VENICE, THE GLASS POSSIBLY BY THE MURANO WORKSHOPS, LAST QUARTER 17TH CENTURY

With its frame richly encrusted with a variety of vividly-colored glass imitating flowers, this mirror is not only an extravagantly luxurious piece of furnishing but also a testament to the imagination and exceptional capabilities of Venetian glass and mirror makers of the Baroque era. During the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries Venice was the unchallenged center of Italian mirror making and glass blowing. In this mirror the products of these two crafts are combined to create a work that was unrivaled not only on the Italian peninsula but in the whole of Europe. Mirrors produced in Venice in the late 1600s and the 1700s were set in a variety of frames decorated in the most imaginative ways, including gilding or gilding a mecca , veneering with etched glass, painting, lacquering, covering in lacca povera or, as in this case, embellishing with colorful glass imitating flowers or fruits. Here, the repoussé gilt metal frame adds additional brilliance and opulence to the mirror that is further enhanced with inset jasper. Mirrors of this type were manufactured in various shapes but octagonal ones, such as the subsequent lot, appear to have been the most common, while few rectangular ones survive. For a pair of very similar colored glass-mounted and gilt metal octagonal mirrors in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, see Musei e Gallerie di Milano, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Ceramiche-Vetri, Mobili e Arredi, Milan, 1983, p. 358, figs. 36-27. A mirror almost identical to this lot is illustrated in G. Child, World Mirrors, London, 1990, p. 241, fig 538.