris. The union was unhappy, and when, under the first
Republic, divorce was legalized, the marriage was dissolved. When Rieserrer contracted his first marriage he possessed little or nothing; his second contract of marriage recited that in cash and in the money due to him by Louis XVI. he was worth more
than £20,000, without counting the finished work in hand, bronze models, jewels and personal effects and invested funds. Thus in fifteen years he had accumulated a fortune amounting in all to about
£40,000. By that time there had been conferred upon him the title, formerly enjoyed by Oeben, of “Elbéniste du Roi.” He died on the 6th of January 1806, in the Enclos des Iacobins, leaving an only son, Henri Francois (1767-1828), a distinguished portrait painter of the First Empire. Riesener was unquestionably the greatest of the Louis Seize cabinet-makers. His name is stamped upon the Bureau du Roi in the Louvre, and although the original conception of that master-work was due to Oeben, it cannot be
doubted that its consummate finish and perfect achievement must in great measure be attributed to the man who completed it. Occasionally there may, perhaps, be some lack of spontaneity in his forms, but his work is generally at once bold and graceful. His marquetry presents an extraordinary finish; his chisel led bronzes are of the first excellence. He was especially
distinguished for his cabinets, in which he employed many European as well as exotic woods. Wreaths- and bunches of flowers form the centres of the panels; -on the sides are often diaper patterns in quiet colours. Yet despite his distinction as a maker of cabinets his high-water mark was reached in the Bureau du Roi, finished in 1769 and consequently belonging rather to the Louis Quinze than the Louis Seize period, and
a not altogether dissimilar cylinder bureau believed to have been made for Stanislas Leszczynski, king of Poland, now in the Wallace Collection. Stanislas died in 1766, but the desk was not completed until February 20, 1769, as appears by the inscription accompanying the maker's signature. Upon its completion it passed into the possession of the French crown and was included in a sale of the royal furniture which took place in Holland. It was purchased by Sir William Hamilton, then British Minister at the Hague, and appears to have passed out of his hands when he left Naples, where it was purchased by Sir Richard Wallace.
At Buckingham Palace there is a third bureau on the same lines. These pieces are triumphs of marquetry. They are inlaid with trophies of musical instruments, doves, bouquets and garlands of flowers; the bronze vases and “galleries” are exquisite-they may possibly be the work of Gouthiére, but are more probably from the hands of Duplessis. For several years this great artist appears to have used the models of his master Oeben, but there was a gradual transition to a style more individual, more delicately conceived, with finer but hardly less vigorous lines. By the time he had been working alone for ten years he had completely embraced the Louis Seize manner-he had, “perhaps,
some responsibility for it. One of the most distinguished of his achievements for the court was the famous flat writing-table now at the Petit Trianon, for which he received only £200. The extent of these royal orders may be gauged from the fact that
between 1775 and 1785 Riesener received 500,000 livres from the Garde Meubles, notwithstanding that during the whole of this period Gondouin the architect was the official designer of furniture for the royal palaces. Like so many other artists he was condemned
in the end to sacrifice to the false taste of his day,
and a certain number of his creations, otherwise delightful, were vitiated by being mounted with panels of Sevres, Wedgwood and other china. The beautiful little secretaire in the Jones collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum suffers seriously by this lapse.
RIESENGEBIRGE (Bohemian Krkonose), or Giant Mountains, a lofty and rugged group on the boundary of Silesia and Bohemia, between the upper courses of the Elbe and the Oder. They form the highest portion of the Sudetic system which separates south-east Prussia from the Austrian empire, and
finds its natural continuation towards the N.W. in the Erzgebirge,
the Thuringian Forest and the Harz Mountains.
Adjoining the Isergebirge and the Lausitzergebirge on the
W., and the Eulengebirge and the Adlergebirge on the E. and
S.E., the Riesengebirge proper run S.E. and N.W. between the
sources of the Zacken and the Bober, for a distance of 23 m., with a breadth of 14 m. They cover an area of about 425 sq. m., three-fourths of which is in Austrian, and the remainder in Prussian territory. The boundary line follows the crest of the principal chain or ridge (Riesenkamm), which stretches along the northern side of the group, with an. average height of over 4000 ft. The principal peaks are the Reiftrager (4430 ft.), the Hohe Rad (4968 ft.), the Great Sturmhaube (4862 ft.), the Little Sturmhaube (4646 ft.), and, near the east extremity, the Schneekoppe or Riesenkoppe (5266 ft.), the loftiest mountain in northern or central Germany. Roughly parallel to this northern ridge, and separated from it by a long narrow valley known as the. Siebengrtinde, there extends on the S. a second and lower chain, of broad massive “saddles,” with comparatively few peaks. The chief heights here are Kesselkoppe (4708 ft.), the Krkonose (4849 ft.), the Ziegenriicken and the Brunnenberg (5072 ft.). From both ridges spurs of greater or less length are sent off at various angles, whence a magnificent view is obtained from, Breslau to Prague; the lowlands of Silesia, watered by the Oder, and those of Bohemia, intersected by the Elbe and the Moldau, appearing to lie mapped in relief. The summit is crowned by a chapel dedicated to St Lawrence, which once also served as a traveller's shelter.. Since 1850 the chapel has been restored to its religious use, and a 'hotel for the accommodation of tourists is built close by. A remarkable group of isolated columnar rocks are those known as the Adersbacher Felsen in a valley on the Bohemian side of the Riesengebirge, 9 m. W.N.W. of Braunau.
On its northern side this mountain group rises ruggedly and precipitously from the Hirschberg valley; but on its southern side its slope towards Bohemia is very much more gradual. The scenery is in general bold and wild. The Bohemian ridge is cleft about the middle by a deep gorge through which pour the headwaters of the river Elbe, which finds its source in the Siebengrtinde. The Iser, Bober, Aupa, Zacken, Queiss, and a great number of smaller streams also rise among these mountains or on their skirts; and small lakes and tarns are not infrequent in the valleys. The Great and Little Schneegruben—two deep rocky gorge-like valleys in which snow remains all the year round—lie to the north of the Hohe Rad.,
Nearly the whole of the Riesenkamm and the western portion of the southern chain are granite; the eastern extremity of the main ridge and several mountains to the south-east are formed of a species of gneiss; and the greater part of the Bohemian chain, especially its summits, consists of mica-slate. Blocks of these minerals he scattered on the sides and ridges of the mountains and
