| Description
A table cabinet made of softwood with ebony
veneer and rippled moulding.
The door in the centre of the façade is decorated with a
pietre dure panel depicting
a courtyard with a large arched entrance and a fountain in the middle.
Inside the door is another pietre dure panel with a picture of a
saint holding a martyr’s palm. This door gives access to an
interior section that can be pulled out, inside which there are
two drawers edged in rippled moulding with black marble and pietre
dure panels, decorated with sprigs of flowers.
The side wings of the cabinet have two
drawers with vases of flowers inlaid on the outside. Each pair of
the upper and lower pietre dure panels decorated with birds fronts
a single drawer. The two panels on each side between the pietre
dure with the fountain and the panel with flowers, each covers a
whole drawer, as do the two plaques above and below the fountain
decorated with three flowers tied with a ribbon. The cabinet is
set on a stand of carved and gilded
wood made in England about 1750.
The sides of the cabinet are faced with
two large panels, each bearing three pietre
dure mosaics, the centre one depicting a bird on a flowering
branch, the upper and lower depicting trophies. The top has two
further pietre dure panels with sprays of campula. The pietre dure
plaques contain various types of breccia
and coloured marbles with an inlay of lapis lazuli, jasper, Sienese
onyx, verde d’Arno and
Albarese limestone. The edges and corners of the cabinet have gilt-bronze
mounts. The birds in the lower corners resemble bramblings (Fringilla
montifringilla) or Northern European finches; the parrots on the
bottom row have ring necks like the rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula
krameri).
Commentary
This piece is constructed after the manner of the Flemish cabinetmakers
of the mid-seventeenth century, who disseminated the style throughout
Europe. It has certain similarities with a Flemish cabinet that
has a view of the Villa della Petraia in the centre, which was included
in the inventory of goods left by Don Lorenzo de' Medici after his
death in 1649. The two panels set into the lid also occur in a cabinet
formerly in the possession of the diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706),
and a cabinet with the Barberini coat-of-arms in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York.
Doubt has been cast on the Florentine origins
of the pietre dure panels, but they appear to be typical products
of the Grand Ducal workshops in the first half of the seventeenth
century. The fountain motif also appears on the Evelyn cabinet,
which was made in Florence in 1645 by Domenico Benotti. The military
trophies on the sides could also be of Florentine manufacture.
The panels were probably acquired in Florence
and mounted elsewhere in the Flemish style.
Glossaries
ebony
- a very hard dark-coloured wood
veneer - a thin layer of decorative wood used to cover a
cheaper material
pietre dure - literally ‘hard stones’, a form
of mosaic where brilliant pictures are created from cut and polished
marbles and minerals
gilded - the embellishment of silver, bronze or other material
with a thin layer of gold
breccia - a coarse-grained rock made of
solidified fragments of other rocks and stones
onyx - a fine-grained mineral that has alternating layers
of different colours, including white, brown and black
gilt-bronze - the embellishment of bronze with a thin layer
of gold
back to the
collection
|
|
 |
Cabinet decorated with Florentine hardstone or 'pietre dure' panels.
Detail below. |
 |
|
the
Gilbert silver