.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This chair is almost certainly part of the celebrated and very large suite of seat-furniture made for Napoleon I’s uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839), probably for his Roman embassy, the Palazzo del Buffalo-Ferraioli in the Piazza Colonna. From a design of circa 1806 by Dionisio Santi (b. 1784-86) and/or Lorenzo Santi (1783-1839), as published in the former’s Modèles de Meubles (1828), the suite consisted of at least ninety-six pieces, most of which were recorded in an inventory, dated 1815, of Fesch’s Parisian hôtel Hocquart de Montfermeil; the suite comprised chaises, fauteuils, canapes and causeuses. In this number but not described separately there were at least three stylistic variations: a suite with triangular pediment, another with arched pediment, and an ‘acanthus-tailed griffin suite’ (L. Wood, The Upholstered Furniture in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, vol. II, New Haven and London, 2009, p. 744). Many of the chairs from the suite bear chiselled Roman numerals, as found on the pair offered here (ibid., pp. 738-756).
Part of this furniture was subsequently sold in the sale of Fesch’s Parisian house, 17 June 1816 and following days, lots 444-446, while the balance possibly remained at Fesch’s archiepiscopal residence at Lyon. Fourteen pieces were bequeathed to Fesch’s home town of Ajaccio, Corsica, and a large part was inherited by his principal heir, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain and comte de Survilliers (1768-1844); this was later acquired by Prince Anatole Demidoff for the Villa San Donato, outside Florence, illustrated in two watercolours by Fortuné de Fourrier, dated 1841, of the salle de Bal. The San Donato sale, held by Charles Pillet et al, 15 March 1880 and following days, included sixty-one pieces from this suite, and marked the date of its wide dispersal.
The antiquarian and collector, William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, almost certainly purchased his set of Fesch seat-furniture, with triangular pediments, from the San Donato sale (illustrated in John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill, 1822, sold in the Phillips 1823 Fonthill sale, ‘The Grand (Damask) Drawing Room’, probably lots 1534-1540, to the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, ed. D.E. Ostergard, William Beckford, 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent, New Haven and London, 2001, p. 432, no. 53).
Part of this furniture was subsequently sold in the sale of Fesch’s Parisian house, 17 June 1816 and following days, lots 444-446, while the balance possibly remained at Fesch’s archiepiscopal residence at Lyon. Fourteen pieces were bequeathed to Fesch’s home town of Ajaccio, Corsica, and a large part was inherited by his principal heir, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain and comte de Survilliers (1768-1844); this was later acquired by Prince Anatole Demidoff for the Villa San Donato, outside Florence, illustrated in two watercolours by Fortuné de Fourrier, dated 1841, of the salle de Bal. The San Donato sale, held by Charles Pillet et al, 15 March 1880 and following days, included sixty-one pieces from this suite, and marked the date of its wide dispersal.
The antiquarian and collector, William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, almost certainly purchased his set of Fesch seat-furniture, with triangular pediments, from the San Donato sale (illustrated in John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill, 1822, sold in the Phillips 1823 Fonthill sale, ‘The Grand (Damask) Drawing Room’, probably lots 1534-1540, to the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, ed. D.E. Ostergard, William Beckford, 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent, New Haven and London, 2001, p. 432, no. 53).