LATE 17TH CENTURY

This fine bureau mazarin desk was formerly in the collection of Nathaniel Mayer von Rothschild (1836-1905) at The Rothschild Villa at Hohe Varte, Vienna, where it is described in the 1906 inventory as: '582: Ein Schreibschrank mit 14 Laden und einem aufklappbaren Fach, reiche Bronzeintarsien mit Perlmutter' (The Rothschild Archive, 000/793/1, p. 11).

In 1882, Nathaniel Mayer acquired plots of land including a former spa to build a villa, and create The Rothschild Gardens. He purchased further plots on the Hohe Warte of approximately 81,600 square metres and established a botanical garden, under the guidance of the city Garden Inspector Anton Joli. A Japanese garden was created, and an array of summer houses, imitation antiquities and other garden constructions in fashion at the time (https://family.rothschildarchive.org/estates/87-the-rothschild-gardens-hohe-warte. Accessed 13 May 2020). After Nathaniel’s death in 1905, it was rumoured that the villa was to be purchased by Emperor Franz Josef as a summer residence; the New York Times reporting that: 'The Villa is a commodious and handsome building, but the great glory of the place is its gardens, which rank among the first three or four in Europe… It is in the Italian style, and laid out with charming terraces and cunningly devised archways, through which one obtains most picturesque glimpses of the great City of Vienna and the distant Danube' (ibid.).

After the end of the First World War, the garden estate was inherited by Nathaniel Mayer's nephew, Alphonse Mayer (1878-1942), who together with his English wife Clarice (née Sebag-Montefiore, 1894-1967) and their three children also had a townhouse at 18 Theresianumgasse, Vienna, one of five Rothschild properties in Vienna known collectively as the ‘Palais Rothschild’. After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, the family were forced to flee to Switzerland and then to America, abandoning their estates and collection, including the Hohe Varte estate and this bureau to the Nazis. The latter retained the original Rothschild inventory numbers in their own cataloguing of the Viennese Rothschild collections - in this case, ‘AR582' (S. Lillie, Was Einmal War: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens, Czernin, 2003, p. 1022). Both the 1906 inventory and the Nazi records for Alphonse Mayer and Clarice's collection, published by Sophie Lillie in Was Einmal War, show that the bureau was intended for The Führermuseum or ‘Kunstmuseum Linz’, an unrealised art museum within a cultural complex planned by Adolf Hitler for his hometown, the Austrian city of Linz, near his birthplace of Braunau. In 1999, the Austrian government restituted a significant portion of the collection of Alphonse and Clarice, including this bureau, from museums throughout Austria to the Rothschild family, which was subsequently sold by the family at Christie’s in 1999; the desk was lot 199. The Hohe Varte parkland has since the mid-20th century been restored, and now forms Vienna’s Heiligenstädter Park.

The central element of the side panels, with their sphinxes flanking a vase of flowers above two birds, is of identical design to the fall-front of another Rothschild bureau mazarin reputedly from Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire and sold anonymously at Christie's, London, 11 June 1998, lot 104. Interestingly, the decoration of the tops of both bureaux is also identical in most respects, although they are veneered in contre and première partie respectively and this bureau has some added zoomorphic designs to the top, probably because of its larger scale, being 55 in. (140 cm.) wide, while the one sold in 1998 was 44 in. (112 cm.) wide. The two bureaux were almost certainly executed in the same atelier, therefore, with the designs adapted to accommodate the differing sizes.

The exceptional collection at Mentmore was assembled by Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild (1818-1874) who, ahead of contemporary taste, actively collected the finest French furniture and objects from the 1840s onwards. Subsequently inherited by the Earls of Rosebery through the marriage of his only daughter, Hannah, the contents of Mentmore was largely sold in 1977, but several of the finest pieces are now at Dalmeny House, Scotland.