an important princely pair of colonnes the stone Russian, the capitals by Ferdinand barbedienne, circa 1850

R. Wenley (Curator of Sculpture & Metalwork at the Victoria & Albert Museum), Partridge Fine Art Catalogue, Vol. II, 2001, pp. 155-161; The Trustees of the Wallace Collection, Wallace Collection Exhibition Catalogue, March 10 to July 25, 1994, p. 70.; and C. Wainwright, 'Prince of San Donato,' Country Life, Vol. CLXXXVIII, no. 10, London, March 1994, p. 94-95, for articles on Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato (1813-1870).

The collection formed by the Demidoff family ranks amongst those such as the Rothschilds, Lord Hertford, or his son Sir Richard Wallace. Born in St. Petersburg, Anatole Demidoff (1813-1870) moved to Rome upon the death of his mother in 1818. In 1822 his father bought a tract of marshland at San Donato in Polverane to build a palace for his already burgeoning collection. Anatole continued to collect on a grand scale while continuing his philanthropic work, for which he was made Count of San Donato by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1836, and later raised to a princedom upon his marriage to Princess Mathilde Bonaparte in 1840. He was founder of the French Jockey Club and a contemporary of the 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-1870). Demidoff died on April 29, 1870, just before the last of his Florentine collection, including the present lot, were sold at auction. The auction had taken 28 days, selling over 2,500 lots. The seemingly limitless family fortune had come from industrial concerns and vast estates in the Siberian Urals. Nikita Demidoff (1656-1725) was a blacksmith by trade, but by virtue of his skills, became armorer to Peter the Great, later ennobled and landowner over vast mineral deposits, which included the laborodite veneered on the present lot. Another Nikita (1724-1789) helped Catherine the Great buy works of art in France, and his son, Nicolas (1773-1828), married into the Stroganoff family, living in Paris in the house later occupied by Sir Richard Wallace and, from 1824, the Palazzo Serristori in Florence, subsequently buying the San Donato estate. Such was the scale and historical range of the Demidoff collection that it might be likened to that of William Beckford.

The Barbedienne attribution for the gilt-bronze castings comes from the 1880 catalogue. As well as the eight labradorite columns, lot 116, the following lot was a pair of similarily veneered baluster vases, 128 centimeters high, also by the same founder. It might be assumed that these positive contemporary attributions were based, at best, on invoices, information that is now lost to view. According to unsubstantiated tradition, the molds for the capitals were destroyed so that they could not be copied.

The present lot is part of a set of eight, while the original capitals from the Renaissance, on which the present capitals were modeled, were exhibited in the Salon des Mosaiques. The columns later were divided into two sets of four, one set placed at the top of the Escalier d'Honneur, the other within the Grand Salon d'Honneur.

On the abdication of the Grand Duke Leopold in 1859, Florence was annexed by the Kingdon of Sardinia and Demidoff, already unwell, returned to France. San Donato was closed, with the first sale of contents in 1863 attracting international buyers, including the Marquess of Hertford. Further auctions were held in 1868 and 1870 and the present lot was sold in 1880.

Malachite had been used extensively by Nicolas Demidoff for furniture and furnishings and the tradition was continued by Anatole when large deposits were discovered on the Demidoff Estates in the Urals in 1835. A pair of columns of circa 1850, of similar size to the present lot but veneered in malachite, are now in the Wallace Collection, London (no.325 F522-3, illustrated, Hughes, Vol. III, p. 1492). Anatole's propensity to decorate items he commissioned with his coat-of-arms, especially from 1840 when he was raised to the status of a prince, can be seen on both the Wallace columns and the present lot.