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Lot Essay
A veritable tour de force of Italian craftsmanship of the early nineteenth century, every element of this splendid table is a magnificent piece of art in itself. It sumptuously combines a highly-sculptural base entirely conceived in gilt bronze with a rich combination of chased and burnished surfaces, supporting a marble top elaborately-inlaid with some of the most colorful semiprecious stones available to artists of the time of its creation. Works including an array of exceptional and rare semiprecious stone specimens were highly sought-after in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and were sometimes accompanied by printed materials identifying each stone, as was the case with the luxurious snuff boxes of Johann Christian Neuber. Similarly, this table could have served as a microcosm encompassing ancient history, geology, science and geography, all united by exceptional design and superb craftsmanship in one magnificent work of art. It was this artistic environment in which Giacomo Raffaelli learned his craft and honed his artistic sensibilities, which made him one of the most successful mosaicists and marble-workers of his generation.
GIACOMO RAFFAELLI (1753-1836) LAPIDARY MASTER
Anna Maria Massinelli
‘Giacomo Raffaelli whom I have already named,
and who I will name again as the one who combines
the possession of rare and precious stones
with sublime merit in the art of mosaic’ (Faustino Corsi, 1833)
This pietra dura specimen top is a celebration of Giacomo Raffaelli’s fascination for the mineral world and his virtuosity as a lapidary artist. The stunning lapidary palette of the table features a rich specimen of semiprecious stones inlaid on a white Carrara statuary marble background. The geometrical pattern comprises one hundred and thirty stones, dominated by the large central slice of agate whose internal microcrystalline formation is brightened by a gold foil underneath. This specimen maintains the natural irregular pebble shape and is immersed in a large border constituted by slices of amethyst. The surrounding stones are arranged symmetrically around a lozenge formed by a sequence of rectangular panels (including Sicilian and Corsican jasper and other rare stones) and a row of round and oval cut agates that frame the central amethyst and agate.
Giacomo, born in Rome in 1753, was a descendant of a family of glass makers. In 1775 he achieved renown with a successful mosaic exhibition held in his studio in Salita San Sebastianello, near the Spanish steps. Contemporary sources crowned Giacomo as the inventor of a new way to use glass mosaic in objets de vertu, such as boxes, small plaques and jewelry. Archival research shows that, while he achieved fame as a glass mosaicist, he was also very involved with a different range of productions, in particular lapidary works, which enchanted the Grand tourists during their stay in Rome.
In 1794, writing a letter to Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, architect of the Elector of Mainz, Raffaelli announced the opening of his pietra dura workshop in Rome. He asked for some samples of German stones, and ‘pietre nicolate’ (sardonix agate) to carve cameos. He offered in exchange some of his mosaics. It is not known if he succeeded in this specific request, but we know that his lapidary collection was hugely increased at this time.
The celebrated Roman connoisseur and marble collector, Faustino Corsi (1711-1846), described the Raffaelli workshop as a special place where one could find a large assortment of rare stones and specimens, and pointed out that Raffaelli’s son Vincenzo was also a refined lapidary connoisseur. Corsi described an antique, huge specimen of spato-fluore, remarkable for its size, vivacity and variety of the colors and an enormous block of rock crystal, weighing eight hundred and seventy pounds.
Raffaelli’s fame as a lapidary artist quickly widespread and in 1784 he received an important commission from the Florence resident George Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper via the Scottish painter Jacob More, who resided in Rome, for a pair of marble and pietra dura table tops, to incorporate two Florentine Grand Ducal workshop panels already in the Earl’s collection, depicting an interior view of the Coliseum and the harbor in Leghorn. It is significant that Cowper, living in Florence, turned to Raffaelli, rather than the Grand Ducal workshop, for these tables, which included a variety of marmora romana, porphyry, granites, lapis lazuli and Sicilian jasper.
In the early 19th century, Raffaelli renewed the technique and style of his lapidary works. In a letter to Vincenzo Mora, who was traveling in the south of Italy trying to sell luxury objects to the Bourbon court, Raffaelli described a chimney piece and a pair of tables from his workshop, in statuary marble inlaid in rare stones. The chimney piece was eventually acquired by Pope Pius VII and in 1803 he sent it as a present to Napoleon, who had it installed in the Salon Doré at Malmaison. In the letter which accompanied the chimney Raffaelli listed 126 rare stones in the frieze including agate, carnelians, lapis lazuli, jasper, 177 stones in the pilasters, 151 amethyst stones around the light of the chimney, everything framed in gilt bronze. The frieze included also three micromosaic plaques with Herculaneum subjects (these and most of the stone decoration were removed and dispersed during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870). Giacomo sent to Napoleon the descriptions of the two inlaid tables that matched the chimney and he attached the design showing the top and the stand of one of them (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale), although the tables were never sent.
In 1804 Raffaelli moved to Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Italian Kingdom, invited by the viceroy Eugenio de Beauharnais to open a mosaic school, at which time the two still unfinished tables were shipped with the rest of his properties. He was able to complete them, with some changes, only ten years later when they were exhibited, in 1814, at the annual exhibition in Brera. They are described in a printed brochure and only about three decades later when Vincenzo inherited them they were sent to St. Petersburg and are now in the Hermitage Museum. The tops are profusely inlaid with rare marbles, hardstones and with micromosaic panels of allegories of the arts and Cupids, while the remarkable stands are similarly inlaid with hardstones in white marble
The interest of Giacomo for vases, clocks and many other different kind of decorative objects in marble and semiprecious stones is very well documented. He referred to different stonecutters in Rome, one of them was "Domenico scalpellino" who supplied marble vases, in different sizes and stones, and sculptures in "rosso antico". A repertoire of designs for vases, remained between Giacomo papers, it shows some common shapes: urns, craters, amphorae, columns vases. Raffaelli was able to transform these traditional vases into something completely new: he inset the white curved surface of the vases with pietra dura and micromosaic plaques, a very sophisticated technique invented and perfected by Giacomo himself.
In 1803, the year before he moved to Milan, Giacomo met the Duke Francesco Melzi d'Eril and he showed him the design of a monumental centerpiece, or dessert, a triumph of the Roman style with retour d'Egypte accents. The Duke was enchanted and he soon ordered it, following with a second commission of a larger centerpiece for the Royal Palace in Milan to set the table in honour of Napoleon for his coronation as king of Italy on May 26 1805 (Palazzo Reale, Milan). This masterwork, together with his marble pieces donated by the Pope to Napoleon, established his reputation at the Napoleonic court and guaranteed him a very good commitment and compensation during his time in Milan.
As soon as he was settled, he began a close correspondence with his son Vincenzo who remained in Rome to organize the final move of the studio and of the rest of the family. The letters exchanged with his son between 1803-1804 are a precious source of information about his private life, his works, patrons and collaborators. He was immediately planning to open an ‘antique store’ in Milan to sell his own art works, jewelry and different objects imported from Rome. In one of the first letters to Vincenzo he wrote: ‘hopefully we can do some business, not with the mosaics, that they don’t know it here, but only with marbles and other genres’.
In fact, along with the organization of the mosaic school, Raffaelli focused his private production on the lapidary works. Writing to his wife in Rome, he described how ‘I am sitting here with Giuseppe [his assistant and stone cutters], night and day, trying to arrange stones on papers to make tables’.
His concentration on lapidary works at this time is testified by the lists of objects shipped by the sculptor Pietro Marchetti (1766-1846) from Carrara from 1805 to 1815. These included several pieces of marbles cut for table tops of different size, bases for ‘deserts’, frames for chimneys. Raffaelli was very demanding about the quality of the statuary marble. Marchetti sometime explained how difficult it was to find immaculate white marble as Raffaelli required, but he also remarked that he can easily hide some spots with the inlaid colored stones.
Although the canonical repertoire of marmora romana was adopted enthusiastically by Raffaelli, he was also fascinated by more exotic hard stones, of which he was a voracious researcher and buyer and was especially curious about the most recently mined minerals, including labradorite, which he often inserted in his lapidary works. While in Milan, Giacomo intensified his research of stones and traveled across the Alps in search of famous German jaspers and agates. In 1809 he was in touch with the Caesar Demeaux Gottlie Scriba & Comp workshop based in Idar-Oberstein for the purchasing of hardstone vases and rough stones. The business relationship did not last too long because the German workshop was unable to meet Raffaelli's demanding requests, but nevertheless Giacomo loved the translucent and unique palettes of the agates found there. An undated autograph notebook seems to be a kind of traveler diary where he listed various purchases of stones during one of his trips to Germany. From this we learn, for example, of the purchase of agates, of a red and crystalline stone, petrified wood, several small stones and ‘niccoli’ (sardonix agate), suitable materials for cameos; also a piece of jade from a Frankfurt dealer in exchange for various stones. The vast specimens collected exceeded two thousand samples, accurately described in the inventory drafted in 1821 when Giacomo relocated to Rome: by then, the vast assortment was equal to the most important contemporary lapidary collections. These remarkable jewel-like stones collected by Raffaelli, with their enchanting chromatic variations, added a touch of novelty and richness to his lapidary work.
Raffaelli’s concentration on hardstones during his time in Milan, and his days spent accommodating colorful stones on the papers, is evident in a distinctive group of table tops created during this period, of which the spectacular example examined here is a significant example.
One can certainly recognize his skill, derived from such tireless questing for rare hardstones, in the present table, composed exclusively of semiprecious stones, suggesting the important destination of this sophisticated specimen. The top can be compared for the geometrical pattern, size and use of similar stones, with a pair of Raffaelli tables at the Hermitage Museum (of which one is illustrated here) which together with agates, jaspers and carnelians also include a refined selection of marmora romana (unlike the table studied here which is composed exclusively of hardstones).
Two other larger tables are related to this distinctive production by Raffaelli. One belongs to the Spanish Royal collection and was purchased in Rome shortly before 1800 by the watchmaker François-Louis Godon, whose widow would later sell it to Charles IV of Spain in 1803 (Madrid, Palacio Real, see A. González-Palacios, Las Colecciones Reales Españolas de Mosaicos y Piedras Duras, Madrid, 2001. pp.240-3, illustrated here fig.3). The other was acquired by Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquis of Londonderry (1778-1854) when British ambassador at the Habsburg court in Vienna between 1814 and 1822. According to documents which I discovered, Giacomo was coincidentally in the same city between 1818 and 1819, after an adventurous trip with a caravan of more than one hundred wagons to bring the monumental mosaic of the Last Supper, after the celebrated fresco of Leonardo da Vinci, the mosaic masterpiece that Giacomo produced during his stay in Milan (Wien MinoritenKirche). From the correspondence exchanged with Vincenzo, who remained in Milan, we know that Giacomo opened a small gallery in his Viennese house and he sent to his son a list of mosaics and tables to ship soon in order to display it and try to make good business in the Imperial city. Possibly during his stay in Vienna he had the opportunity to meet Lord Londonderry who bought his outstanding table (see Massinelli op.cit.,pp. 287-293).
In 1821 after relocating to Rome in October 1820, Giacomo shipped 195 boxes filled with finished and unfinished objects, tools, etc. and more than 2000 different stones carefully listed. He went back to his native town as a wealthy artist and merchant, and he bought a building in Via del Babuino where he lived until his death in 1836. Giuseppe Valadier, the celebrated bronzier and designer, remodeled the house for Raffaelli, providing him with a design for the house inscribed to ‘Sig. Giacomo Raffaelli Consigliere di S.M. Imperatore dellle Russie’, emphasizing his connections to the Russian Imperial Court. Here, in his old age, he was finally able to make his dream true and he founded a 'grande opificio', running it with his son Vincenzo, whose production was very much oriented toward lapidary works.
THE BASE
The spectacular base, entirely conceived in gilt-bronze and inset with further precious stones in the frieze (although of different sources to those of the top), is a veritable tour de force of sculpture and chasing and sumptuous gilding. This base, inspired by ancient iconographic sources, is formed of four herms of younger and older males embracing two figures of caryatids which grasp towards opulent cornucopiae on the long side of the table. The construction of the table base, which is entirely made of metal, is ingenious, with the legs formed of two sections which slot into each other and joined by an inner iron rod which is hidden at the base by the hoof feet.
The sculptor responsible for the magnificent base remains a mystery. There is no documentary evidence that it was conceived by Raffaelli himself, and the existence of an identical base, with later porphyry top, in the Invernizzi collection, Milan (illustrated in A. González-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Roma e il Regno delle Due Sicilie, Milan, 1984, vol. II, fig. 146), suggests that the two tables may have originally been conceived as a pair, suggesting a commission of considerable importance.
When publishing it in 1984, González-Palacios dated the Invernizzi table to 1770-1775 while Anna Maria Giusti, who first published the present table in 2008, advanced an attribution to Righetti based on possible stylistic references to works by the famous Roman bronze artist and dated the base to the early 19th century. She compares the figures on these tables to those found on a lectern by Righetti in San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, see Koeppe and Giusti, op.cit.,. pp. 313-314. The figures’ distinctive combination of highly chased and burnished finishes also features in his 1819 reliefs of Saint Francesco and Saint Ferdinando at the Palazzo Reale in Naples (see E. Colle, A. Griseri, and R. Valeriani, Bronzi decorative in Italia: Bronzisti e fonditori italiani dal Seicento all’Ottocento, Milan 2001, p .238, no. 67).
She also suggested a connection between this base and documentary references to some bronze cariatyds received by Raffaelli in 1804. More recent archival researches demonstrate that the many mentions related to these bronzes are instead referring to smaller scale caryatids for the four candelabra that dominated the monumental centerpiece in the Royal Palace in Milan.
Different ‘metallari’ provided bronzes and models that Giacomo intended to cast himself while planning to found his proper foundry. ‘Angelo metallaro’ supplied the caryatids through ‘Domenico’ scultore, other suppliers mentioned in the documents were Conti, Giosuè, Marcandetti, ‘Gislacho’ and a ‘metallaro in Porta Nuova’. Giacomo also explored the techniques of creating gilt-bronzes himself and in 1803 before leaving for Milan urged his son Vincenzo to discover how to make the distinctive beaded rim he often used to frame his marble tops, as on the example studied here and those in the Hermitage, for which Vincenzo created an 'ordigno', a special tool for this component.
The documents show a dense network of artisans in whose workshops the celebrated late eighteenth-century models of Luigi Valadier (1726-1785) were still circulating together with those of Luigi Righetti (1780-1852). Giacomo often used these models which he then reworked on his own, creating something completely new. His deference to the creations of Valadier and Righetti is especially testified by his extraordinary centerpieces. It is of course interesting to note that Giuseppe Valadier remodeled Raffaelli’s house in Rome, and the remarkable à l’antique caryatids of this base, their arms straining towards the frieze, certainly recall the supports of the celebrated 17th century table reset by his father Luigi in 1774, now in the Sacro Militare Ordine di Malta, Rome and the pair of tables supplied by Giuseppe to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in 1789-1792 (see A. González-Palacios, Luigi Valadier, New York, 2018, p. 424, fig.9_27 and p. 457, figs. 10_3 and 10_4).
It cannot therefore be excluded that the bronzes on the present base were conceived in the context of the circulation of models by the two leading sculptors in bronze on the Roman art market of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
VINCENZO RAFFAELLI
Vincenzo invented a new tool to cut curved slices of stone and joint it with extreme precision. A late article published in 1838 by Pietro Volpicelli, describes the operation of this ‘machine’ and the use made in stone mosaics and marble reproduction of roman monuments. Giacomo and Vincenzo used their large collection of stones and their new tool to reinvent the idea of the specimen table. They created elliptical patterns like in the table sold to Danike Pettiward in 1829 (Cambridge, Trinity College, Fitzwilliam Museum) or the one sold on 8 March 1831 to Lord John and Lady Augusta Kennedy-Erskine (Private collection). Accurate descriptive catalogues were attached to this table tops conceived like selected lithic collection. Carlo Alciati was paid by Raffaelli for writing the catalogues of four tables, one of them referring to the Erskine table. Vincenzo carried on the Opificio in via del Babuino until, in 1845, he moved to St. Petersburg where he founded the Imperial mosaic factory and school. He also moved many pieces to St. Peterburg remaining from the earlier production of his father and also his ‘machine’ for cutting stone, continuing to produce marble vases and specimen table tops in the city of the Tzar.
The personality of Vincenzo was overshadowed by his exuberant and creative father but many of the results achieved in the family workshop were also made possible thanks to Vincenzo's ingenuity and manual skill. He was the central figure of the project cherished by Giacomo right from the start: the foundation of a luxury artistic industry, an ‘opificio’ with an internal system of production capable of covering all the techniques and needs related to interior decoration. Vincenzo was totally involved in the grandiose project of his father, who encouraged him to learn everything rather than having to deal with sometimes elusive and not always reliable artisans or established artists with excessive economic demands. Vincenzo was the one going around to the Roman workshops trying to learn how to make scagliola, cast bronzes, cameos imprinting, and he ended up traveling to Paris to learn how to make gilt bronzes. In 1803, before moving to Milan, Giacomo urged him to learn how to make the golden brass pearl border that Giacomo used in large quantities to frame his mosaics, table and any other kind of works. He told Vincenzo to walk in the workshop of his bronze suppliers ‘Gislacho’ to look and understand how he did it and to provide the tools to make it by himself. Vincenzo achieved most of the goals but his father’s project failed in Milan, where they were mostly occupied with the mosaic school and with the monumental mosaic of the Last Supper for the government, so that their private production was limited to some glass mosaics and specimen table tops. When in his old age Giacomo founded the ‘opificio’ in via del Babuino, in Rome, the workshop was mostly focused on lapidary works. Vincenzo’s deep knowledge in stones and antique marbles was estimated by the erudite and lapidary expert Francesco Belli who described, in Villa Albani, a vase carved by Vincenzo from the fragment of an ancient column in red porphyry.
Vincenzo’s mechanical and experimental skill was very much appreciated during his time in Russia by the Emperor Nicholas I. While in St. Petersburg he was able to create and add, to the glass mosaic palette, a tint which was monopoly of the Venetian: the aventurine. Vincenzo presented it like a new product of the Russian imperial workshop, but the emperor said: ‘c'est-à-dire le produit de votre talent’.
The documents mentioned in this essay are from the Raffaelli Archive, Negro Foundation, Rome.
The references and transcriptions are in: A.M. Massinelli, with contributions from M.Alfieri, L.Biancini, E. Yakovleva, G.Tassinari, Giacomo Raffaelli: Maestro di Stile e di Mosaico, Firenze, 2018
F. Corsi, Delle pietre antiche di Faustino Corsi Romano, II ed. Tipografia Salviucci, Roma, 1833
Prof. Anna Maria Massinelli teaches modern art history at the Academy of Fine Art of Brera, Milan. She has a particular interest in the history of the Medici dynasty and the art of hardstones, and has written and edited a number of books on the subject including Il Tesoro dei Medici, 1992; Il Mobile Toscano, 1993; Scagliola.L’arte della pietra di luna, 1997; The Gilbert Collection. Hardstone, 2000; the recent monograph on Raffaelli: Giacomo Raffaelli Maestro di stile e di mosaico, 2018 and most recently De Lapidibus. Il trattato delle pietre di Giuseppe Antonio Torricelli, 2019, a comprehensive study of this Grand Ducal lapidary artist.
GIACOMO RAFFAELLI (1753-1836) LAPIDARY MASTER
Anna Maria Massinelli
‘Giacomo Raffaelli whom I have already named,
and who I will name again as the one who combines
the possession of rare and precious stones
with sublime merit in the art of mosaic’ (Faustino Corsi, 1833)
This pietra dura specimen top is a celebration of Giacomo Raffaelli’s fascination for the mineral world and his virtuosity as a lapidary artist. The stunning lapidary palette of the table features a rich specimen of semiprecious stones inlaid on a white Carrara statuary marble background. The geometrical pattern comprises one hundred and thirty stones, dominated by the large central slice of agate whose internal microcrystalline formation is brightened by a gold foil underneath. This specimen maintains the natural irregular pebble shape and is immersed in a large border constituted by slices of amethyst. The surrounding stones are arranged symmetrically around a lozenge formed by a sequence of rectangular panels (including Sicilian and Corsican jasper and other rare stones) and a row of round and oval cut agates that frame the central amethyst and agate.
Giacomo, born in Rome in 1753, was a descendant of a family of glass makers. In 1775 he achieved renown with a successful mosaic exhibition held in his studio in Salita San Sebastianello, near the Spanish steps. Contemporary sources crowned Giacomo as the inventor of a new way to use glass mosaic in objets de vertu, such as boxes, small plaques and jewelry. Archival research shows that, while he achieved fame as a glass mosaicist, he was also very involved with a different range of productions, in particular lapidary works, which enchanted the Grand tourists during their stay in Rome.
In 1794, writing a letter to Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, architect of the Elector of Mainz, Raffaelli announced the opening of his pietra dura workshop in Rome. He asked for some samples of German stones, and ‘pietre nicolate’ (sardonix agate) to carve cameos. He offered in exchange some of his mosaics. It is not known if he succeeded in this specific request, but we know that his lapidary collection was hugely increased at this time.
The celebrated Roman connoisseur and marble collector, Faustino Corsi (1711-1846), described the Raffaelli workshop as a special place where one could find a large assortment of rare stones and specimens, and pointed out that Raffaelli’s son Vincenzo was also a refined lapidary connoisseur. Corsi described an antique, huge specimen of spato-fluore, remarkable for its size, vivacity and variety of the colors and an enormous block of rock crystal, weighing eight hundred and seventy pounds.
Raffaelli’s fame as a lapidary artist quickly widespread and in 1784 he received an important commission from the Florence resident George Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper via the Scottish painter Jacob More, who resided in Rome, for a pair of marble and pietra dura table tops, to incorporate two Florentine Grand Ducal workshop panels already in the Earl’s collection, depicting an interior view of the Coliseum and the harbor in Leghorn. It is significant that Cowper, living in Florence, turned to Raffaelli, rather than the Grand Ducal workshop, for these tables, which included a variety of marmora romana, porphyry, granites, lapis lazuli and Sicilian jasper.
In the early 19th century, Raffaelli renewed the technique and style of his lapidary works. In a letter to Vincenzo Mora, who was traveling in the south of Italy trying to sell luxury objects to the Bourbon court, Raffaelli described a chimney piece and a pair of tables from his workshop, in statuary marble inlaid in rare stones. The chimney piece was eventually acquired by Pope Pius VII and in 1803 he sent it as a present to Napoleon, who had it installed in the Salon Doré at Malmaison. In the letter which accompanied the chimney Raffaelli listed 126 rare stones in the frieze including agate, carnelians, lapis lazuli, jasper, 177 stones in the pilasters, 151 amethyst stones around the light of the chimney, everything framed in gilt bronze. The frieze included also three micromosaic plaques with Herculaneum subjects (these and most of the stone decoration were removed and dispersed during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870). Giacomo sent to Napoleon the descriptions of the two inlaid tables that matched the chimney and he attached the design showing the top and the stand of one of them (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale), although the tables were never sent.
In 1804 Raffaelli moved to Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Italian Kingdom, invited by the viceroy Eugenio de Beauharnais to open a mosaic school, at which time the two still unfinished tables were shipped with the rest of his properties. He was able to complete them, with some changes, only ten years later when they were exhibited, in 1814, at the annual exhibition in Brera. They are described in a printed brochure and only about three decades later when Vincenzo inherited them they were sent to St. Petersburg and are now in the Hermitage Museum. The tops are profusely inlaid with rare marbles, hardstones and with micromosaic panels of allegories of the arts and Cupids, while the remarkable stands are similarly inlaid with hardstones in white marble
The interest of Giacomo for vases, clocks and many other different kind of decorative objects in marble and semiprecious stones is very well documented. He referred to different stonecutters in Rome, one of them was "Domenico scalpellino" who supplied marble vases, in different sizes and stones, and sculptures in "rosso antico". A repertoire of designs for vases, remained between Giacomo papers, it shows some common shapes: urns, craters, amphorae, columns vases. Raffaelli was able to transform these traditional vases into something completely new: he inset the white curved surface of the vases with pietra dura and micromosaic plaques, a very sophisticated technique invented and perfected by Giacomo himself.
In 1803, the year before he moved to Milan, Giacomo met the Duke Francesco Melzi d'Eril and he showed him the design of a monumental centerpiece, or dessert, a triumph of the Roman style with retour d'Egypte accents. The Duke was enchanted and he soon ordered it, following with a second commission of a larger centerpiece for the Royal Palace in Milan to set the table in honour of Napoleon for his coronation as king of Italy on May 26 1805 (Palazzo Reale, Milan). This masterwork, together with his marble pieces donated by the Pope to Napoleon, established his reputation at the Napoleonic court and guaranteed him a very good commitment and compensation during his time in Milan.
As soon as he was settled, he began a close correspondence with his son Vincenzo who remained in Rome to organize the final move of the studio and of the rest of the family. The letters exchanged with his son between 1803-1804 are a precious source of information about his private life, his works, patrons and collaborators. He was immediately planning to open an ‘antique store’ in Milan to sell his own art works, jewelry and different objects imported from Rome. In one of the first letters to Vincenzo he wrote: ‘hopefully we can do some business, not with the mosaics, that they don’t know it here, but only with marbles and other genres’.
In fact, along with the organization of the mosaic school, Raffaelli focused his private production on the lapidary works. Writing to his wife in Rome, he described how ‘I am sitting here with Giuseppe [his assistant and stone cutters], night and day, trying to arrange stones on papers to make tables’.
His concentration on lapidary works at this time is testified by the lists of objects shipped by the sculptor Pietro Marchetti (1766-1846) from Carrara from 1805 to 1815. These included several pieces of marbles cut for table tops of different size, bases for ‘deserts’, frames for chimneys. Raffaelli was very demanding about the quality of the statuary marble. Marchetti sometime explained how difficult it was to find immaculate white marble as Raffaelli required, but he also remarked that he can easily hide some spots with the inlaid colored stones.
Although the canonical repertoire of marmora romana was adopted enthusiastically by Raffaelli, he was also fascinated by more exotic hard stones, of which he was a voracious researcher and buyer and was especially curious about the most recently mined minerals, including labradorite, which he often inserted in his lapidary works. While in Milan, Giacomo intensified his research of stones and traveled across the Alps in search of famous German jaspers and agates. In 1809 he was in touch with the Caesar Demeaux Gottlie Scriba & Comp workshop based in Idar-Oberstein for the purchasing of hardstone vases and rough stones. The business relationship did not last too long because the German workshop was unable to meet Raffaelli's demanding requests, but nevertheless Giacomo loved the translucent and unique palettes of the agates found there. An undated autograph notebook seems to be a kind of traveler diary where he listed various purchases of stones during one of his trips to Germany. From this we learn, for example, of the purchase of agates, of a red and crystalline stone, petrified wood, several small stones and ‘niccoli’ (sardonix agate), suitable materials for cameos; also a piece of jade from a Frankfurt dealer in exchange for various stones. The vast specimens collected exceeded two thousand samples, accurately described in the inventory drafted in 1821 when Giacomo relocated to Rome: by then, the vast assortment was equal to the most important contemporary lapidary collections. These remarkable jewel-like stones collected by Raffaelli, with their enchanting chromatic variations, added a touch of novelty and richness to his lapidary work.
Raffaelli’s concentration on hardstones during his time in Milan, and his days spent accommodating colorful stones on the papers, is evident in a distinctive group of table tops created during this period, of which the spectacular example examined here is a significant example.
One can certainly recognize his skill, derived from such tireless questing for rare hardstones, in the present table, composed exclusively of semiprecious stones, suggesting the important destination of this sophisticated specimen. The top can be compared for the geometrical pattern, size and use of similar stones, with a pair of Raffaelli tables at the Hermitage Museum (of which one is illustrated here) which together with agates, jaspers and carnelians also include a refined selection of marmora romana (unlike the table studied here which is composed exclusively of hardstones).
Two other larger tables are related to this distinctive production by Raffaelli. One belongs to the Spanish Royal collection and was purchased in Rome shortly before 1800 by the watchmaker François-Louis Godon, whose widow would later sell it to Charles IV of Spain in 1803 (Madrid, Palacio Real, see A. González-Palacios, Las Colecciones Reales Españolas de Mosaicos y Piedras Duras, Madrid, 2001. pp.240-3, illustrated here fig.3). The other was acquired by Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquis of Londonderry (1778-1854) when British ambassador at the Habsburg court in Vienna between 1814 and 1822. According to documents which I discovered, Giacomo was coincidentally in the same city between 1818 and 1819, after an adventurous trip with a caravan of more than one hundred wagons to bring the monumental mosaic of the Last Supper, after the celebrated fresco of Leonardo da Vinci, the mosaic masterpiece that Giacomo produced during his stay in Milan (Wien MinoritenKirche). From the correspondence exchanged with Vincenzo, who remained in Milan, we know that Giacomo opened a small gallery in his Viennese house and he sent to his son a list of mosaics and tables to ship soon in order to display it and try to make good business in the Imperial city. Possibly during his stay in Vienna he had the opportunity to meet Lord Londonderry who bought his outstanding table (see Massinelli op.cit.,pp. 287-293).
In 1821 after relocating to Rome in October 1820, Giacomo shipped 195 boxes filled with finished and unfinished objects, tools, etc. and more than 2000 different stones carefully listed. He went back to his native town as a wealthy artist and merchant, and he bought a building in Via del Babuino where he lived until his death in 1836. Giuseppe Valadier, the celebrated bronzier and designer, remodeled the house for Raffaelli, providing him with a design for the house inscribed to ‘Sig. Giacomo Raffaelli Consigliere di S.M. Imperatore dellle Russie’, emphasizing his connections to the Russian Imperial Court. Here, in his old age, he was finally able to make his dream true and he founded a 'grande opificio', running it with his son Vincenzo, whose production was very much oriented toward lapidary works.
THE BASE
The spectacular base, entirely conceived in gilt-bronze and inset with further precious stones in the frieze (although of different sources to those of the top), is a veritable tour de force of sculpture and chasing and sumptuous gilding. This base, inspired by ancient iconographic sources, is formed of four herms of younger and older males embracing two figures of caryatids which grasp towards opulent cornucopiae on the long side of the table. The construction of the table base, which is entirely made of metal, is ingenious, with the legs formed of two sections which slot into each other and joined by an inner iron rod which is hidden at the base by the hoof feet.
The sculptor responsible for the magnificent base remains a mystery. There is no documentary evidence that it was conceived by Raffaelli himself, and the existence of an identical base, with later porphyry top, in the Invernizzi collection, Milan (illustrated in A. González-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Roma e il Regno delle Due Sicilie, Milan, 1984, vol. II, fig. 146), suggests that the two tables may have originally been conceived as a pair, suggesting a commission of considerable importance.
When publishing it in 1984, González-Palacios dated the Invernizzi table to 1770-1775 while Anna Maria Giusti, who first published the present table in 2008, advanced an attribution to Righetti based on possible stylistic references to works by the famous Roman bronze artist and dated the base to the early 19th century. She compares the figures on these tables to those found on a lectern by Righetti in San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, see Koeppe and Giusti, op.cit.,. pp. 313-314. The figures’ distinctive combination of highly chased and burnished finishes also features in his 1819 reliefs of Saint Francesco and Saint Ferdinando at the Palazzo Reale in Naples (see E. Colle, A. Griseri, and R. Valeriani, Bronzi decorative in Italia: Bronzisti e fonditori italiani dal Seicento all’Ottocento, Milan 2001, p .238, no. 67).
She also suggested a connection between this base and documentary references to some bronze cariatyds received by Raffaelli in 1804. More recent archival researches demonstrate that the many mentions related to these bronzes are instead referring to smaller scale caryatids for the four candelabra that dominated the monumental centerpiece in the Royal Palace in Milan.
Different ‘metallari’ provided bronzes and models that Giacomo intended to cast himself while planning to found his proper foundry. ‘Angelo metallaro’ supplied the caryatids through ‘Domenico’ scultore, other suppliers mentioned in the documents were Conti, Giosuè, Marcandetti, ‘Gislacho’ and a ‘metallaro in Porta Nuova’. Giacomo also explored the techniques of creating gilt-bronzes himself and in 1803 before leaving for Milan urged his son Vincenzo to discover how to make the distinctive beaded rim he often used to frame his marble tops, as on the example studied here and those in the Hermitage, for which Vincenzo created an 'ordigno', a special tool for this component.
The documents show a dense network of artisans in whose workshops the celebrated late eighteenth-century models of Luigi Valadier (1726-1785) were still circulating together with those of Luigi Righetti (1780-1852). Giacomo often used these models which he then reworked on his own, creating something completely new. His deference to the creations of Valadier and Righetti is especially testified by his extraordinary centerpieces. It is of course interesting to note that Giuseppe Valadier remodeled Raffaelli’s house in Rome, and the remarkable à l’antique caryatids of this base, their arms straining towards the frieze, certainly recall the supports of the celebrated 17th century table reset by his father Luigi in 1774, now in the Sacro Militare Ordine di Malta, Rome and the pair of tables supplied by Giuseppe to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in 1789-1792 (see A. González-Palacios, Luigi Valadier, New York, 2018, p. 424, fig.9_27 and p. 457, figs. 10_3 and 10_4).
It cannot therefore be excluded that the bronzes on the present base were conceived in the context of the circulation of models by the two leading sculptors in bronze on the Roman art market of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
VINCENZO RAFFAELLI
Vincenzo invented a new tool to cut curved slices of stone and joint it with extreme precision. A late article published in 1838 by Pietro Volpicelli, describes the operation of this ‘machine’ and the use made in stone mosaics and marble reproduction of roman monuments. Giacomo and Vincenzo used their large collection of stones and their new tool to reinvent the idea of the specimen table. They created elliptical patterns like in the table sold to Danike Pettiward in 1829 (Cambridge, Trinity College, Fitzwilliam Museum) or the one sold on 8 March 1831 to Lord John and Lady Augusta Kennedy-Erskine (Private collection). Accurate descriptive catalogues were attached to this table tops conceived like selected lithic collection. Carlo Alciati was paid by Raffaelli for writing the catalogues of four tables, one of them referring to the Erskine table. Vincenzo carried on the Opificio in via del Babuino until, in 1845, he moved to St. Petersburg where he founded the Imperial mosaic factory and school. He also moved many pieces to St. Peterburg remaining from the earlier production of his father and also his ‘machine’ for cutting stone, continuing to produce marble vases and specimen table tops in the city of the Tzar.
The personality of Vincenzo was overshadowed by his exuberant and creative father but many of the results achieved in the family workshop were also made possible thanks to Vincenzo's ingenuity and manual skill. He was the central figure of the project cherished by Giacomo right from the start: the foundation of a luxury artistic industry, an ‘opificio’ with an internal system of production capable of covering all the techniques and needs related to interior decoration. Vincenzo was totally involved in the grandiose project of his father, who encouraged him to learn everything rather than having to deal with sometimes elusive and not always reliable artisans or established artists with excessive economic demands. Vincenzo was the one going around to the Roman workshops trying to learn how to make scagliola, cast bronzes, cameos imprinting, and he ended up traveling to Paris to learn how to make gilt bronzes. In 1803, before moving to Milan, Giacomo urged him to learn how to make the golden brass pearl border that Giacomo used in large quantities to frame his mosaics, table and any other kind of works. He told Vincenzo to walk in the workshop of his bronze suppliers ‘Gislacho’ to look and understand how he did it and to provide the tools to make it by himself. Vincenzo achieved most of the goals but his father’s project failed in Milan, where they were mostly occupied with the mosaic school and with the monumental mosaic of the Last Supper for the government, so that their private production was limited to some glass mosaics and specimen table tops. When in his old age Giacomo founded the ‘opificio’ in via del Babuino, in Rome, the workshop was mostly focused on lapidary works. Vincenzo’s deep knowledge in stones and antique marbles was estimated by the erudite and lapidary expert Francesco Belli who described, in Villa Albani, a vase carved by Vincenzo from the fragment of an ancient column in red porphyry.
Vincenzo’s mechanical and experimental skill was very much appreciated during his time in Russia by the Emperor Nicholas I. While in St. Petersburg he was able to create and add, to the glass mosaic palette, a tint which was monopoly of the Venetian: the aventurine. Vincenzo presented it like a new product of the Russian imperial workshop, but the emperor said: ‘c'est-à-dire le produit de votre talent’.
The documents mentioned in this essay are from the Raffaelli Archive, Negro Foundation, Rome.
The references and transcriptions are in: A.M. Massinelli, with contributions from M.Alfieri, L.Biancini, E. Yakovleva, G.Tassinari, Giacomo Raffaelli: Maestro di Stile e di Mosaico, Firenze, 2018
F. Corsi, Delle pietre antiche di Faustino Corsi Romano, II ed. Tipografia Salviucci, Roma, 1833
Prof. Anna Maria Massinelli teaches modern art history at the Academy of Fine Art of Brera, Milan. She has a particular interest in the history of the Medici dynasty and the art of hardstones, and has written and edited a number of books on the subject including Il Tesoro dei Medici, 1992; Il Mobile Toscano, 1993; Scagliola.L’arte della pietra di luna, 1997; The Gilbert Collection. Hardstone, 2000; the recent monograph on Raffaelli: Giacomo Raffaelli Maestro di stile e di mosaico, 2018 and most recently De Lapidibus. Il trattato delle pietre di Giuseppe Antonio Torricelli, 2019, a comprehensive study of this Grand Ducal lapidary artist.