An Italian carved giltwood console table, designed by Simone Cantoni, Genoa, last quarter of the 18th century

E. Colle, Il mobile neoclassico in Italia: Arredi e decorazioni d’interni dal 1775 al 1800, Milan, 2005, p.386.

This important console table brings together the fertile imagination of Italian designers, a high standard of technical execution and the taste for highly ornamental magnificence in eighteenth-century palatial interiors; its splendour and quality places it among some of the finest Genoan furniture pieces of the period.

Genoa’s many centuries of wealth and power as a key Mediterranean port city meant that a clutch of wealthy families drove a strong market for luxurious furniture in fashionable styles, even once the city was on the wane in the eighteenth century. This giltwood table is an example of the Neoclassical taste in Italian fine residences, adopted in a final flourish of elegance for the palazzi of Genoa’s old regime before the city succumbed to Napoleon’s forces in the 1790s and the 700-year republic came to an end. Neoclassicism came earlier to Genoa than many other regions of Italy, partly due to direct contact with French architects: Charles de Wailly, for instance, worked on the Palazzo Spinola, one of the most important neoclassical commissions in Genoa. One of the first Neoclassical buildings in Genoa was the seat of the city’s political power, the Doge’s Palace: after the older edifice burned down in a major fire in 1777, the public competition for its redesign was won by the Neoclassical architect Simone Cantoni. Indeed, a surviving design by Cantoni depicting a table remarkably similar to the model of the present lot suggests that it could even have been made for one of his major commissions in Genoa.¹ It is difficult to precisely identify the maker of this table, but the evident high quality of its workmanship means that is it is likely to be one of the city’s top-tier makers as identified by Colle such as Battista and Pasquale Marchese, Giuseppe Seppe, Francesco Massone and others.²

This table is one of a group of Genoese tables that have similar columnar legs, rectilinear forms, intricate friezes and carved central panels, evidently inspired by the Louis Seize style that was widespread in France. One of the most important comparable examples is in the Villa Cimena in Turin, a magnificent table with a central panel depicting an “anacreontic scene” and, remarkably, a frieze with singerie motifs.³ A pair to this Villa Cimena table, which differs only in its marble top and the depiction of a military trophy on its central panel, once belonged to the Spinola family mentioned above and sold at Sotheby’s in 1999.⁴

Beyond that important pair, there are also some other Genoese tables made to a similar style that are documented,⁵ as well as a pair that has been in the collections of the 1st Duke of Acquarone (1890–1948), Alberto Bruni Tedeschi and Gianni Giordano.⁶ Between these examples, there are some notable differences between the designs, such as the material of the central panel to the frieze, or the angle of the capital at the top of the legs. Several other notable tables that are of different form but still essentially the same neoclassical mode are also documented.⁷

¹ E. Colle, Il mobile neoclassico in Italia: Arredi e decorazioni d’interni dal 1775 al 1800, Milan, 2005, pp.386, cat. 90.

² Ibid., pp.373-4.

³ B. Camerana, Villa Cimena: L’archittetura, il giardino, gli arredi, Turin, 2003, p.173. The colour plates are not numbered but the table is illustrated twice, and can also be seen on the Villa Cimena’s website at <https://villa-cimena.it/en/the-villa/> [accessed 24 July 2025]

⁴ Sotheby’s London, The Italian Furniture from the Estate of the late Giuseppe Rossi, vol I, 10 March 1999, lot 198.

⁵ See E. Bacchesci, Mobili Genovesi, Milan, 1962, p.123; A. Gonzáles-Palacios, Il mobile in Liguria, Genoa, 1996, p.308, fig.360; Sotheby’s London, 3 December 1997, lot 159; Sotheby’s London, 12 June 2002, lot 369.

⁶ See the printed catalogue for Sotheby’s Paris, Giordano: Une Vision Muséale, 26-27 November 2024, pp.428-431, previously also at auction at Sotheby’s Milan, 10-11 July 2007, lot 266. One of these tables was also illustrated in G. Morazzoni, Il mobile genovese, Milan, 1962, pl.99.

⁷ In academic literature, see E. Colle, op. cit., cat. 90 (in Milan’s Palazzo Reale) and A. Gonzáles-Palacios, op. cit, p.302, fig.352.

At auction, see Sotheby’s London, 10 June 1998, lot 43; Sotheby’s London, 16 December 1998, lot 197; Artcurial, 23 June 2010, lot 1806; Sotheby's London, 10 July 2013, lot 147.