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n° 55
Titre : Roman Early 17Th Century Pietre Dure Polychrome Marble Table Top
Dimensions : 182cm x 114cm (71.5 x 44.5)Notes : Provenance:By repute, the Chigi family1916-17: Eleonora ChigiMarried to the Marchesi Incisa della RocchettaThence by descentBought from the family by the present vendorOriginally from Siena in Tuscany, the Chigi were an important family of bankers. Two members have marked the history and the artistic patronage in Italy. First Agostino, said the magnificent (1465-1520), in time of Pope Leon X, was a generous and important patron. Protector of Raphael, he commissioned the artist to decorate his roman residence the Villa Chigi (acquired later by the Farnese, it is known today as The Farnesina) and two chapels in Rome, Santa Maria della Pace and the family funeral Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. During the 17th century, Fabio Chigi (1599-1667) became pope under the name of Alexander VII. At the height of the Roman Baroque, he was a great patron of the arts. Close to artists such as Boromini or Pietro da Cortona, he confided the construction of the colonnade in Piazza San Pietro to Bernini. The Chigi acquired the Aldobrandini palace on the current piazza Colonna (now the seat of the Italian Government). This was a very luxurious residence, richly decorated with paintings, sculptures and furniture of the most precious productions of the time. Gian Lorenzo Bernini himself designed models for two important consoles (preserved today in the palace of Ariccia). A table top inlaid with polychrome marblesBy Annamaria GiustiThe decoration of this marble table top consists of an elaborate composition of cartouche and raceme motifs made with a variety of polychrome stones, around a large oval slab of tartaruga (tortoise-shell) alabaster placed in the center. The rectangular section is formed by a background of black stone into which the slender multi-colored racemes have been set. External to this is a band of Verde Antico marble, inlaid with a variety of cartouche motifs which face one another symmetrically. A moulded frame of African marble concludes the table top around the outer edge.Close examination of the technique and materials used for the table reveals that it consists of a single slab of white marble, about 4cm thick, to which the frame of African marble has been attached (apparently with the aid of small passing pins which remain invisible). The frame consists of various pieces of stone (13 in all), cut with precision to fit together perfectly. The main slab of marble has been carved leaving thin white borders raised to serve as outlines for the racemes and the three narrow bands which enclose the central oval and the cartouche band. These elements also form the case, that is the openings into which the small individual slips of polychrome stone are inserted. The entire central area, in the shape of a kind of rectangular carpet where the polychrome foliage motifs show up against the black marble background, has been set into such a casing, carved from the main slab of white marble. This section has been inlaid using the commesso (mosaic) technique: the various stones (including the black Belgian marble) have been cut into the desired shapes with a bow saw, metal blade and abrasive. Then assembled with great precision. Both techniques, intarsia and commesso, were frequently used together on the tables manufactured in Roman workshops, starting from the last decades of the 16th century. This also occurred in Florence in this period, although the technique preferred in the renowned Grand Ducal workshop was commesso.The variety of stones used for the table top lends it an overall chromatic effect which combines the paler tonalities of the cartouche band, with the more vivid contrast achieved by the colourful entwined racemes set into the black background. The former respond to a taste which is still typically 16th century, both for design and color, while the latter reflect a 17th century inclination for décor of naturalistic inspiration and for brighter colors, rendered even more lively by setting them into the black field.Almost all of the stones are antique marbles deriving from previous archaeological usage, starting with the marmor luculleus (African) of the moulded outer frame, and the Verde Antico marble from Thessalony, adopted for the cartouche band. Further materials preferred at the time of the Roman Empire may be identified in the cartouche motifs themselves: Semesanto from the Greek island of Skyros, oriental Lumachella from the Near East, Spanish broccatello, spotted black and white Nero antico, from Aquitania, Rosso antico, from the Cape Tenaro promontory in Greece. Together with these stones, a rich assortment of alabaster of the fiorito and listato types has been employed for the corollas and calyxes of the flowers set into the rectangular area. Particularly impressive is the central oval made of alabaster, of the type known as tartaruga (tortoise-shell) because of its variegated reddish brown markings, both form and colour of this stone are very close to those found on a large early 17th century Roman table now in Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. (A. Giusti, Pietre dure. L’arte europea del mosaico negli arredi e nelle decorazioni, Torino 1992, p. 19, tav. 9)Many analogies exist between this table and the ones produced in Rome at the beginning of the 17th century: first of all, the general characteristics already mentioned above, including the choice of an abstract design to enhance a large slab of precious material placed centrally, an orderly spatial division of the table top into three basic elements, the oval, the rectangular section, and the surrounding band, the concatenation of the cartouche motifs, the typology of the stylized foliage motifs which trace racemes rhythmically scrolled in volutes, and finally, the almost exclusive use of marbles and soft-stones, as had once been the practice in ancient Rome. The motif of the band inlaid with a series of cartouches, already present in what may be considered a true incunabulum of 16th century Roman intarsia work, the famed Farnese table now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, has been rendered more dynamic in the design of the cartouche motifs bordering a large table now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence. This table top was made in the 1570s for the Roman residence of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, according to a design by Giovanni Antonio Dosio (A. Giusti, L’arte delle pietre dure. Da Firenze all’ Europa, Firenze 2005, p. 43, fig.30). The vivacious cartouche band of our table seems to derive from this sort of taste, which shows a preference for opposing concave and convex contours. This may also be noted in another Roman table top which dates from the end of the 16th century, again conserved in the Mantua Ducal Palace (A. Giusti 1992 cit., p.12, fig.8).The carpet with racemes against a black background instead appears on Roman intarsia table tops slightly later in time, between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. A layout similar to that of the table considered here (a large oval piece placed in the center of a rectangle, itself surrounded externally by a band with cartouches) may be seen in such tables as the one from the Borghese collection, now in the Museum of Villa Borghese in Rome (Giusti 1992, p.30, fig.14), or in that conserved in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (S. Ephimova, West European Mosaic, Leningrad 1968). Specific to our table top is the slenderness of the raceme motifs, characterized by their very minute design and sharply contrasting colors. These aspects differ from the foliage present in the aforementioned tables, generally stouter and more variegated in color, differences which may indicate in this case a slightly later date.The state of conservation is generally good, with only a few minor losses and repairs, probably dating from different moments: several sections of lapis lazuli, located in particular in the series of small medallion inserts within the two small, white-bordered frame bands, appear of a more intense and uniform blue color. They are most likely substitutions, as is perhaps also the case of some of the square shaped elements of Sardonyx alabaster present in the cartouches, which appear shinier and of a more uniform brown coloration than the rest. Various cracks run through the large oval slab of tartaruga alabaster, which have produced several small losses in different points. These have been filled to saturation with a dark colored, hard stucco material. Other limited fills imitate the Verde antico marble, and are located outside the four corners of the narrow frame band surrounding the raceme carpet, also, both in the cartouche band and in the racemes, other small areas have been simply filled with wax. These losses are limited to a small button of Rosso antico in the little collar around a lumachella oval placed on one of the short sides, and to several pistils made of Giallo antico emerging from the buds on the plant shoots.Several zones of black Belgian marble forming the carpet background show slight surface alteration. This appears as an irregular whitish blanch, visible also on the small slips of Rosso antico found in the vicinity of the phenomenon present on the black marble, which may be the result of humidity present in the past.The rear of the slab shows traces of hand crafting done to saw down the thickness of the block. The saw has left partially visible parallel marks, and is also probably the tool responsible for the slight hollow present in the rear center of the stone. The help of a chisel for thinning down the block is apparent from evident signs of roughing typical of this tool, which have remained visible after a similar reduction in thickness towards the edge of one of the long sides. The African marble perimeter frame has been attached to the main slab with glue, probably mixed with shellac, whose drips have produced stains in proximity to the joint between the stone slab and frame.Annamaria GiustiAnnamaria Giusti, who has examined this tabletop in person, is Director of the Museum of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence.Literature:Claudio Strinati and Rossella Vodret, Palazzo Chigi, 2001, Milano.Enrico Colle, il Mobile Barocco in Italia, arredi e decorazioni d'interni dal 1600 al 1738, 2000, Milano.Annamaria Giusti, Pietre Dure, L'arte europea del mosaico negli arredi e nelle decorazioni dal 1500 al 1800, 1992, Torino.Annamaria Giusti, Pietre Dure and the Art of Florentine Inlay, 2006, London.Bonhams 3, Salle de vente
, London, UK
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Titre de la vente : Fine Continental Furniture
Date de la vente : 25/06/2008
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