THE PIETRA DURA PANELS FLORENCE, SECOND HALF 17TH CENTURY, THE GEORGE III EBONISED STAND THIRD QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

This Flemish ebony and ivory cabinet-on-stand was specifically made in the third quarter of the 18th century to display a collection of costly and jewel-like coloured 17th-century pietre dure panels, and would have been the pièce de résistance of the principal room in which it was placed. Such pictorial panels, on a background of black marble edged with yellow marble borders, were created by the Galleria de' Lavori, the Medici grand-ducal workshop in Florence, founded by Grand Duke Ferdinando I of Tuscany in 1588 (renamed the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in the mid-1800s). They were almost certainly collected on the Grand Tour by the wealthy patron who commissioned the cabinet. Such cabinets evolved from the German Wunderkammer or Italian studiolo, and ebony-framed reliquaries ornamented with pietre dure panels and gilt bronze mounts. They had several functions: as a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ in which precious items such as gemstones, carved ivories, and small bronzes were kept; as a statement piece of furniture that illustrated the refined learning of the cabinet’s owner; and also to display wealth and prestige. The ultimate example of this is the Badminton Cabinet, sold twice at Christie’s, most recently on 9 December 2004 (£19,045,250 inc. premium).
The theme of the central panel of this cabinet is the legendary Thracian poet Orpheus charming the animals with his lira da braccio, an early type of viol, one of the Galleria de' Lavori’s most popular subjects, and reflects the high technical standards of the workshop (W. Koeppe, A. Giusti, Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, New Haven and London, 2008, pp. 176-177). The imagery is undoubtedly derived from an Italian 16th/17th century engraving by Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), entitled ‘Orpheus Charming the Birds and the Animals’ (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, object no. S9.26). This central panel is flanked by Tuscan alabastro fiorito columns. There are at least twenty-two documented hardstone Orpheus plaques, most with slight variations (Koeppe, Giusti, op. cit., pp. 176-177) and mounted on furniture including:

* A magnificent Louis XIV gilt-bronze and pietra dura-mounted ebonised and parcel-gilt cabinet-on-stand, attributed to Domenico Cucci and the Gobelins Workshop, Paris, circa 1665-75, sold Christie’s, London, 10 December 2009, lot 875 (£4,521,250 inc. premium)
* A pair of Sicilian cabinets at the château de Beloeil, Mons, Belgium
* An ebony and pietra dura table cabinet, circa 1620, formerly in the collection of the Frescobaldi family of Florence, now in the Detroit Institute of Arts (accession no. 1994.77)
* ‘The Barberini Cabinet’, circa 1606-23, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, made for Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (1568-1644), the son of a Florentine merchant, and later Pope Urban VIII (accession no. 1988.19)
* A cabinet, dated 1650, at Chirk Castle, Wrexham, probably acquired by Sir Thomas Myddleton during his Grand Tour in the early 1670s (S. Swynfen Jervis, D. Dodd, Roman Splendour English Arcadia, London, 2015, p. 12, fig. 13)
* A Flemish cabinet sold ‘Collection Valerian Rybar et Jean-Francois Daigre’, Christie’s, Paris, 5 June 2003, lot 35 (€105,750 inc. premium)
* An English cabinet inset with pietra dura panels, the collection of Harry Hyams; sold Christie's, London, 6 July 2017, lot 6 (£137,000 inc. premium)
* A version of the Orpheus pietra dura panel is intriguingly inset into an alcove surrounding the throne in the Hall of Public Audience at the Red Fort, Delhi. Dating to circa 1631-40, its presence suggests that the Indian Mughal rulers were as fascinated by Florentine pietre dure as their Western counterparts (Koeppe, Giusti, op. cit., pp. 176-177)

Many of the smaller panels of both exotic and domestic animals found on the cabinet offered here, for example, the unicorn, camel, stag and billy goat, created by the Galleria de' Lavori, appear on the Cucci cabinet, on the cabinet in the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum and on the one sold Christie’s, Paris, 5 June 2003, lot 35, which likewise feature the closely-related central panel of Orpheus – as discussed above.