ANGIOLO BARBETTI (1805-1873) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

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Carved Giltwood, Pietre Dure

Stamped beneath the marble top and to the inside of one leg 'Barbetti Firenze'.

125.00cm wide    96.00cm high    67.00cm deep (49.21 inches wide  37.80 inches high  26.38 inches deep)

Masinelli, Anna Maria, The Gilbert Collection: Hardstones, London 2000, p.109 for a comparative table top

An Important Florentine Renaissance Revival Pietre Dure and Carved Giltwood Centre Table.

The rectangular black marble top with an outer edge of lapis lazuli, is inset with a pietre dure still life of a bowl containing a pearl necklace, a blue and white vase issuing flowers, a footed bowl with fruit including pears and pomegranates, shells and coral. The still life composition rests on a limestone slab, which appears to float against the black marble ground and is framed by naturalistic spandrels of flowers and fruit.

The finely carved giltwood table base has an acanthus carved frieze centred by a tablet carved with putti, dancing and playing musical instruments. The table is raised on finely carved acanthus uprights of 'S'-scrolls and 'C'- scrolls with putti figures carved in the round holding foliate garlands. The legs are united by a shaped undertier with an acanthus apron and leaf carved tapering feet.

Angiolo Barbetti (b. Sienna 1805 - d. Florence 1873) was a skilled carver, designer and decorator, with a flourishing atelier in Florence during the nineteenth century.

After working in his father Massimiliano's atelier in Siena he took up an apprenticeship with Giovacchino Guidi (d. 1842), considered one of Siena’s finest ebenisti. By 1826-7, he had established a workshop on the piazza San Giovanni, Sienna and in 1830 exhibited his first works at the Istituto delle Belle Arti, Siena.

In November 1842, Barbetti moved his workshop to Florence, establishing himself near the ponte alle Grazie. Important commissions from this period included carvings for the interiors of Villa san Donato for Prince Anatoly Demidoff.

Barbetti took part in many of the important international exhibitions of the second half of the nineteenth century, including the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, where he was awarded a medal for a suite of carved walnut furniture. The suite of furniture was purchased following the exhibition by the South Kensington Museum (V&A), where it remains today.

Joined in the business by his four sons Rafaello, Egisto, Ottavio and Rinaldo by the beginning of 1860, Barbetti as a firm, continued to find international success exhibiting successfully at the 1861 Exhibition in Florence, the Paris exhibition of 1867 and the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, the year of Angiolo's death.

The spectacular Florentine pietre dure marble top, which compliments Barbetti’s virtuoso carving, draws inspiration from late eighteenth century still life paintings and table tops designed by the artist Antonio Cioci. The black paragone marble field is inlaid in a variety of marbles, alabasters and hardstones, including, lapis, onyx, white marble, chalcedony and Verte d'arno. A table with a comparative still life scene on a black marble field also laid on an alabaster slab is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum, and illustrated by Anna Maria Masinelli in her book 'The Gilbert Collection: Hardstones', p.109. Further comparative examples with a similar treatment of the design include a pair of tables formerly in the Collection of Lord Astor of Hever.

'Pietre dure' or hard stone mosaic was a costly and time-intensive art form perfected during the Renaissance in Florence, under the patronage of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Medici.

Rome in the early sixteenth century was the catalysing centre of High Renaissance culture. It was here that the cult of the Antique, and the excitement of archaeological discovery was fostering a lasting passion for the marbles and rare stones that had adorned Imperial Rome in the days of her splendour. In Rome there was also a tradition of skilled marble working that had survived throughout the Middle Ages, and made possible the revival of ingenious techniques such as opus sectile. This was a composition of irregular sections of coloured stone, used since the days of the Roman Empire, mainly for the covering of pavements and walls. The Renaissance brought about a revival and refining of this technique, and saw its adoption for display furniture for the homes of rich and cultivated patrons, in a form know as intarsia.

The Medici family were amongst the keenest admirers of Roman intarsia work, and it is clear that it played an important part in the birth of Florentine mosaic, later to be known as Pietre Dure, which was far more complex, and involved the creation of motifs and pictures, not just the geometrical shapes of the earlier 'intarsias'.

In 1588 Grand Duke Ferdinando I founded in Florence the Galleria de Lavori in Pietre Dure, a hardstone workshop combining all the Grand Ducal workshops. He hired local craftsmen and trained them to restore ancient carved-stone objects as well as create original works in pietre dure. These artists soon perfected the art of making pictures with thin pieces of brightly coloured semi-precious stones. Florence was to dominate this trade for the next three hundred years.

During the 1600's the Galleria's work was mainly restricted to Florence, concentrating on the decorations of the Medici family's chapel in the church of San Lorenzo, begun in 1605, and the Tribune in the Uffizi, intended to be a showcase for the finest pieces in the Medici collections. But by the 1700's, when pietre dure became increasingly fashionable, artists trained in the workshop travelled all over Europe to work for other noble or royal households.

Brilliantly coloured flowers, fruits, and birds on a ground of black paragone, were consistently the favourite compositions for pietre dure works. In these designs the memory of Ligozzi's (1547 - 1626) naturalism coexists with extreme stylisation. The plant theme was also to be continued in the festoons of bronze foliage and 'pietre dure' fruits, for which the Galleria even created a new job of fruttista'.

The end of the Tuscan Grand Duchy in 1859 was to see the end of the Gallerias dominance, since it had always been so closely linked to the Court. The House of Savoy, almost completely ignored the manufactory, preferring to obtain their furnishings and gifts from private Florentine workshops, most notably that of Enrico Bosi. The 1870's did see commissions to the Galleria from other monarchs such as Ludwig II of Bavaria and Alexander II of Russia, for pieces in the grand tradition of the past, and such productions maintained earlier levels of quality and taste.