A Rare Italian neoclassical white marble and scagliola chimney-piece Circa 1790

bidding is closed

Description

height 40 1/2 in.; width 61 1/2 in.; depth 6in.
(102.8cm; 156.21cm; 15.24cm)

decorated with panels of scagliola imitating micromosaic incorporating eagles, roundels with ruins, foliate sprays and panels of simulated porphyry.

Provenance

Formerly located in the dining room of the apartment of the late Stavros Niarchos, 820 Fifth Avenue, New York.

Catalogue Note

Scagliola has been practiced in Italy since the late 16th/early 17th century, most probably originating in Emilia in the area of Carpi. The technique tried to imitate the more expensive pietre dure commessi made famous by the Florentine Opificio. It made use of a type of stone derived from the Apennines in Emilia and in Tuscany called lapis specularis or pietra di luna (moonstone, a type of selenite) which was then ground down and mixed with lime. This mixture was laid down on a stone and inlaid with a composition of colored scaglioli and graphite in order to obtain the required chiaroscura effects, finally the surface was highly polished.

Lot 120 in the present sale, and the present lot are decorated with scagliola which imitates micromosaic and appears to be of Neapolitan origin. This technique was more than likely the product of a single workshop. A table top using this technique and incorporating decorative motifs very similar to those on the present lot is illustrated, Anna Maria Massinelli, Scagliola l'arte della pietra di luna, Rome, 1997, pp.170-171. This, together with the offered lot and lot 120 in the present sale, are examples of the new creative impetus towards neoclassical motifs, taking inspiration from the discoveries at Pompei, and from antique ceramics

An almost identically decorated chimneypiece is at Ickworth, Suffolk the country seat of the Hervey family since the middle of the 15th century. Frederick Augustus Hervey who succeeded his brother as 4th Earl of Bristol in 1779 spent long period of time in Rome during the latter part of the 18th century where he amassed a large collection of paintings, sculpture and works of art. He commissioned chimney pieces for Ickworth in Rome to which he referred in a letter to his daughter in 1798 after he was briefly arrested and his purchases impounded:

All my effects at Rome are under sequestration to the amount of £20,000 at the very leaste ... including immense & valuable & beautiful property of large mosaic pavements, sumptuous chimney pieces for my new house ...[Ickworth].