THE ESPIRITO SANTO FAMILY
A DYNASTY OF COLLECTORS
The Espirito Santo family has been synonymous with banking in Portugal since José Maria Espirito Santo Silva founded a financial house and the family bank of that name in 1884. Succeeded by his two borthers, Ricardo and Manuel, the Espirito Santo empire grew to be prominent in both banking and insurance, as well as plantations, with huge coffee, sugar and palm-oil interests in the Portuguese colonies. Celebrated for their hospitality in Lisbon and Cascais or their hunting lodge at Alentejo, the Espirito Santos counted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as well as the Spanish, Italian and French Royal families amongst their friends.
Financial success came hand in hand with a passion for collecting, and the collections formed by each brother are a worthy testimony to their connoisseurship. Certainly the most celebrated of these, in Portugal at least, is the collection of Portuguese furniture, silver, rugs and paintings presented by Ricardo Espirito Santo Silva to the Portuguese state in 1953, along with the Azurara Palace in Lisbon, in which the collection is still housed. Of equal calibre, however if a little less well known, were the collections of French furniture, porcelain, paintings and objets d'art, together with the Rococo Capricci of Jean-Baptiste Pillement, also assembled by the family.
As the 1955 Paris sale catalogue of part of Riccardo Espirito Santo's collection evocatively reveals, the furniture, stamped by such celebrated ébénistes as Jean-Francois Oeben, Jean-Henri Riesener, Claude-Charles Saunier and Adam Weisweiler was assembled with a discerining eye and unwavering determination. Now the core of some of the greatest collections of French furniture of today, the Espirito Santo's taste also proved to be the source of inspiration for much of Pierre Verlet's influential book, 'Les Ebénistes du XVIIIe Siecle' of 1963. Subsequent sales by José Espirito Santo from his appartment in the 16ème in Paris also provided rich hunting-grounds for Museums, and indeed it was from the Espirito Santo's that the Getty museum acquired the magnificent Louis XV ormolu and Vernis Martin Cartonnier and Serre-Papier by 'BVRB' and the pair of Louis XVI encoignures by Pierre Garnier, as well as that masterpiece of orfèvrerie, the Louis XV silver tureens by Thomas Germain.
Assembled by José and Vera Espirito Santo, the collection of French furniture, Chinese and European Porcelain, objets d'art and Old Master Paintings offered on the 12 and 13 December is a testimony to the taste of a collecting dynasty.
OBJECTS OF ART, FURNITURE AND PORCELAIN
SIX CHINESE PORCELAIN SMALL PLATES AND SIX SIDE-PLATES
18TH CENTURY
Details
SIX CHINESE PORCELAIN SMALL PLATES AND SIX SIDE-PLATES
18th Century
All variously painted with flower sprays, some old damages
The side-plates 6½ in (16.5 cm.) diam. (12)
18th Century
All variously painted with flower sprays, some old damages
The side-plates 6½ in (16.5 cm.) diam. (12)