Cesare Roccheggiani Italian, fl. 1860 A large mircomosaic table top Rome, circa 1875

original paper label reading C. ROCCHEGGIANI / ARTIST / SOLE MANUFACTORY / OF / ROMAN MOSAICS / Via Condotti, 14-15 / ROME (Italy) to underside. Raised on a modern black marble base.

Michelangelo Barberi, Alcuni musaici usciti dallo studio del Ca.r Michel’Angelo Barberi, 1856
Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel, Micromosaics: the Gilbert Collection, 2000, no’s. 33, 59
Charlotte Gere, The Art of the Jeweller: a catalogue of the Hull Grundy gift to the British Museum : jewellery, engraved gems, and goldsmiths' work, 1984, no. 966
International Exhibition, 1876: Official Catalogue: Part II--Art Gallery, Part II, G. E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, Philadelphia, 1876, pp. 119,120
Mayfair Gallery, London, 2015
Melbourne International Exhibition, Official Catalogue, Mason, Firth & M’Cutcheon, Melbourne, 1880, vol. 2, p. 155
John Murray, Handbook of Rome and the Campagna, London, 1899, p. 22
Petochi, Domenico, Massimo Alfieri and Maria Grazia Branchetti, I mosaici minuti Romani dei secoli XVIII e XIX, Abete-Petochi, Rome, 1981, p. 69

Overall in good condition. Marble base in good condition with only some minor abrasions to edges. Top in excellent condition with some very small areas of colored infill and small restorations. A small loss to tessarea to tree trunk in center (1/2 cm). Some scratches and some dark spots to one scene.
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The central image on this tabletop portrays the Roman legend of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, being nursed by a wolf, after a detail from Rubens’ 1616 painting Romolo e Remo allattati dalla Lupa, Capitoline Museum, Rome. Surrounding it is an anthemion and scrolling leaf border and eight important monuments of Rome within a chromatic Greek key border and malachite bands. The Roman scenes depicted are, clockwise: the Pantheon; the Arch of Constantine; the Capitoline Hill; the Colosseum; St. Peter’s Basilica; the Roman Forum; Castel Sant’Angelo; and the Temple of Hercules Victor.

Little is known of Cesare Roccheggiani before the opening of his shop on Via Condotti in 1874. He did not, as previously recorded, work at the Vatican Mosaic Workshop from 1856-1864; a log from that time period shows that the only known payment to him was in 1859 (Petochi et al., 1981, p. 69). However, examination of his mosaics suggests he may have worked in Michelangelo Barberi’s workshop. After Barberi’s death in 1867, his studio continued under the direction of his daughter, Isabella Barberi, and is last listed in 1873. Roccheggiani’s shop opened the following year; thereafter, his habitual and accomplished use of Barberi’s original designs is apparent. The present mosaic scene of Romulus and Remus and its monochromatic border of anthemions and scrolling acanthus is found on two tabletops attributed by this author to Michelangelo Barberi; each of those has radiating views of Italy identical to those requested by Tsar Nicholas I on a Barberi tabletop of 1846, now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg  (Christie’s, 2008, lot 113; Christie’s, 2013, lot 116; Efimova, 1968, no. 73). Roccheggiani produced several mosaic plaques using another Barberi composition: the Pincio Fountain between the Colosseum and St. Peter’s Basilica representing ancient and modern Rome (Bonham’s, 2013, lot 4307; Mayfair Gallery, 2015). This composition originated on Barberi’s tabletop for the Duke of Palmella, and is also found on a signed Barberi table in the Gilbert Collection (Barberi, 1856; Gabriel, 2000, no. 33).

The scion of a dynasty of mosaicists, Roccheggiani was perhaps the most successful mosaicist in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He is doubtless related to Lorenzo Roccheggiani, a late eighteenth-century master mosaicist at the Vatican, whose work included the altarpiece, Crucifixion of St. Peter after Guido Reni. Nicolo Roccheggiani, possibly Lorenzo’s son, was also a principle artist at the Vatican, involved in executing the famous tabletop Achilles Shield commissioned by Napoléon Bonaparte, and later gifted to Charles X, King of France (Louvre).

A period photo of Roccheggiani’s impressive store facade displays an extensive range of mosaics. A late nineteenth-century guide book to Rome lists him as a supplier of mosaic pictures, tables, cabinets, paper weights and gold ornaments (Murray, 1899, p. 22). His extensive retail  production indicates that Roccheggiani ran a large workshop of mosaicists, as well as goldsmiths and craftsmen. The finest and most costly objects were tabletops and large scale pictures acquired by wealthy and important patrons and displayed at international exhibitions; today they are in possession of discriminating collectors and museums.

A group of Roccheggiani’s mosaics was exhibited in the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition at Philadelphia (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1876, pp. 119,120). In the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, his table with nine views was displayed (Mason et al., 1880, p. 155). His extraordinary skill is evident in his very large and rectangular mosaic of St. Peter’s Square, signed and dated C. ROCCHEGGIANI /ARTISTA/ VIA CONDOTTI NO. 15 / ROMA 1879 that sold Christie’s, London, April 2010, lot 268 for an astonishing $730,538; his matching view of the Roman Forum, identically signed and dated, sold Christie’s, London, December 2010, lot 245, for $533,192. Similar circular mosaic tops to the present but unsigned were sold Christie's New York, April 9, 2008, lot 113 for $325,000 and April 18, 2013, lot 116, $231,750

Examples of his work in museums are an étagère with mosaics in the Gilbert Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, and a necklace in the British Museum, London (Gabriel, 2000, no. 59; Gere, 1984, no. 966).

Sotheby's is grateful to Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel for her extensive research and compilation of this scholarly footnote.

The present lot will be published in Micromosaics: Private Collections by Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel to be published in 2016.