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Lot Essay
The distinctive inlay of this striking bureau mazarin, with genre hunting scenes inlaid in ivory within frames of richly scrolling strapwork, relates it to a small group of similar bureaux mazarins attributed to the Turinese cabinet-maker Luigi Prinotto (active circa 1712-circa 1777), illustrated in G. Ferraris, Pietro Piffetti e gli Ebanisti del Piemonte, Turin, 1985, pp. 168-71. This group of bureaux is linked to Prinotto through a related bureau, now generally accepted as the work of Prinotto, in the Royal Hunting Lodge, the Palazzina di Stupinigi, op. cit., pp, 165-7, cat. 8. The designs for the genre scenes are attributed to the painter Pietro Domenico Olivero (1680-1755), who was godfather to two of Prinotto's children. The example offered here most closely resembles a bureau in the group, once in the collection of Marchese Paolo Thaon di Revel, illustrated op. cit., p. 170, fig. b, while the example illustrated as fig. c, p. 171, with the unusual feature of giltwood uprights, was recently sold from the Giuseppe Rossi Collection, Sotheby's London, 10-12 March 1999, lot 14 £254,500).
LUIGI PRINOTTO
The facts about Prinotto's career are frustratingly scant. He became a master cabinet-maker in 1712, and his first recorded delivery to the Royal Piedmontese Court is for a fall-front bureau supplied to the Palazzo Reale, Turin in 1723, inlaid with scenes of the siege of Turin in 1706 (Ferraris op. cit., p. 149, cat. 1), while in 1732-4 he supplied a spectacular prie dieu, also in the Palazzo Reale, which in its more flowing lines clearly prefigures the work of his celebrated fellow Turinese cabinet-maker, Pietro Piffetti.
Documented pieces by Prinotto are extremely rare, and until recently much of his work was attributed instead to Piffetti. A commode signed by Prinotto was sold at Christie's Monaco, 15 December 1996, lot 120 (FF 740,500), while another inlaid with similar genre scenes was sold at Christie's Monaco, 20 June 1994, lot 368 (FF 1,776,000).
LUIGI PRINOTTO
The facts about Prinotto's career are frustratingly scant. He became a master cabinet-maker in 1712, and his first recorded delivery to the Royal Piedmontese Court is for a fall-front bureau supplied to the Palazzo Reale, Turin in 1723, inlaid with scenes of the siege of Turin in 1706 (Ferraris op. cit., p. 149, cat. 1), while in 1732-4 he supplied a spectacular prie dieu, also in the Palazzo Reale, which in its more flowing lines clearly prefigures the work of his celebrated fellow Turinese cabinet-maker, Pietro Piffetti.
Documented pieces by Prinotto are extremely rare, and until recently much of his work was attributed instead to Piffetti. A commode signed by Prinotto was sold at Christie's Monaco, 15 December 1996, lot 120 (FF 740,500), while another inlaid with similar genre scenes was sold at Christie's Monaco, 20 June 1994, lot 368 (FF 1,776,000).