PROBABLY VENICE, LATE 17TH CENTURY

With its frame richly encrusted with brilliant ornaments of various forms imitating flowers, this mirror is not only an extravagantly luxurious piece of furnishing but also a testament to the imagination and exceptional capabilities of Venetian glass and mirror makers of the Baroque era. During the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries Venice was the unchallenged center of Italian mirror making and glass blowing. In this mirror the products of these two crafts are combined to create a work that was unrivaled not only on the Italian peninsula but in the whole of Europe. Mirrors produced in Venice in the late 1600s and the 1700s were set in a variety of frames decorated in the most imaginative ways, including gilding or gilding a mecca , veneering with etched glass, painting, lacquering, covering in lacca povera or, as in this case, embellishing with glass and rock crystal imitating flowers. Here, the repoussé gilt metal frame adds additional brilliance and opulence to the mirror. Mirrors of this type were manufactured in various shapes but octagonal ones, such as this lot, appear to have been the most popular and sought-after.
This lot epitomizes the opulence of the “goût Rothschild” and it appears that other members of the family owned comparable mirrors, such as the one of more modest dimensions sold from the collection of Ann and Gordon Getty that was previously in the Rothschild’s legendary collection at Mentmore Towers, see The Ann and Gordon Getty Collection; Christie’s, New York, 23 October 2022, lot 541 ($289,800). Other closely related mirrors include one formerly in the collection of Charles de Beistegui at Palazzo Labia, Venice, sold Christie’s, Paris, 3-4 May 2016, lot 162 (€181,500); and one in the collection of the count and countess Brandolini d'Adda, see L. Verchère, Renzo Mongiardino: Renaissance Master of Style, New York, 2013, p. 124.