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Lot Essay
These magnificent commodes, veneered with exquisite marquetry of engraved mother-of-pearl, brass and tortoiseshell strikingly set against a dark ground of exotic veneers, is part of a small group of masterpieces of an unidentified Sicilian intarsiatore.
Only one other such impressive cassettone, decorated with this distinctive marquetry, is known and attributable to the workshop of this skilled intarsiatore (sold at Sotheby's, Milan, 16-17 December 1997, lot 557 and now in a private collection). However, the identification is convincingly supported by the closely related delicate floral marquetry in engraved mother-of-pearl preserved on a late 17th century altar panel and a table top at the Oratorio di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria all'Olivella in Palermo (E. Colle, il Mobile Barocco in Italia, Milan, 2000, p. 56)
A remarkable casket inlaid with identical ribbon-tied engraved mother-of-pearl sprays and attributed to the workshops of Trapani, though probably a work of the same intarsiatore, is conserved in the Ezio Governale collection in Palermo and illustrated by M. Giarrizzo and A. Rotolo, Mobili e Mobilieri nella Sicilia del Settecento, 1992, Palermo, ill. 11, p. 72.
Only one other such impressive cassettone, decorated with this distinctive marquetry, is known and attributable to the workshop of this skilled intarsiatore (sold at Sotheby's, Milan, 16-17 December 1997, lot 557 and now in a private collection). However, the identification is convincingly supported by the closely related delicate floral marquetry in engraved mother-of-pearl preserved on a late 17th century altar panel and a table top at the Oratorio di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria all'Olivella in Palermo (E. Colle, il Mobile Barocco in Italia, Milan, 2000, p. 56)
A remarkable casket inlaid with identical ribbon-tied engraved mother-of-pearl sprays and attributed to the workshops of Trapani, though probably a work of the same intarsiatore, is conserved in the Ezio Governale collection in Palermo and illustrated by M. Giarrizzo and A. Rotolo, Mobili e Mobilieri nella Sicilia del Settecento, 1992, Palermo, ill. 11, p. 72.