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A PAIR OF ITALIAN NEOCLASSIC GILTWOOD SIDETABLES In the manner of Giovanni Battista Pira...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:90,000.00 - 110,000.00 USD
A PAIR OF ITALIAN NEOCLASSIC GILTWOOD SIDETABLES In the manner of Giovanni Battista Pira...
A PAIR OF ITALIAN NEOCLASSIC GILTWOOD SIDETABLES

In the manner of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Rome, circa 1765 Each rectangular porphyry marble top above an egg-and-leaf molding and a sunken frieze centered by a beaded Caesar medallion flanked by a pair of bucrania, all linked by ribbon-tied laurel swags, above a guilloche molding and acanthus clasp to the apron, the sides similarly decorated, each corner set with a laurel-crowned ram head with stylized acanthus collar, above tapering molded cabriole legs on hoof feet, with flowerheads to the terminals of the volute tops, husks to the front, acanthus to the reverse 34 X 50 X 26 IN. (87 X 127 X 66 CM)

$90,000-110,000

Provenance Sir Arthur du Cross, 21 Park Street, London, until 1957; Michael Behrens, Esq. (sold Christie's London, July 9, 1998, lot 33).

The present side tables tables with their festive Caesar medallion-centered and bucrania-hung friezes and acanthus-wrapped ram headed monopodia typify the Roman style promoted by the artist/architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi. For the pair, he used several ancient designs: he modeled the legs, set with ram heads, after bronze tripods that were found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and based the ox skulls (bucrania) on Roman funerary motifs. They also relate to his designs for two tables and a chimneypiece (John Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, The Complete Etchings. San Francisco, 1984, Vol. II, p. 902, fig. 829), to the legs on a pair of chimera-supported tables (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/ Minneapolis Institute of Arts) which he designed for the Quirinale apartments of Cardinal Giovanni

Battista Rezzonico, nephew of Pope Clement XIII (d. 1769), to whom he dedicated his pattern book Le Diverse Maniere d'adonare I camini, 1769 (Wilton-Ely, "Reflections on Piranesi as a Furniture Designer," Furniture History (1990), p. 195, fig. 2, p. 197, figs. 4-5), and to a design for a side table in which he uses an egg molding beneath the marble and Caesar medallions on the frieze (Ibid., p. 198, fig. 9).

A closely related, but larger, side table, with an almost identical Caesar medallion centering the frieze and hoof-footed cabriole legs with flowering volutes is at the Capitoline Museum, Rome (Alvar Gonzales-Palacios, Il Tempio di Gusto. Milan, 1984, Vol. II, fig. 152). Another single larger side table set with medallions for the full length of the frieze and with virtually identical legs and ram heads was sold Christie's New York, September 27, 2000, lot 460, $64,625
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