Summary

Table; base, giltwood, carved, probably made in France, about 1650-1700.

Full description

This sixteenth-century art object was created to form a centrepiece and point of discussion in a room. Emphasis was placed on the table-top, inlaid with decorative hardstones (pietre dure), being the rarest, most expensive and desirable element. This table-top showcases particularly fine quality craftsmanship of the Grand Ducal workshops in Florence, during the first quarter of the 17th century. The combination of pietre dure and extensive use of rare lapis lazuli, with an intense blue colour and gold flecks, meant that this table was produced for a very wealthy collector. Ralph Dutton originally positioned it in the centre of the Hall, to be the first object seen by his guests. He bought this during the summer of 1960 when he visited Venice. It cost him £900 to purchase, £150 in duty and £172.10.6 to ship via Milan. Maxine Fox (2016): The panels on this Florentine hardstone inlaid table top, with naturalistically rendered flowers and birds, display the fine skills and quality of the Grand Ducal workshops in the first half of the 17th century. The technique of creating inlays from hard, coloured stones (pietre dure) was developed by the ancient Romans and revived in the 1550s in Rome, when supplies of antique marbles were available from surrounding excavations. In Florence in 1588 Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici established the Galleria dei Lavori, in the Uffizi,the first court manufacture in Europe to specialise in hardstone work. The workshop produced cabinets, caskets and table-tops to furnish Medici residences, to adorn important public locations in Florence and to serve as diplomatic gifts. This table top is inlaid with a sumptuous assortment of hardstones, each carefully selected and combined to give naturalistic detail, colour and fluidity to the decoration. It is exceptionally striking due to the combination of pietre dure and the extensive use of lapis lazuli both rare and precious materials.The lapis lazuli, which stands out prominently amongst the decoration of the top is of the finest quality with an intense colour and gold flecks and originates from Persia (now Afghanistan). The Design: The subject-matter of the panels on this table top demonstrates the influence of Jacopo Ligozzi’s (Verona 1547-Florence 1626) depictions of flora and fauna. He was the Medici court painter and director of the Galleria dei Lavori (Grand Ducal Manufactory) in Florence. As early as 1577, Ligozzi was creating drawings which were admired by Francesco I (1541-87) and by the end of his career he was court painter and superintendent of the galleries for Ferdinand II (1610-70) and his paintings were widely admired for their scientific accuracy appealing to the late Renaissance fascination with the natural world. According to Giusti, 2006, op. cit., p. 76, ‘in the last decade of his service to the manufacture, he (Ligozzi) succeeded in making the principal and almost exclusive theme of hardstone inlays those compositions of birds, flowers and fruit with which he had always demonstrated his analytical and captivating skill as a draughtsman of nature’. Ligozzi executed a series of watercolour drawings of zoological and botanical subjects for Francesco I de’ Medici which are now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Giusti also states op. cit., p. 83,’Thanks to Ligozzi the phantasmagorical natural world of stone that had risen out of the bowels of the earth, now opened up to embrace and interpret the other highly coloured expressions of nature that stud the earth like flowers, or plough the sky like birds’. See Giusti, 1992, op. cit., plate 26, p. 49, (fig. 1), for a gouache of a bird of paradise by Ligozzi (Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Florence) which almost certainly inspired the craftsmen of the Galleria in their depictions of birds on fruiting and flowering branches. A vase of flowers was one of the earliest and most common motifs in Florentine mosaics. An identical vase in lapis lazuli with siena marble c-scroll ornamentation with a different floral arrangement to that upon this top is illustrated by Giusti, 2006, op. cit., plate 69, p. 88 (fig. 2). The aforementioned vase is a detail on a Medici kneeler in ebony circa 1621-24 (Museo degli Argenti, Florence). The kneeler was started in the last years of Cosimo II (1590-1621) and completed after his death in 1621. It was in the form of a small altar made of ebony and hardstones and displays a tessera mosaic of the Baptism of Christ in the frontispiece, where according to a 1624 inventory-there was previously a half length Magdalene, now lost, by Leonardo da Vinci. It was formerly in the Villa del Poggio Imperiale, near Florence. A Florentine panel in hardstones and marble from the Galleria dei Lavori depicting a related vase of flowers on a plinth, probably by Romolo di Francesco Ferrucci del Tadda, after a design by Matteo Nigetti, dating to the early 17th century, which was originally in the Medici collections then Villa del Poggio Imperiale is illustrated by Koeppe, op. cit., plate 44. p. 181. The author states that it was customary in the Grand Ducal workshops to entrust the overall design for a mosaic to an artist in the Medici circle and that Duke Ferdinand de Medici’s favourite architect designed vessels for the altar of the Chapel of the Annunciation in the Florentine Church of the Santissima Annunziata that in silhouette and form are similar to the vase illustrated by Koeppe, op. cit.. The same author also states,‘The panel is one of the finest examples in which black Belgian marble is used for a mosaic ground.This stone would become the obligatory background for dazzling coloured-stone inlays of flowers, fruit and birds-the principal subject matter of Florentine mosaics throughout the seventeenth century and later. The unexpected but effective juxtaposition of semi-precious and calcareous stones …is most characteristic of mosaics made early in the history of the Grand Ducal workshop’s production’. It is interesting to note that his workshop produced other inlaid views of vases set in a black background in the first years of the 17th century and it is not inconceivable that del Tadda may well be the author of the vase on the present table top due to its exceedingly fine design, choice of stones and execution and similarity with the vase on the kneeler made for Cosimo II. Furthermore, Giusti illustrates,1992, op. cit., plate 35, p. 59, a table top with pietre dure commesso of a parrot and flowers on a paragone ground produced by the Grand Ducal Workshops after a design attributed to Jacopo Ligozzi, circa 1610-20, (Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence). Also see Massinelli, op. cit., no. 20, pp. 80-81, for a Florentine table top with a central cartouche with a bird on a branch dating to the mid 17th century, in the Gilbert Collection now on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It is also worthwhile noting that according to Giusti, 1992, op. cit., p. 79, `..both at court and among other highly-placed patrons the most appreciated designs were the floral ones on a ground of paragone di Fiandra and ones showing birds’. From their inception in the first decades of the 17th century and for over a century thereafter, the jet black colour of the Belgian marble panels made an ideal ground, accentuating the vivid colours of the bird’s plumage and the bright compositions of flowers and fruit which became the signature of the pietre dure panels manufactured in Florence. Also the same author states op. cit., ‘These panels were frequently imitated but seldom equalled in quality and execution and were so admired and in demand across Europe.’ Giusti, 2006, op. cit. plate 73, p. 93, illustrates a related table top with flowers, fruits with reserves in siena marble from the Grand Ducal workshops, dating to the second half 17th centuy in Schloss Schönbrunn, Vienna (fig.3). Finally, as a postscript, although much grander in scale and design, there is the profuse use of lapis lazuli in octagonal and oval reserves on a floral decorated pietre dure table top with the arms of the Elector of Bavaria, from the Grand Ducal workshops, circa 1623, (Residenz Munich), illustrated by Giusti, 2006, op. cit., plate 70, p. 89. These Florentine plaques depicting birds, fruit and flowers were popular with Grand Tourists and John Evelyn brought nineteen plaques back from Florence to England and had a cabinet made in England to display them. Several plaques with birds and butterflies, although later in date than the offered example, can be seen on the Badminton Cabinet commissioned by the 3rd Duke of Beaufort from the Opificio delle pietre dure in 1726, and in his extensive note when the cabinet appeared for sale in 2004, Alvar González-Palacios states that a paper label with Bacco Cappelli's signature was found on two of the pietre dure panels on the cabinet and `.. . it was common practice at the Galleria to keep aside pietra dura embellishments and panels to be used or sold at a convenient date, or to be incorporated in new objects or furnishings.’