VENICE, CIRCA 1775

This luxurious and rare table showcases one of the most quintessential arts of Venice: colored glass, produced at the Murano factory since the thirteenth century. While mirrors and chandeliers incorporating colored glass were a consistent aspect of Venetian production, furniture incorporating glass panels is particularly rare and must have been reserved for the most elite patrons. One of the few recorded examples of furniture incorporating glass panels from Venice is a Rococo chair in the Museo Vetrario, Murano, see E. Colle, Il Mobile Rococò in Italia, Milan, 2003, p. 359. An example of a pair of blue glass inlaid armchairs, sold Christie's, New York, 15 October 2019, lot 242 ($40,000); as well as Christie's, New York, 2 June 2015, lot 305 ($100,000).

Born into a prestigious Venetian family with Florentine roots dating back hundreds of years, Ludovico Giovanni Manin (1725-1802) had already had an illustrious career holding various titles in a number cities throughout Veneto by the time he was elected Doge of Venice in on 9 March, 1789. At the beginning of Napoleon’s campaign in Italy, Manin tried to keep Venice neutral, however when the Habsburgs lost Venice, Istria and Dalmatia in the Treaty of Campo Formio to France, Napoleon’s forces invaded La Serenissima and on 12 May 1979 the city surrendered to the French. Manin immediately abdicated and spent the next three years as a recluse in the Palazzo Dolfin Manin and the Villa Manin. He dies on 24 October 1802, leaving a large sum of money to a number of charitable causes.

Built in the sixteenth century, the Villa Manin was one of the ancestral homes of the Manin family in Veneto. The building was enlarged and altered many times over the years, most notably in the eighteenth century when the architects Domenico Rossi, Giovanni Ziborghi and Giorgio Massari transformed the villa into a grand edifice whose primary function was no longer agriculture but representation. A new chapel was lavishly outfitted along with the main apartments, which were decorated with grand late Baroque frescoes by Ludovico Dorigny, Jacopo Amigoni and Pietro Oretti. During the French invasion of Venice in 1797, Napoleon and Joséphine de Beauharnais took up lodging in the villa.