A PAIR OF GERMAN BIEDERMEIER MAHOGANY AND PARCEL-GILT SOFAS

EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Details

A PAIR OF GERMAN BIEDERMEIER MAHOGANY AND PARCEL-GILT SOFAS
Early 19th Century
Each with padded back and seat covered in trellis-patterned cotton, flanked by a column to one side surmounted by an acanthus capital and a figure of Nike on a sphere and a half-column to the other, with scrolled dolphin terminals, above a velvet-backed pierced trellis frieze and with conforming panels to one side, on block feet, restorations, losses to the trellis panels, one with indistinct chalk inscription to the inside front-rail '28 Sussex Square Brighton From Roberto de Sprozzi', the columns adapted, possibly Italian
77 in. (196 cm.) high; 73 in. (186 cm.) wide; 25 in. (65.5 cm.) deep (2)

Sale room notice

Please note that this lot has been probably adapted from a larger seating scheme.

Lot Essay

The triumphal column-supported Nike figures, each perched with one foot on a sphere, are perhaps symbolising Fortune and appear in a design for a Royal child's cradle by Luigi Faccioli (1821), at the Accademia di Belli Arti, Bologna (E. Colle, Il Mobile Impero in Italia, Milan, 1998, p. 334). Whilst the present pair were conceived as single sofas, they might have been situated adjacent to one another and can be compared to a model of canopied ormolu-mounted mahogany beds published in Florence by Giuseppe Landi (c.1816) at the Accademia di Belli Arti, Florence (Colle, op. cit., p. 94).

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