An Italian arte povera bureau, attributed to Giacomo Locatelli, Venice, circa 1750

Sotheby’s, Milan, Old Master Paintings, 19th Century Paintings, Furniture, Works of Art and Rare Books, 16 November 2010, lot 144.

This bureau is a rare example of a piece of arte povera furniture that can be firmly attributed to a particular maker based on comparison with closely similar pieces.

The term arte povera literally translates to ‘poor art’ or ‘pauper’s art’, and refers to the eighteenth-century practice of imitating lacquer using cut-out prints under varnish. This was a rather ingenious response to the appetite for East Asian lacquer among European collectors, which is well-documented and was the prompt for many creative European attempts to mimic the technique. This arte povera method, though, is particularly associated with Venice, and generally involved the découpage-like use of cut-out printed scenes and figures that would be stuck to a plain painted background, before being sealed with a lustrous varnish called sandracca that imitated the glossy sheen of lacquer. Arte povera is often a joyous and vibrant interpretation of the lacquer source material, given that it employs a wide palette of rich colours and a variety of subjects including European landscapes and figure scenes.

A closely similar bureaux in this arte povera style bears the label ‘Lavori di Giacomo Locatelli all'Insegna del Redentore in Merceria Venezia’, announcing that it is the work of a certain Giocomo Locatelli under a [shop]sign of the Redeemer in the ‘Le Mercerie’ shopping street of Venice’s San Marco district, which still exists today. This bureau,¹ which closely parallels the present lot in many aspects of its arte povera decoration, also has much in common with a pair that sold at Sotheby’s in 1999 as part of the Giuseppe Rossi Collection² and also bears the Locatelli label. These clearly issue from the same workshop, although less similar bureaux in arte povera demonstrate that the demand was wider than this specific Locatelli group.⁴ The bureau as a form was invented and popularised in England, but here takes a more dramatic serpentine profile with pointed edges that is far more Venetian – this shape can also be seen on standard non-lacquered Venetian bureaux in veneered wood.⁵

¹ Illustrated in C. Alberici, Il Mobile Veneto, Milan, 1980, no. 271, p. 204.

² Sotheby's London, The Italian Furniture from the Collection of Giuseppe Rossi, 10 March 1999, lot 126.

³ As mentioned when this bureau was illustrated in E. Colle, Il Mobile rococò in Italia, Milan, 2003, cat.79, pp.338-339.

⁴ See Art Casa D’Asta Genova, 27 February 2007, lot 5 and E. Baccheschi (ed), Mobile laccati del settecento Veneziano, Milan, 1966, pp.94-95.

⁵ e.g. Sotheby’s London, 11 December 1992, lot 185.