Lot Essay
The distinctive palette of this side table and its tapering fluted supports relate it to a celebrated suite of furniture carved with chinoiserie figures supplied to Villa Silva, Cinisello Balsamo, near Milan, after designs by Giuseppe Levati (illustrated in A. Gonzalez-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto: La Toscana e l'Italia Settentrionale, Milan, 1986, vol. II, p. 275, figs. 558-9). The distinctive urn with dolphin supports centering the stretcher relates to a similar urn forming part of a boiserie scheme in the gabinetto alla China in the Duke of Aosta's apartments in the Palazzo Reale, Turin (illustrated in G. Ferraris, Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, Milan, 1991, fig. XLVIII).