A fine set of four Italian grey painted and parcel-gilt chairs, Milanese circa 1800

each with a rectangular padded back with outward scrolled top-rail carved with flowers and leaves, above a square padded seat, the seat -rail carved with guilloche enclosing flowerheads, on leaf carved baluster turned tapering front legs and sabre rear legs, the seat rail with the inscription`.....Lioja Litta'  and with a paper label inscribed in ink; some minor retouching to painting and gilding

Originally Palazzo Litta, Milan

Comparative Literature:
G. Morazzoni, Il Mobile Neoclassico Italiano, Milan, 1957 Tav CCCV.

These elegant chairs with a label from Palazzo Litta are comparable to an armchair, one of a suite illustrated by Morrazzoni, op. cit., which the author attributes to a Lombardy maker working at the Court of Viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais, in the Palazzo Reale, Milan, reproduced here in fig.1.

Also see Enrico Colle, Il Mobile neoclassico in Italia arredi e decorazioni d’interni dal 1775 al 1800, Milan, 2005, p. 356, no. 83, for a chair of similar conception with an acanthus leaf joining the rear legs to the side-rail as on the offered chairs, formerly in the Royal Palace in Milan and now in the Pinacoteca Brera, Milan. He states that the illustrated chair was probably designed by Levati.

Palazzo Litta:
In 1648, Count Bartolomeo Arese(1610-1674) commissioned the architect Francesco Maria Richini (1584-1658) to design the Palace.

The former was president of the senate and a well known political figure in the Dukedom of Lombardy. His political position justified the grandeur and the magnificence of his palazzo (Palazzo Arese-Borromeo-Litta). He had three children, but his son died very young and he married off his two daughters, one of whom married Conte Renato Borromeo.

During the 18th century, the prestige of the palace was very dependent on the power of the families Arese-Borromeo. During this period and under the influence of the Conte Renato and afterwards Comte Carlo Borromeo (1710-1778), many alterations to the garden were realised, the fountain was completed and an irrigation system and a windmill were also constructed. Painters such as Donetti, Marelli, Besozzi, Bellotto, Ceriati, Maggi, Zariata and sculptors as Anchelli, Persico, Brivio and Damiani were called upon to embellish the palace. The façade today is exactly as it was when it was built, between 1752 and 1763 by Francesco Bolli with the two Atlases upholding the doorway.