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Lot Essay
With their white and gold decoration and distinctive chandelles-fluted channelling to the baluster legs, these stools closely recall the Royal suites of seat-furniture executed for the Savoia family at the Royal Hunting Lodge at Stupinigi, Turin. A suite of six stools with similar character legs, probably copied from French prototypes executed by Nicholas Quinibert Foliot, maître in 1776, have been attributed to the celebrated Turinese furniture maker Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo (see L. Malli, Stupinigi, Turin, 1968, p. 328). Bonzanigo (1745-1820) is perhaps best known for his work for the Royal House of Savoy, who commissioned him to decorate and furnish the State Rooms of the King and Queen at both Stupinigi, as well as at the Palazzo Reale in Turin, Rivoli, Venaria and Govone.
The connection of the Stupinigi stools to Bonzanigo is supported by a commode with remarkably similar legs from the appartments of the Duchessa d'Aosta in the Palazzo Reale, Turin (see G. Ferraris, Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, Cavalleremaggiore, 1991, plate XX) and a pair of side tables originally in the antechamber to the Queen's State Rooms at Stupinigi, which display the same wreath-surrounded medallion suspended from the center of the apron (Ibid, plate XXXI). Two canapes, matching a suite of stools by Bonzanigo, which originally stood in the antechamber to the King's Rooms at Stupinigi, are recorded in an inventory dated 21 October 1783 as having been painted by Michele Rapos (see Ibid, p. 66, figs. XVI and XVII).
STUPINIGI
The original commission for the hunting palace at Stupinigi was given to the famed architect Filippo Juvarra (d.1736) by King Vittorio Amedio II in 1729. In spite of the King's abdication in 1730 and the architect's death in 1736, construction continued unabated and was only completed late in the reign of Charles Emanuel III (r. 1730-73). It was towards the end of this period that Bonzanigo was first employed by the di Savoia family, being appointed woodcarver to Victor-Amadeus III (r. 1773-1796) in 1787.
The connection of the Stupinigi stools to Bonzanigo is supported by a commode with remarkably similar legs from the appartments of the Duchessa d'Aosta in the Palazzo Reale, Turin (see G. Ferraris, Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, Cavalleremaggiore, 1991, plate XX) and a pair of side tables originally in the antechamber to the Queen's State Rooms at Stupinigi, which display the same wreath-surrounded medallion suspended from the center of the apron (Ibid, plate XXXI). Two canapes, matching a suite of stools by Bonzanigo, which originally stood in the antechamber to the King's Rooms at Stupinigi, are recorded in an inventory dated 21 October 1783 as having been painted by Michele Rapos (see Ibid, p. 66, figs. XVI and XVII).
STUPINIGI
The original commission for the hunting palace at Stupinigi was given to the famed architect Filippo Juvarra (d.1736) by King Vittorio Amedio II in 1729. In spite of the King's abdication in 1730 and the architect's death in 1736, construction continued unabated and was only completed late in the reign of Charles Emanuel III (r. 1730-73). It was towards the end of this period that Bonzanigo was first employed by the di Savoia family, being appointed woodcarver to Victor-Amadeus III (r. 1773-1796) in 1787.