THE TOP ROME, LATE 16TH EARLY 17TH CENTURY

The spare geometric design of this impressive Roman specimen marble top, with a central oval medallion of alabastro on a ground of breccia rosso within a border of scrolling, shield-shaped medallions, relates it to other Roman tops of intarsia produced at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th Centuries. A table top in the Villa del Poggio Imperiale, Florence, with a similar overall design, also incorporating isolated sprays of flowers, is illustrated in A.M. Giusti, Pietre Dure: Hardstone in Furniture and Decorations, London, 1992, p. 23, fig. 12, while similar shield-shaped devices in the borders feature on a top in the Prado Museum, illustrated op. cit., p. 25, fig. 10. Other Roman marble tops with the distinctive border of ovals, dots and lozenges framing the central medallion, also in the Prado Museum, are illustrated in A. González-Palacios, Las Colecciones Reales Espanolas de Mosaicos y Piedras Duras, Madrid, 2001, pp. 56 and 65.