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Lot Essay
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
A.M. Giusti, Pietre Dure: Hardstone in Furniture and Decorations, London, pp. 1 - 33.
A. González-Palacios, Las Colecciones Reales Españolas de Mosaicos y Piedras Duras, Madrid, pp. 56 - 58 and 65 - 66.
This marble top is remarkably similar to another table top sold Christie's, New York, 21 October 2004, lot 1224 ($400,000 exc. premium). All the major design elements are identical but it placed the emphasis on its central alabastro fiorito panel, while the offered lot is embellished with the deeply colored breccia quintilina. However, the similarities in design and choice of marbles are so marked that the two table tops must have originated in the same workshop.
The art of commesso was a mosaic technique of inlaying various irregular sections of rare coloured marbles and semi-precious stones to form a design. Its origins lie with the mosaic-work of ancient Rome known as opus sectile, a tradition which survived in Rome throughout the Middle Ages and was revived in the 16th century when the Renaissance led to a reawakening of interest in the arts of ancient Rome, reusing the rare coloured marbles of antiquity of which Rome itself was such a rich source.
In Rome, commesso work was particularly associated with architects and designers such as Jacopo Vignola (1507 - 73), who is now thought to have provided the designs for the celebrated table supplied to Alessandro Farnese circa 1565, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and Giovanni Antonio Dosio (1533 - 1609). Their work attracted the interest of wealthy, sophisticated patrons such as Cardinal Giovanni Ricci of Montepulciano and Cosimo I Medici, whose fascination for the art of inlaying marbles led to the foundation of the celebrated Medici workshop by his son Ferdinando. In 1565 the Bishop of Viterbo, Sebastiano Gualterio, owned three inlaid marble tables, with centres of alabaster 'surrounding, of brocatello white and black, greens, and other rare stones', which, although earlier, must have been broadly similar to the table top offered here (Giusti op. cit., p. 12).
The earliest versions of these table tops, produced in Rome in the middle of the 16th Century, would usually consist of a plain rectangular panel of a rare ancient stone, usually a form of alabaster, within relatively plain geometric borders. Interestingly, a 1568 inventory of the Palazzo Farnese refers to table tops solely by recording them as panels of rare marbles, implying that the display of the central panel of a single stone was their primary purpose. Certain design features of the borders of the Farnese table can clearly be seen in the top offered here, notably the pelta-shields and the distinctive cartouches enclosing oval panels, which are virtually identical (Giusti, op. cit., p. 10).
Later in the century, while retaining the basic scheme of a larger central panel and geometric borders, the designs of Roman table tops became more elaborate, with more naturalistic elements such as flowers and trailing foliage being introduced.
The table top offered here, with its distinctive beaded foliate arabesque framing the central cartouche around the oval, belongs to a distinct group of table tops, all produced at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century and conceivably from the same Roman workshop, as follows:
-one in the J. Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles, previously in the collection of Alfred de Rothschild, Halton, Buckinghamshire, and by descent to Edmund de Rothschild, Exbury, Hampshire (C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collections, Malibu, 1993, p. 189, cat. 320)
-one in the Villa Borghese, Rome (Giusti, op. cit., p. 30)
-one in the Prado Museum, Madrid, first inventoried in the Royal Spanish collection in 1636 (González-Palacios, op. cit., p. 65, cat. 3
-one in the Hermitage Museum (E. Efimova, West European Mosaic in the Collection of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, 1968, figs. 6 and 7)
-one, adapted to fit a George III base, previously in the collection of David Style, Wateringbury Place, sold Lyegrove, Christie's House sale, 26 September 1988, lot95
Interestingly, the example in the Prado has a very similar selection of marbles, particularly in the border, with geometric cartouches of alabastro a tartaruga, breccia quintilina, lumachella and alabastro fiorito on a ground of brocatello.
Slightly later variants of this group employ even richer design schemes, adding devices such as military trophies (as with an example in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, illustrated in González-Palacios, op. cit., p. 53), or through employing three main panels in the centre and placing the arabesque foliage in the borders rather than in the main field, as with examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (Giusti, op. cit., p. 19, pl. 10 and p. 30, fig. 15) and Charlecote, Park, Warwickshire (formerly in the Palazzo Borghese and subsequently in the collection of the celebrated English antiquarian William Beckford, illustrated in González-Palacios, op. cit., p. 73). The latter two tops feature boldly scrolling cartouches framing the central panel closely related in design to that in brocatello and alabastro fiorito on the table offered here.
A.M. Giusti, Pietre Dure: Hardstone in Furniture and Decorations, London, pp. 1 - 33.
A. González-Palacios, Las Colecciones Reales Españolas de Mosaicos y Piedras Duras, Madrid, pp. 56 - 58 and 65 - 66.
This marble top is remarkably similar to another table top sold Christie's, New York, 21 October 2004, lot 1224 ($400,000 exc. premium). All the major design elements are identical but it placed the emphasis on its central alabastro fiorito panel, while the offered lot is embellished with the deeply colored breccia quintilina. However, the similarities in design and choice of marbles are so marked that the two table tops must have originated in the same workshop.
The art of commesso was a mosaic technique of inlaying various irregular sections of rare coloured marbles and semi-precious stones to form a design. Its origins lie with the mosaic-work of ancient Rome known as opus sectile, a tradition which survived in Rome throughout the Middle Ages and was revived in the 16th century when the Renaissance led to a reawakening of interest in the arts of ancient Rome, reusing the rare coloured marbles of antiquity of which Rome itself was such a rich source.
In Rome, commesso work was particularly associated with architects and designers such as Jacopo Vignola (1507 - 73), who is now thought to have provided the designs for the celebrated table supplied to Alessandro Farnese circa 1565, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and Giovanni Antonio Dosio (1533 - 1609). Their work attracted the interest of wealthy, sophisticated patrons such as Cardinal Giovanni Ricci of Montepulciano and Cosimo I Medici, whose fascination for the art of inlaying marbles led to the foundation of the celebrated Medici workshop by his son Ferdinando. In 1565 the Bishop of Viterbo, Sebastiano Gualterio, owned three inlaid marble tables, with centres of alabaster 'surrounding, of brocatello white and black, greens, and other rare stones', which, although earlier, must have been broadly similar to the table top offered here (Giusti op. cit., p. 12).
The earliest versions of these table tops, produced in Rome in the middle of the 16th Century, would usually consist of a plain rectangular panel of a rare ancient stone, usually a form of alabaster, within relatively plain geometric borders. Interestingly, a 1568 inventory of the Palazzo Farnese refers to table tops solely by recording them as panels of rare marbles, implying that the display of the central panel of a single stone was their primary purpose. Certain design features of the borders of the Farnese table can clearly be seen in the top offered here, notably the pelta-shields and the distinctive cartouches enclosing oval panels, which are virtually identical (Giusti, op. cit., p. 10).
Later in the century, while retaining the basic scheme of a larger central panel and geometric borders, the designs of Roman table tops became more elaborate, with more naturalistic elements such as flowers and trailing foliage being introduced.
The table top offered here, with its distinctive beaded foliate arabesque framing the central cartouche around the oval, belongs to a distinct group of table tops, all produced at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century and conceivably from the same Roman workshop, as follows:
-one in the J. Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles, previously in the collection of Alfred de Rothschild, Halton, Buckinghamshire, and by descent to Edmund de Rothschild, Exbury, Hampshire (C. Bremer-David, Decorative Arts An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collections, Malibu, 1993, p. 189, cat. 320)
-one in the Villa Borghese, Rome (Giusti, op. cit., p. 30)
-one in the Prado Museum, Madrid, first inventoried in the Royal Spanish collection in 1636 (González-Palacios, op. cit., p. 65, cat. 3
-one in the Hermitage Museum (E. Efimova, West European Mosaic in the Collection of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, 1968, figs. 6 and 7)
-one, adapted to fit a George III base, previously in the collection of David Style, Wateringbury Place, sold Lyegrove, Christie's House sale, 26 September 1988, lot95
Interestingly, the example in the Prado has a very similar selection of marbles, particularly in the border, with geometric cartouches of alabastro a tartaruga, breccia quintilina, lumachella and alabastro fiorito on a ground of brocatello.
Slightly later variants of this group employ even richer design schemes, adding devices such as military trophies (as with an example in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, illustrated in González-Palacios, op. cit., p. 53), or through employing three main panels in the centre and placing the arabesque foliage in the borders rather than in the main field, as with examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (Giusti, op. cit., p. 19, pl. 10 and p. 30, fig. 15) and Charlecote, Park, Warwickshire (formerly in the Palazzo Borghese and subsequently in the collection of the celebrated English antiquarian William Beckford, illustrated in González-Palacios, op. cit., p. 73). The latter two tops feature boldly scrolling cartouches framing the central panel closely related in design to that in brocatello and alabastro fiorito on the table offered here.