A NORTH ITALIAN CARVED GILTWOOD SIDE TABLE, PIEMONTE SECOND QUARTER 18TH CENTURY, FROM THE CIRCLE OF FILIPPO JUVARRA

The richly carved motifs of this impressive side table with voluted scrolls combined with large-scale rocailles relates it to other Piedmontese consoles produced in the 1730s and 1740s. The extraordinary quality of the carving, visible down to the stretcher, reaches its pinnacle in the delicate foliate mouldings of the front rail and in the leg with two C scrolls forming an S scroll, graceful yet exuberant at the same time.

The table’s ornamentation epitomizes the rococo style dictated in Turin by the Italian Filippo Juvarra named First Architect to the King of Sicily, Duke of Savoy, who charged Juvarra with transforming Savoy's capital. The design of the present table relates to a drawing of a console table published by the French carver and designer Nicolas Pineau in 1737 as the frontispiece of ‘Nouveaux desseins de Pieds de tables, de Vases et de Consoles’ - a publication which has highly influential in Italy. The curves of the legs are also similar to a drawing of a console table by Juvarra’s student and collaborator Giovanni Pietro Baroni di Tavigliano (Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, Ris. 59.20/31, Fig. 1). The table, directly inspired after the drawing is now in the Palazzo Reale of Turin and displays Juvarra’s playful and harmonious rococo style.

A series of similar consoles are illustrated in V. Viale, op.cit., Vol. III, figs.58-60, fig.62, fig.64. A related console was sold Sotheby's London, 15 December 1999, lot 61.