Staff finial with the Virgin of the Rosary (i); and Firedog for Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome (ii)

These two drawings were made in the workshop of the most distinguished Italian goldsmith of the eighteenth century, Luigi Valadier. The Valadier workshop, located in Via del Babuino in Rome, was active for many generations from 1725 until 1882. At its peak, under Luigi’s guidance, the fourteen-room workshop employed over 180 highly skilled silversmiths and draftsmen. As attested by his drawings, Luigi Valadier himself was not only a talented goldsmith, but was also an extremely accomplished draftsman. Drawings of many types were created and preserved in the workshop: finished drawings to be shown to clients, quick sketches, apprentice drawings, full scale working drawings to be used by the craftsmen when creating the objects, and drawings made to record finished designs.

The Valadier firm served many prestigious European clients with both religious and secular commissions. Together with the production of gold- and silver-ware, Valadier designed objects in gilt-bronze and pietre dure, architectural sculptures, casts after the antique and more. These two drawings clearly attest to the breadth of the commissions undertaken by the goldsmith.

The sheet with the Staff finial was part of an album (Artemis album) discovered in the early 1990s, together with a trove of loose sheets (Artemis inventory), the provenance of which can be traced back to the closure of the Valadier workshop in 1882 (Winter, Mayer Haunton, Thompson, Mennell, op. cit., pp. 11-16). The sheet is still mounted on the page of the album, assembled at the beginning of the 19th Century by the bottega. Valadier signed only some of his drawings, but many remain unsigned and when it is not possible to connect a design directly to an existing and marked object, it is difficult to precisely date and attribute the execution of a drawing within the workshop.

It is, however, possible to date precisely to 1777 the drawing of the Firedog on the basis of a bill presented by Luigi Valadier to the Prince Odescalchi (Duke of Bracciano) for work made between 1775 and 1777 (González-Palacios and Salomon, op. cit., pp. 410-411). Andrea Valadier, the founder of the dynasty, had worked for the Odescalchi family frequently since the 1730s and his son Luigi continued to serve them. The bill of 1777 lists a variety of objects, executed to furnish one of Odescalchi’s new apartments: sconces, mirror frames, a chimneypiece, and, most interestingly, a pair of andirons with triangular bases ‘lavorati a tutta perfezione’ (executed to total perfection) and decorated with a gryphon with one leg raised, clearly corresponding to the design of this drawing.