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Lot Essay
THE PROFILE MEDALLION TOP
This George III golden table has its 'Roman' antique-fluted frame enriched with sunflowerd tablets and elongated in an elegant elliptic arch, that corresponds to the late 18th century 'Grecian' fashion adopted by architects such as James Wyatt (d. 1813); while its columnar legs' festive veil-drapery reflects the French/antique fashion introduced by Parisian marchands-merciers. Its statuary marble top is mosaiced in scagliola and richly polychromed in the Roman/Etruscan fashion promoted by the Rome-trained court architect Robert Adam (d. 1792), and popularised by the second volume of his Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1777. Its central shell-scalloped demi-medallion or patera is wreathed by an 'Etruscan' black-and-red ribbon band hung with medallion portraits in Adam's 'Columbarium' or decorative 'vase' style 'in the manner of the ancients' as encouraged by J. B. Passeri's Picturae Etruscorum, (Rome, 1767-1775), and Baron d' Hancarville's publication of Sir William Hamilton's Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities (Naples, 1766-1767).
Adam also drew related laurel-swagged profile medallions on his design for a 'Slab for the Duke of Northumberland, Adelphi, May 6 1774', which is now in the Sir John Soane Museum (D. Owsley and W. Rieder, Northumberland House', London, 1974). The Northumberland tables were executed, probably by Mayhew and Ince, and are listed in the inventory of 1786 as 'A pair of circular Marble pier Tables done in Skioll [sic. i.e. scagliola] with brass mouldings round the Edge on carved and gilt frame'; they are now in the Red Drawing Room at Syon House (ibid., pl.19). The present examples and the Northumberland tops in turn relate to those executed by Messrs. Bartoli and Richter, to Adam's designs, for Sir Rowland Winn's Saloon at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire.
This medallion top also relates to his design of the same year for the Countess of Derby's 'pier-commode-table' (E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, London, 2001, figs. 350, 436 and 437). Hung from its palm-flowered and thyrsus-finialed scrolls of Roman acanthus are 'Etruscan' medallioned heads of ancient heroes and heroines centred round a vine-decked festive bacchante head, which probably derived from those on volute-krater vase handles and asssociated at the time with the History of the Trojan War and sometimes identified as Leda or her daughter Helen (see the vase at Naples illustrated in Passeri, ibid., vol. III, 1775 pl. 282ff).
Amongst the most celebrated 'Inlayers in Marbles and Stucco-workers' employed by Adam to execute such work was Dominic Bartoli. The firm of Bartoli and Richter was employed in the early 1780s at the Carlton House palace of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, and they are likely to have supplied the related medallion-enriched chimneypiece that is now incorporated in St. James Palace. As late as 1805 Bartoli was still petitioning the Prince for payment of £84 for 'two Scagliola Tables inlaid with foliage and [antique] ornament' (information kindly supplied by Donald Cameron (see below). Adam generally designed such pier-table tops to harmonise with a room's chimneypiece, and similar portraits are inlaid on a number of chimneypieces in Ireland (C. O'Neill, ibid., figs. 4,5,6 and 11).
Bartoli himself designed a pair of similar table tops, which he sold at Christie's in 1796, when they were purchased by George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis (d. 1801) of Powis House, London and Powis Castle, Wales (Christie's, 30 April 1796, lots 87 and 88). They were described as 'A beautiful Scaliola slab, exquisitly inlaid with figures from the antique, designed and executed by that eminent artist Dominick Bartoli, size 4 foot 8¾ by 2 foot 1½'; and 'A ditto immediately to correspond, by Ditto'. Bartoli may have executed a related table top that was formerly at Russborough House, Co. Wicklow (G. Kenyon, Irish Furniture at Malahide Castle, Dublin, 1994, pp. 28 and 29).
Similar work was also executed in Dublin by Pietro Bossi, who advertised a pair of such table tops for sale in 1786 as: 'an elegant pair of statuary marble tables the whole inlaid scajola, on an entire new design' (information kindly supplied by John Rogers; C. O. Neill, 'In search of Bossi', Journal of the Irish Georgian Society, vol. 1, 1998, pp. 146-175). These are probably the table tops with flowered and laurel-festooned urns formerly at Carton, Ireland, where Bossi was employed around 1780 (Kenyon, op.cit., p. 28). Amongst his contemporaries were John Baptiste Cuvillie (d.1788) and Joseph Butcher, who boasted his 'Artificial Marble Chimneypieces; Side-Boards, etc...equal in colour and polish to any kind of Marble' (C. O'Neill, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 146-175).
THE 'APOLLO' SUNFLOWER TABLE
This table top, almost certainly designed by Dominic Bartoli, reflects the 'Roman' fashion promoted by the architect Robert Adam, while its composition celebrates lyric poetry's triumph with a laurel-festooned and golden sunflowered demi-medallion, that derives from a Roman temple dedicated to the sun and poetry deity Apollo (R. Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra, 1753). Dionysiac or Bacchic festivities in antiquity are also recalled by its flowered 'guilloche' border of ribbon-entwined vines framed by Grecian-black and laurel-flowered bands. Its ribboned border relates to patterns issued by the Italian artist Michelangelo Pergolesi (d. 1838), who had been brought to England by Adam in 1760 and was the author of Designs for Various Ornaments, 1771-1801 and Original Designs...in the Etruscan and Grotesque Style, published posthumously in 1814.
Although it was Bartoli's partner, John (Johan) Augustus Richter (fl. 1767-96) who patented the invention of inlaying scagliola in 1770, Richter appears almost exclusively to have been the financial arm of the partnership. With its 'palmyreen' sunflower and Etruscan beaded borders, this slab certainly relates to Robert Adam's design 'of two Tables for the Salon the tops to be of Scagliola' for Luton Park (Sir John Soane Museum). However, although Bartoli and Richter worked extensively for Robert Adam, including the table tops for Nostell Priory (cited above) executed in 1777 at a cost of 150 gns, an 'Etruscan' chimneypiece for 20 Portman Square in 1775, and the Croome Court tables of 1768 (sold from the collection of the late Sir Charles Clore, Christie's, London, 20 November 1986, lot 194), these commissions all corresponded directly to Adam designs.
A 'slab', with closely related inlay, now also attributed to Bartoli, is in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin (illustrated in M. Jourdain, English Decoration and Furniture of the later 18th Century, London, n.d., p. 69, fig. 82).
These exceptional scagliola-topped pier tables were almost certainly originally one from two identical pairs, which have subsequently been misdivided into matched pairs. The complimentary pair were seen by the present owner on exhibition in London in the 1970s.
DOMINIC BARTOLI
By Donald Cameron
Dominic Bartoli came from Leghorn1. The earliest record of him in England is a court record of 1761 in which he is described as a carver2 with an address in Newman Street, Westminster.
He was probably the first inlayer of scagliola to work in England although Vassali was engaged in producing architectural work - columns, pilasters and wall panels - at Castle Howard as early as 1737.
From 1763-1766 Bartoli was employed as a scagliolist by William Constable at Burton Constable Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire, being paid a guinea a week and the cost of his materials3. The work he produced was remarkably accomplished and the chimneypiece he made for the State Bed Dressing Room at Burton appears to be the first time scagliola was inlaid in white statuary marble as opposed to the coloured marbles used by the Florentine School.
In 1767 Bartoli went into partnership with John Augustus Richter, working from premises in Great Newport Street4 near Leicester Square. Although they are frequently spoken of as an enduring entity, the partnership appears to have been a relatively brief one, lasting only ten years from 1767- 1777/8, the work they did together being almost exclusively for Robert Adam, including the celebrated Croome Court tables executed in 17685. After the partnership was dissolved both men continued to take individual commissions, Bartoli working for the architects James Wyatt at 15 St James's Square, Thomas Leverton at Watton Wood and George Steuart at Attingham amongst others.
In 1794-95 he went to Ireland to work for James Wyatt at Castle Coole in Co. Fermanagh6. The last record of his work is a receipt dated 11th March 1805 for a pair of table tops for Carlton House7, although mention is made of him in Jutsham as late as 1807 (see below).
Both the present tables may be attributed to Dominic Bartoli. The design of both tables closely follows the template invented by Robert Adam. Both have the stylised central fan and the running bands of decoration which feature on a number of table designs by Adam in the Soane Museum. All the executed designs for which there are documentary records of manufacture are by the firm of Richter and Bartoli. The tables at Syon, Nostell and Osterley are all similar in overall design to the present examples.
The medallion table relates particularly closely to Dominic Bartoli's work, probably for Carlton House.
There is a chimneypiece, almost certainly by Bartoli, now in St James's Palace, which has almost identical ornament, and the medallion heads on both the table and the chimneypiece are very similar to the heads on the chimneypiece executed by Bartoli and Richter for Osterley House.
There are a number of records in the Royal Archives of Bartoli having produced work for Carlton House between 1784 and 1805.
In 1784 he was paid £450 for "work done at Carlton House" (RA Geo/34975) and in 1805 he writes begging for payment for "the tables" (RA Geo/25189). A payment of £84 is made on 11th March 1805 (RA Geo/25190) for "two Scagliola Tables inlaid with foliage and ornament", for which Bartoli signs a receipt (RA Geo/25190a). Finally, Jutsham records the return to Bartoli of a semicircular table inlaid with flowers (which was not wanted) in March 1807.
The second table is also certainly by Bartoli. It has a ribbon and oak motif on the border that was invented by Bartoli and is apparently unique to him. He first used it on the column jambs of the chimneypiece he designed for the State Bed Dressing Room at Burton Constable in 1764/5. He used variations of this design on a table formerly in the collection of Archbishop Agar and there is a nearly identical pair of tables now in an Irish Collection (illustrated in D. Guinness, Irish Houses, Dublin, 1972, p. 256).
Footnotes
1. In his Saggio Istorico della Real Galleria di Firenze of 1779 Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni calls him "un tal Domenico Bartoli, Livornese". Quoted in Anna Maria Massinelli, Scagliola, Rome, 1997.
2. Middlesex Sessions Papers, SP 1761/02/011
London Metropolitan Archives
3. A receipt in his hand states "Decr.13 1764 Recd. Of William Constable Esqur at the hands of Robt. Foster Fifty Four pounds twelve shillings in full One years Wages" (East Riding Archives DDCC/2/51)
4. Letter from Sir William Chambers 1773 quoted by R.B.Wragg, "The History of Scagliola", Country Life, 10 October 1957, pp. 718 - 721
5. These tables were sold from the collection of Sir Charles Clore, Christie's, London, 20 November 1986, lot 194. The Croome Court Account Books record a payment of £134.5.2 for these tables. (Eileen Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, London, 2001, p. 340)
6. Alistair Rowan, Buildings of North West Ulster, London, 1997
7.The Royal Archives record both Richter and Bartoli as having provided pieces for Carlton House - Bartoli writes begging for payment for two table tops (RA GEO/25189) and a payment of £84.0.0 is made on March 11th 1805 (RA GEO/25190a).
Donald Cameron's article, 'Bossi and Bartoli: Problems of attributing scagliola work in Ireland' was published in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, Volume VII, January 2005.
This George III golden table has its 'Roman' antique-fluted frame enriched with sunflowerd tablets and elongated in an elegant elliptic arch, that corresponds to the late 18th century 'Grecian' fashion adopted by architects such as James Wyatt (d. 1813); while its columnar legs' festive veil-drapery reflects the French/antique fashion introduced by Parisian marchands-merciers. Its statuary marble top is mosaiced in scagliola and richly polychromed in the Roman/Etruscan fashion promoted by the Rome-trained court architect Robert Adam (d. 1792), and popularised by the second volume of his Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1777. Its central shell-scalloped demi-medallion or patera is wreathed by an 'Etruscan' black-and-red ribbon band hung with medallion portraits in Adam's 'Columbarium' or decorative 'vase' style 'in the manner of the ancients' as encouraged by J. B. Passeri's Picturae Etruscorum, (Rome, 1767-1775), and Baron d' Hancarville's publication of Sir William Hamilton's Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities (Naples, 1766-1767).
Adam also drew related laurel-swagged profile medallions on his design for a 'Slab for the Duke of Northumberland, Adelphi, May 6 1774', which is now in the Sir John Soane Museum (D. Owsley and W. Rieder, Northumberland House', London, 1974). The Northumberland tables were executed, probably by Mayhew and Ince, and are listed in the inventory of 1786 as 'A pair of circular Marble pier Tables done in Skioll [sic. i.e. scagliola] with brass mouldings round the Edge on carved and gilt frame'; they are now in the Red Drawing Room at Syon House (ibid., pl.19). The present examples and the Northumberland tops in turn relate to those executed by Messrs. Bartoli and Richter, to Adam's designs, for Sir Rowland Winn's Saloon at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire.
This medallion top also relates to his design of the same year for the Countess of Derby's 'pier-commode-table' (E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, London, 2001, figs. 350, 436 and 437). Hung from its palm-flowered and thyrsus-finialed scrolls of Roman acanthus are 'Etruscan' medallioned heads of ancient heroes and heroines centred round a vine-decked festive bacchante head, which probably derived from those on volute-krater vase handles and asssociated at the time with the History of the Trojan War and sometimes identified as Leda or her daughter Helen (see the vase at Naples illustrated in Passeri, ibid., vol. III, 1775 pl. 282ff).
Amongst the most celebrated 'Inlayers in Marbles and Stucco-workers' employed by Adam to execute such work was Dominic Bartoli. The firm of Bartoli and Richter was employed in the early 1780s at the Carlton House palace of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, and they are likely to have supplied the related medallion-enriched chimneypiece that is now incorporated in St. James Palace. As late as 1805 Bartoli was still petitioning the Prince for payment of £84 for 'two Scagliola Tables inlaid with foliage and [antique] ornament' (information kindly supplied by Donald Cameron (see below). Adam generally designed such pier-table tops to harmonise with a room's chimneypiece, and similar portraits are inlaid on a number of chimneypieces in Ireland (C. O'Neill, ibid., figs. 4,5,6 and 11).
Bartoli himself designed a pair of similar table tops, which he sold at Christie's in 1796, when they were purchased by George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis (d. 1801) of Powis House, London and Powis Castle, Wales (Christie's, 30 April 1796, lots 87 and 88). They were described as 'A beautiful Scaliola slab, exquisitly inlaid with figures from the antique, designed and executed by that eminent artist Dominick Bartoli, size 4 foot 8¾ by 2 foot 1½'; and 'A ditto immediately to correspond, by Ditto'. Bartoli may have executed a related table top that was formerly at Russborough House, Co. Wicklow (G. Kenyon, Irish Furniture at Malahide Castle, Dublin, 1994, pp. 28 and 29).
Similar work was also executed in Dublin by Pietro Bossi, who advertised a pair of such table tops for sale in 1786 as: 'an elegant pair of statuary marble tables the whole inlaid scajola, on an entire new design' (information kindly supplied by John Rogers; C. O. Neill, 'In search of Bossi', Journal of the Irish Georgian Society, vol. 1, 1998, pp. 146-175). These are probably the table tops with flowered and laurel-festooned urns formerly at Carton, Ireland, where Bossi was employed around 1780 (Kenyon, op.cit., p. 28). Amongst his contemporaries were John Baptiste Cuvillie (d.1788) and Joseph Butcher, who boasted his 'Artificial Marble Chimneypieces; Side-Boards, etc...equal in colour and polish to any kind of Marble' (C. O'Neill, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 146-175).
THE 'APOLLO' SUNFLOWER TABLE
This table top, almost certainly designed by Dominic Bartoli, reflects the 'Roman' fashion promoted by the architect Robert Adam, while its composition celebrates lyric poetry's triumph with a laurel-festooned and golden sunflowered demi-medallion, that derives from a Roman temple dedicated to the sun and poetry deity Apollo (R. Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra, 1753). Dionysiac or Bacchic festivities in antiquity are also recalled by its flowered 'guilloche' border of ribbon-entwined vines framed by Grecian-black and laurel-flowered bands. Its ribboned border relates to patterns issued by the Italian artist Michelangelo Pergolesi (d. 1838), who had been brought to England by Adam in 1760 and was the author of Designs for Various Ornaments, 1771-1801 and Original Designs...in the Etruscan and Grotesque Style, published posthumously in 1814.
Although it was Bartoli's partner, John (Johan) Augustus Richter (fl. 1767-96) who patented the invention of inlaying scagliola in 1770, Richter appears almost exclusively to have been the financial arm of the partnership. With its 'palmyreen' sunflower and Etruscan beaded borders, this slab certainly relates to Robert Adam's design 'of two Tables for the Salon the tops to be of Scagliola' for Luton Park (Sir John Soane Museum). However, although Bartoli and Richter worked extensively for Robert Adam, including the table tops for Nostell Priory (cited above) executed in 1777 at a cost of 150 gns, an 'Etruscan' chimneypiece for 20 Portman Square in 1775, and the Croome Court tables of 1768 (sold from the collection of the late Sir Charles Clore, Christie's, London, 20 November 1986, lot 194), these commissions all corresponded directly to Adam designs.
A 'slab', with closely related inlay, now also attributed to Bartoli, is in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin (illustrated in M. Jourdain, English Decoration and Furniture of the later 18th Century, London, n.d., p. 69, fig. 82).
These exceptional scagliola-topped pier tables were almost certainly originally one from two identical pairs, which have subsequently been misdivided into matched pairs. The complimentary pair were seen by the present owner on exhibition in London in the 1970s.
DOMINIC BARTOLI
By Donald Cameron
Dominic Bartoli came from Leghorn
He was probably the first inlayer of scagliola to work in England although Vassali was engaged in producing architectural work - columns, pilasters and wall panels - at Castle Howard as early as 1737.
From 1763-1766 Bartoli was employed as a scagliolist by William Constable at Burton Constable Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire, being paid a guinea a week and the cost of his materials
In 1767 Bartoli went into partnership with John Augustus Richter, working from premises in Great Newport Street
In 1794-95 he went to Ireland to work for James Wyatt at Castle Coole in Co. Fermanagh
Both the present tables may be attributed to Dominic Bartoli. The design of both tables closely follows the template invented by Robert Adam. Both have the stylised central fan and the running bands of decoration which feature on a number of table designs by Adam in the Soane Museum. All the executed designs for which there are documentary records of manufacture are by the firm of Richter and Bartoli. The tables at Syon, Nostell and Osterley are all similar in overall design to the present examples.
The medallion table relates particularly closely to Dominic Bartoli's work, probably for Carlton House.
There is a chimneypiece, almost certainly by Bartoli, now in St James's Palace, which has almost identical ornament, and the medallion heads on both the table and the chimneypiece are very similar to the heads on the chimneypiece executed by Bartoli and Richter for Osterley House.
There are a number of records in the Royal Archives of Bartoli having produced work for Carlton House between 1784 and 1805.
In 1784 he was paid £450 for "work done at Carlton House" (RA Geo/34975) and in 1805 he writes begging for payment for "the tables" (RA Geo/25189). A payment of £84 is made on 11th March 1805 (RA Geo/25190) for "two Scagliola Tables inlaid with foliage and ornament", for which Bartoli signs a receipt (RA Geo/25190a). Finally, Jutsham records the return to Bartoli of a semicircular table inlaid with flowers (which was not wanted) in March 1807.
The second table is also certainly by Bartoli. It has a ribbon and oak motif on the border that was invented by Bartoli and is apparently unique to him. He first used it on the column jambs of the chimneypiece he designed for the State Bed Dressing Room at Burton Constable in 1764/5. He used variations of this design on a table formerly in the collection of Archbishop Agar and there is a nearly identical pair of tables now in an Irish Collection (illustrated in D. Guinness, Irish Houses, Dublin, 1972, p. 256).
Footnotes
1. In his Saggio Istorico della Real Galleria di Firenze of 1779 Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni calls him "un tal Domenico Bartoli, Livornese". Quoted in Anna Maria Massinelli, Scagliola, Rome, 1997.
2. Middlesex Sessions Papers, SP 1761/02/011
London Metropolitan Archives
3. A receipt in his hand states "Decr.13 1764 Recd. Of William Constable Esqur at the hands of Robt. Foster Fifty Four pounds twelve shillings in full One years Wages" (East Riding Archives DDCC/2/51)
4. Letter from Sir William Chambers 1773 quoted by R.B.Wragg, "The History of Scagliola", Country Life, 10 October 1957, pp. 718 - 721
5. These tables were sold from the collection of Sir Charles Clore, Christie's, London, 20 November 1986, lot 194. The Croome Court Account Books record a payment of £134.5.2 for these tables. (Eileen Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, London, 2001, p. 340)
6. Alistair Rowan, Buildings of North West Ulster, London, 1997
7.The Royal Archives record both Richter and Bartoli as having provided pieces for Carlton House - Bartoli writes begging for payment for two table tops (RA GEO/25189) and a payment of £84.0.0 is made on March 11th 1805 (RA GEO/25190a).
Donald Cameron's article, 'Bossi and Bartoli: Problems of attributing scagliola work in Ireland' was published in Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, Volume VII, January 2005.