An Italian carved giltwood console table with an ivory and rosewood marquetry top, Venice, late 17th-early 18th century, attributed to Lucio di Lucci

A. Gonzales-Palacios, Il gusto dei principi, Milan, 1993, Vol. I p. 337 ; Vol. II, p. 298, fig. 593 and 594.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Gonzales-Palacios, Il tempio del gusto. Il granducato di Toscana e gli Stati settentrionali, 1986, pp. 327-329.

E. Colle, Il mobile barocco in Italia, 2000, pp. 304-310.

C. Santini, Mille mobili veneti, vol. III, 2002, pp. 150-154.

L. Settembrini, Enrico Colle, Manolo De Giorgi (par), Magnificenze barocche, catalogo della mostra, Milan, 2009, p. 108.

This table of spectacular quality is part of a small group of exceptional giltwood console tables made in Venice of which only a few have been identified. The fine marquetry tops of these tables are highly unusual, and we can firmly attribute the marquetry to Lucio and Antonio de Lucci, active around the 1680s.

The present table is all the more rare for being the only documented example of this oeuvre, where the overall composition is not a regular rectangle, but has a curved and shaped edge.

Grand, forceful, dynamic and theatrical, the carving on Baroque furniture has a depth that makes the finest pieces as compellingly three-dimensional as a piece of stand-alone sculpture. In the Venetian context, there are other examples that exhibit a similar flair and often with the aquatic motifs like shells and river gods that make overt reference to Venice’s maritime power. This select group is also highly unique in that they do not have the typical marble table tops, but instead boast a lighter substitute, usually an inlaid wooden top and a curious two-dimensional counterpoint to the three-dimensional bases.

The attribution

From a design perspective, all of the tables traditionally associated with the Luccis feature showpiece-standard marquetry panels depicting scenes of architecture, hunting etc., contained within profuse floral and foliate marquetry filling the reserves between the cartouches. The present lot, on the other hand, has a shaped top that restricts the surface area, leading to a more mobile and free-flowing design that draws only on floral motifs. This is a contrast to the documented Lucci tables, which conform closely in dimensions and design, but it is hard to imagine a marquetry workshop plausibly producing only one specific design exclusively, even if these are the only signed examples that have been traced so far. In this context we should mention the pair of tables attributed to Lucci that sold at Sotheby's London, 3rd December 2013, lot 56, which were in a simpler style that departs from the above templates. In addition, in a letter to the patron Vincenzo Bargellini dated 1699, Lucio di Lucci explicitly mentioned the quantity of mother-of-pearl required to make the marquetry top,¹ clearly indicating that he had the range to complete a very different type of design to the set formula of the above-mentioned examples (in which mother-of-pearl does not feature)². In light of these factors, the attribution to Lucci is one that can be firmly made.

The floral marquetry tops

There is a small group of documented Venetian Baroque tables that feature rich, floral marquetry tops, showing a clear affinity with the characteristic style of the seventeenth-century Netherlands. For our current scholarly awareness of the work of the Luccis, we have Alvar Gonzáles-Palacios to thank, who first made the connection between several disparate tables and established the Lucci name when writing in the 1990s³. The finest examples of these table tops are clearly signed Lucio and Antonio de Lucci, whose exact relationship is unknown but assumedly operated in a family workshop and whose names are sometimes conflated in the literature on the subject.⁴ Two impressive tables, both signed LUCIO D’ LUCCI FECE, are now on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum (W.6: 1,2-2012) and the National Museum of Scotland (K.2012.26), after being purchased at auction from Sotheby's London, 6 July 2011, lot 8. The National Museum of Scotland example, depicting a colonnade viewed frontally, had been illustrated previously in academic studies of Venetian furniture,⁵ while the V&A example depicting a ship has not featured in the principal publications on Lucci tables. There is also a pair of tables impressively depicting complex cityscapes from a high vantage point, which are not signed but confidently attributed to Lucci – one, depicting Nauplia, is in a private collection⁶ while the other depicting Vienna was offered at Christie’s London, 7 July 2022, lot 23. Gonzáles-Palacios also provides the sole reference for another Lucci table with a signature, depicting a colonnade similar to the Buccleuch example but viewed from an angle, a table which “was on the antique furniture market in Rome some years ago” when he wrote the book in 1993.⁷ Finally, there is an example of a signed Lucci top that is clearly signed but was later cut up and transformed into a desk.⁸ 

The bases

Beyond the Lucci examples with their Dutch-influenced floral marquetry, there is a broader group of documented Venetian tables that are also carved in the Baroque style, and also unusually feature tops that are not the typical marble slabs. One pair, with tops inlaid with mother-of-pearl, were commissioned by Niccolò Meli Lupi, for his palatial seat in Parma called the Rocca di Soragna: this commission followed his marriage to Cecilia Loredan in 1691, who was from a Venetian patrician family.1 The records show that these magnificent tables were quite the team effort, since they list three inlayers (intaglatori), two gilders and two cabinet makers (ebanisti) - one of the intagliatori, Michele Fanoli, would later be part of the team that made the imposing ceremonial boat (peota) for Charles Emmanuel III, Duke of Savoy and King of Sardinia. One of these Rocca di Soragna tables depicts Neptune and Galatea alongside a nereid, while another pair are centred by an enormous shell which is surmounted by a flying eagle. Other tables in this style, similarly without marble tops, include a table commissioned in Venice by Vincenzo Bargellini and documented as being in Bologna as early as April 1690, where it remains today on display in the Davia Bargellini Museum – this table, too, is centred by a large shell. Other notable tables are two tables for the Fulcis family, now in the Museo Civico in Belluno, one of which incorporates a shell into its base; these tables have scagliola tops. Several scholars have noted the affinity between this bold carving style and that of the Veneto-born sculptor Andrea Brustolon, based on documented works and some of his drawings for similarly sculptural console tables, and the bases of the tables in the V&A discussed below are attributed to him.

¹ S. Tumidei, ‘Intagli a Bologna, intagli per Bologna’, in Antologia di Belle Arti, 2000, p.48

² This is presumably because the images of the table tops are usually too small to make out the exact lettering of the signature. For example, the table top with the frontal colonnade is catalogued as having a banner inscribed for Lucio, but Colle describes this as being by Antonio.

³ Ill. E. Colle, Il Mobile Barocco in Italia, Milan, 2000. p.322 and A. Gonzáles-Palacios, Il Gusto dei Principi, 1993, Milan, vol II, p.299-300, fig. 597 (image), figs. 595 and 596 (caption), p.299.         

⁴ Ill. Gonzáles-Palacios, op. cit., fig. 598.

⁵ Ibid., p.338, which formed the basis when later illustrated in Colle, op. cit., p.322.

⁶ The subject of the article by D. di Castro, Una tarsia veneziana del Seicento per un bureau tedesco del Settecento, DecArt, Riviste di arti decorative 1 (2004), pp.20-25. Later sold at Bonhams London on 13 March 2007, lot 174.

⁷ Colle, op.cit, p.304.

⁸ Ibid., p.308.

⁹ Ibid., p.308.