Lot 1

PROPERTY FROM VILLA D'AGLIÈ, TURIN (LOTS 1-51, 62, 299-300 & 318-394) Not far from the Po River in Piedmont, the Villa d'Agliè is located on the hill of Turin, just above the royal road that once connected the capital of Savoy to the Monferrato. It is one of the rare houses around Turin that has remained almost untouched from the beginning of the 18th century until the present day. Beyond the entrance gate the atmosphere and grandeur is from a bygone era.The villa, surrounded by a sumptuous garden embellished with statues, shows a façade with well-preserved 18th-century stone bas-reliefs depicting the Four Seasons, which recent studies have shown to have come from the royal palace gardens of the Venaria Reale, built in the second half of the 17th century to decorate the fountain of Hercules.The presence of a residence on its location is first recorded as far back as 1300 when it was intended to defend the road from Turin to Chieri. It was, however, from 1610 that the property and that next to it was owned by the Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy, son of Emanuele Filiberto and Marguerite de Valois. Soon after it passed to the Bellezia family and was inherited by Giovanni Francesco Bellezia, treasurer of the King and Mayor of the city of Turin during the plague of 1630. Throughout most of the 17th century, the Villa d’Agliè remained the summer residence of the Bellezia family. Later the villa came into the possession of the Princess Del Pozzo della Cisterna; and subsequently, during the first half of the 18th century, Count Ignazio Demorri di Castelmagno embellished the garden with statues and vases and enriched the main hall on the ground floor with large stucco medallions representing the Four Elements. These were the executed in 1739 by Simone Martinez, nephew of the celebrated court architect Filippo Juvarra, and served as models for the marble medallions executed for the Sala della Regina in the Royal Palace of Turin, which are still visible today.At the end of the 18th century, the Villa d’Agliè changed hands again and became the property of Benedetto Maurizio, Prince of Savoy and Duca of Chiablese, the beloved youngest son of King Carlo Emanuele III and Princess Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine. The prince commissioned the Turin architect Castelli to make further changes to the villa. From the beginning of the 19th century the villa was occupied by Sir John Foster, the British Ambassador. His major contribution to the villa was to transform the Italianate garden into a most fashionable romantic garden, by planting cedars of Lebanon, sequoia trees and chestnuts. Sir John Foster is recorded as having participated in a most lavish masked ball held in his honour at a Turinese palace. Fascinatingly, numerous period drawings have been found by the present owners of Villa d’Agliè, which relate to the garden before and after the contribution and vision of Sir John Foster.In the mid-19th century, the Villa was purchased by the Marchesi Pilo Boyl di Putifigari, a noble family of Spanish origin who first settled in Sardinia in 1600 and then later in Piedmont. Villa d’Agliè again changed hands in the early 1900s when it was purchased from the Swedish Reynius family, and finally was acquired by the Italian family of the present owners around seventy years ago, who have painstakingly conserved and maintained the villa in its full original glory.The villa retains the charm of the passage of time with its wonderful garden surrounded by a forest, which was the subject of interest from the celebrated landscape architect Russell Page who redesigned it.Inside the villa, the ground floor rooms have been untouched: the decoration is well preserved, as are the original floors and coffered ceilings with their original polychrome decoration dating from the end of the 17th century. The marble staircase leads to an enclosed porch opening on to a window from which you can admire the garden and, weather permitting, the mountains of the Susa Valley, the church of St. Michael and the river Po. On the Piano Nobile there are three reception rooms lavishly decorated with chinoiserie motifs, landscapes and figures, painted according to the newly fashionable designs which were ‘en vogue’ in Turin and all over Europe during the 18th century. The decoration of these rooms is very well preserved and remains a celebrated testament to the enduring style of Turin.When Villa d’Agliè was acquired by the family of the present owners, the house was sparsely furnished, and most of the furniture, pictures and objects were painstakingly sought out over many years by the passionate owners with the help of the leading tastemakers, designers and antiquaries of Turin, during the second half of the 20th century. The owners’ attention to detail was visible everywhere in the house. The furniture itself was chosen with a preference for pieces of Piedmontese and Turinese origin, a taste developed by the owners after visiting the celebrated ‘Mostra del Barocco Piemontese’ in 1963, in which several of the lots in this sale were exhibited (lots 2, 17, 19, 31 and 40).

A PAIR OF BRONZE GROUPS DEPICTING THE RAPE OF EUROPA AND NESSUS AND DEIANIRA

FRENCH, 18TH CENTURY

Details

A PAIR OF BRONZE GROUPS DEPICTING THE RAPE OF EUROPA AND NESSUS AND DEIANIRA
FRENCH, 18TH CENTURY
The ormolu bases probably 19th century, with foliate scrolls and shaped feet
11 ¾ in. (30 cm.) high; 10 ¼ in. (26 cm.) wide, 6 ¼ in. (16 cm.) deep

Literature

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
H. Weirauch, Europäische Bronzestatuetten 15.-18. Jahrhundert, Brunswick, 1967, p. 410, fig. 494
R. Wenley, French bronzes in the Wallace Collection, London, 2002, pp. 62-3, S187.

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Lot Essay

The slight differences in the modelling of these two figural groups suggest they were conceived by different hands, and paired at a later date. The ‘Nessus and Deianira’ exists in a small number of French casts dating to circa 1690, the principal versions are in the Wallace Collection, London and the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden (Wenley, loc. cit.; Weirauch, loc. cit.). While the model for this bronze may have been conceived at an earlier date to the ‘Rape of Europa’ the two figures were paired together as of 1700, appearing as successive entries in the inventory of André Le Notre's collection and as separate bronzes acquired in 1699 by the Elector of Saxony in Paris, now in the Grünes Gewölbe. It is likely, therefore, that an industrious founder considered this pairing to be of good commercial value and matched the models by supplying them with similar plinths.

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