A set of four North Italian walnut chairs, early 17th century, Veneto or Emilia

This lot should have no VAT symbol. The item will be sold under the auctioneer’s margin scheme and VAT will not be charged on the hammer price.

Sutton Place, Surrey.

Sotheby's Olympia, The Oak and Country sale, including Property removed from Sutton Place, 15th November 2005, lot 409;

When acquired by the present owner.

RELATED LITERATURE

Fausto Calderai and Alan Chong, Furnishing a Museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner's Collection of Italian Furniture, 2012, p. 151 (for a related set).

Graziano Manni, Mille Mobili Emiliani, 1980, figs. 511-513, p. 222.

With organically carved interlaced branches to the back splats and front stretchers, these chairs are attractive and rare examples of seat furniture from North Italy in the first half of the 17th century, underlined by their strong sculptural character, which is a departure from their primary functional role.

A very similar set of six is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (in the Gothic Room).

Built between 1521 and 1524, Sutton Place is a large estate near Surrey, England and one of the finest examples of English renaissance architecture. Sutton Place and the surrounding 700-acre estate was commissioned by a friend of King Henry VIII, Sir Richard Weston, and centuries later was owned by the Duke of Sutherland until 1959 when Jean Paul Getty, widely known as J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) acquired it.