The commode was one of the most popular types of furniture in the 18th century. It was a simple and practical piece of furniture for storage, but was also made in the ornamented form reserved for display products. This last-mentioned - Classicist - version of the commode evolved in Northern Italy.

A large "intasiatore" community worked in Milan and its vicinity. One of its most famous members was Giuseppe Maggiolini, who in 1771 entered the service of Archduke Ferdinand, the governor-general of Milan. The corpus of commodes attributable to him consists of flat-sided, box-shaped pieces with inlay (intarsia) across their entire surface. The design for the intarsia follows organically from the structure of the piece of furniture itself: a rectangular frame encompasses the front. The central motif is an ornamented vessel, a bouquet of flowers or a war trophy. The front is graced on each side by a pilaster, and a freeze embellishes the slim drawer below the top ledge. The fittings are restrained: they are limited to ring-pulls and finely worked gilded keyhole-shields. Many and various types of wood are used for the intarsia: palisander, rosewood and boxwood.

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