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Lot Essay
With its elaborate pietre dure top, inlaid with the arms of the House of Savoy, the Medicis and the City of Florence, this fine giltwood centre table almost certainly commemorates the unification of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II in 1861.
The ancient Roman art of pietre dure was revived in 16th and 17th century Florence under the Grand Ducal workshops of the Medici family, in particular during the reigns of Cosimo I (1569-74), his son Francesco (1574-1587), and Cosimo's brother Ferdinand I (1587-1609). Production and appreciation of this marble work, called commessi, experienced a further renaissance during the 19th century. However, the end of the Tuscan Grand Duchy in 1859 spelled disaster for the manufactory of the workshops, which had always been closely linked to the court of the Medicis. Notoriously uninterested in art, the House of Savoy, now the ruling family of the unified country, completely ignored their work, preferring instead to obtain their furnishings and gifts - which were bourgeois rather than royal - from private Florentine workshops, such as that of Enrico Bosi. Bosi established a workshop on the via Tornabuoni, Florence, in 1858, and for the forty years following exhibited widely, both in Italy and abroad. He was a personal acquaintance of Victor Emmanuel II, who made him an equerry, and he probably made the frame for the portrait of the King presented to the Bey of Egypt in 1870. Strongly reminiscent of his style, this table may well have been included on Bosi's impressive stand at the Esposizione Nazionale Italiana, held in Florence in 1861 to celebrate the unification of the country.
The ancient Roman art of pietre dure was revived in 16th and 17th century Florence under the Grand Ducal workshops of the Medici family, in particular during the reigns of Cosimo I (1569-74), his son Francesco (1574-1587), and Cosimo's brother Ferdinand I (1587-1609). Production and appreciation of this marble work, called commessi, experienced a further renaissance during the 19th century. However, the end of the Tuscan Grand Duchy in 1859 spelled disaster for the manufactory of the workshops, which had always been closely linked to the court of the Medicis. Notoriously uninterested in art, the House of Savoy, now the ruling family of the unified country, completely ignored their work, preferring instead to obtain their furnishings and gifts - which were bourgeois rather than royal - from private Florentine workshops, such as that of Enrico Bosi. Bosi established a workshop on the via Tornabuoni, Florence, in 1858, and for the forty years following exhibited widely, both in Italy and abroad. He was a personal acquaintance of Victor Emmanuel II, who made him an equerry, and he probably made the frame for the portrait of the King presented to the Bey of Egypt in 1870. Strongly reminiscent of his style, this table may well have been included on Bosi's impressive stand at the Esposizione Nazionale Italiana, held in Florence in 1861 to celebrate the unification of the country.