SHELLEY | Settee said to have been owned by him

[SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE]

Italian walnut settee

WITH PROVENANCE LINKING IT BACK TO THE POET, who is believed to have bought it in Pisa in 1821; first quarter of the 19th century, 230cm wide

"...[E.J. Trelawny] further bestowed upon me the sofa which Shelley had procured for himself in Pisa, and on which, for he often slept on it, the poet must probably have passed the very last night of his life. It is in beechwood (or, as some say, in Italian walnut-wood) a very roomy couch, of simple yet rather tasteful construction..." (Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti, vol. 2, p.375)

This sofa was almost certainly bought when the Shelleys took on their apartment on the top floor of the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa in October 1821. This was their final residence in Pisa, but the first that was rented unfurnished (see Shelley, Letters, vol.2, p.363). When they left Pisa in April 1822 they packed the furniture and shipped it by boat to their new (and Shelley's final) residence in San Terenzo on the Bay of Spezia (Holmes, Shelley, p.712). After Shelley's death later that same year the sofa passed through various hands, all connected with the poet, until it reached William Michael Rossetti, brother of Dante Gabriel Rossetti the artist. Rossetti played a significant role in the Shelley renaissance of the 1870s: he wrote extensively on the poet, was chairman of the Shelley Society, and owned a number of other relics of Shelley, most strikingly a fragment of skull which he also had from Trelawny, who had recovered it from the crematorium furnace. Rossetti explained the sofa's provenance in Some Reminiscences, where it was also illustrated.

PROVENANCE:

Percy Bysshe Shelley, purchased Pisa c.1821; his widow Mary Shelley; Leigh Hunt, who lived with his family with Mary Shelley, moving to Florence when Mary Shelley returned to England in 1823; Charles Armitage Brown, the friend of Keats, who befriended Hunt in Florence and remained in Italy after Hunt's return to England in 1825; Seymour Kirkup, painter, antiquarian and friend of Brown; Edward John Trelawny, friend Kirkup and of Shelley, having first met Kirkup at Shelley's funeral ("...The Barone [Kirkup], being still older than Trelawny, was, a year or so before his decease [in 1880], informed by the latter with his usual downrightness that he had better resign the sofa, lest it should at the last get totally overlooked as so much antiquated and unprized upholstery of one defunct. Kirkup admitted the validity of the plea, and sent the sofa from Leghorn to London, to be Trelawny's property..."); William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) artist, editor, and chairman of the Shelley Society ("... [Trelawny] authorized me to receive and house it (the dimensions are such that it had to be taken apart before passing through my house-door), with the understanding that, after his death, it would become absolutely mine. So it did ... and the Shelley sofa, one of my most valued possessions, faces me as I write these words...", Some Reminiscences, p.375); thence by descent

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