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Lot Essay
Evoking luxuriant Baroque flower paintings of the 17th century, this large and impressive panel illustrates in profound its complexity and technical skill the most difficult of micromosaic disciplines: floral still-life. The work is wholly characteristic of the output of the celebrated studio mosaicist, Federico Campanili, who is recorded as being active from 1861 to 1880 in the Vatican Workshop in Rome, while his son, also a flower specialist, was actively producing similar mosaic works through the early 20th century.
Research at the Vatican archives by Dr. Daniel Pergolizi documents the production between 1858 and 1864 of different mosaics with Vasi con Fiori e picchi in smalti filait by Campanili. Another mosaic of similar composition within a lapis lazuli-colored vase, though unattributed, is illustrated in J. H. Gabriel, Micromosaics: The Gilbert Collection, London, 2000, cat. 89, p. 157. Together with another panel sold at Bonham’s London, 5 April 2017, lot 13, the present work joins a series of flower studies set apart by a variegated brown ground executed entirely of mosaic rather than a inlaid into slate or black marble.
Research at the Vatican archives by Dr. Daniel Pergolizi documents the production between 1858 and 1864 of different mosaics with Vasi con Fiori e picchi in smalti filait by Campanili. Another mosaic of similar composition within a lapis lazuli-colored vase, though unattributed, is illustrated in J. H. Gabriel, Micromosaics: The Gilbert Collection, London, 2000, cat. 89, p. 157. Together with another panel sold at Bonham’s London, 5 April 2017, lot 13, the present work joins a series of flower studies set apart by a variegated brown ground executed entirely of mosaic rather than a inlaid into slate or black marble.