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拍品专文
These whimsical and colorful pietra dura panels depicting a jester and a dancing old peasant woman belong to an interesting sub-group of hardstone-inlaid plaques produced in Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pietra dura panels were executed in a great number of different genres, including geometric patterns, still lives, pictures depicting flora and fauna, architectural capricci, biblical and mythological scenes, as well as land- and seascapes. The latter groups often included human figures, which mostly served as staffage similarly to contemporaneous painting practices. The faces and gestures of the staffage figures were often generalized and their sole purpose was to give life to a scene and to make its narrative more easily understandable for the viewer. By the eighteenth century, the human form was rendered with much greater care and in detail as seen in the Imperial pietra dura panel depicting billiard players sold Christie’s, New York, 11 December 2014, lot 47 ($905,000) and in a scene depicting the port of Livorno, now in the Hofburg, Vienna, see A. Giusti, Pietre Dure and the Art of Florentine Inlay, Paris, 2005, pp. 174-175, among others. Humans removed from a scene and used as the main feature on a panel often possessed characteristics that made them worthy of being depicted alone; saints, exotic figures, amorous couples or, as in the case of the present plaques, caricatures. An example of a eighteenth-century Florentine panel showing a middle eastern couple and a magnificent Louis XVI cabinet mounted with plaques depicting a middle eastern lady and a Hungarian gentleman were sold Dalva Brothers: Parisian Taste in New York; Christie’s, New York, 22 October 2020, lots 2 and 65, respectively.
The jester and the woman depicted alone in these panels are certainly eccentric in their appearance and they are executed with great detail, using particularly interesting stones, some of which are typical to the Grand Ducal workshops in Florence. Both figures are humorous interpretations of ordinary characters and closely relate to seventeenth-century caricatures that can already be found in pietra dura panels of the 1600s. Gnomes and jesters playing instruments was a popular motif in the seventeenth century and can be found on inlaid panels such as the one after drawings by Baccio del Bianco (1604-1657) in Marlborough House, London, see A. Gonzáles-Palacios, Mosaici e Pietre Pure, Milan, 1981, p. 33, and on a pair of table tops formerly in the collection of Edmund de Rothschild at Halton House and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, see A.M. Massinelli, The Gilbert Collection: Hardstones, 2000, pp. 85-86. An almost identical figure of a jester playing the guitar can be found on a Florentine table top in the Château de Versailles, see A. Giusti, Pietre Dure: Hardstone Furniture and Decorations, London, 1992, p. 83, fig. 26. This easily-recognizable figure is based on a drawing by Jacques Callot (1592-1635) entitled Le Comédien Masqué Jouant de la Guitare, published as plate 20 in his 1616 series Varie Figure Gobbi: suite appelée aussi Les Bossus, Les Pygmées, Les Nains Grotesques, see D. Ternois and B. Heckel, et. al., Jacques Callot 1592-1635, Paris, 1992, pp. 230-231, fig. 190. The figure of the woman is also Callot’s creation and it was included in his 1617 series of Capricci di Varie Figure. Similarly to del Bianco’s dwarfs, Callot’s Gobbi are grotesque figures depicted in various humorous activities. The two series were published in Florence and thus their direct influence on Florentine ateliers working in pietre dure is evident.
BACCIO CAPPELLI
The master craftsman whose signature is found on the reverse of these panels is Baccio Cappelli. Cappelli was a member of one of those families that worked for generations at the Galleria dei Lavori, the Grand Ducal Workshops. A Baccio Cappelli sr. was employed in the ducal workshops in the time of Cosimo II, and an Antonio Cappelli was active under Ferdinand II. Our Baccio Cappelli was perhaps his son. Only a limited number of his signed works survive, including panels of the iconic Badminton Cabinet sold Christie’s, London, 9 December 2004, lot 260, where his name appears with different spellings, and plaques that decorate a cabinet made in 1771 after a design by Robert Adam for the Duchess of Manchester, which was in the Castle of Kimbolton, Huntingdon, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, see E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, New Haven and London, 2001, p. 195. Interestingly, these two panels, while both signed by Cappelli, similarly to the plaques on the Badminton cabinet are inscribed slightly differently with a mixture of Italian and Latin: the one depicting the dancing woman is with a scratched cursive inscription Baccio Cappelli Fecit anno 1706 in Fiorenza, while the other is with the signature Baccius Cappellius FLorenimus FEcit Anno 1704. The Italian signature in cursive is almost identical to the signature found on the Badminton cabinet panel label, further reinforcing this lot’s attribution to Cappelli. Cappelli is mentioned in the Historia Glytographica by A. F. Gori (Florence 1767), who specified that he was working under Grand Duke Gian Gastone (1723-1737), while Antonio Zobi wrongly reduces his activity to the reign of Grand Duke Francesco Stefano of Lorraine. It is certain, that Cappelli was already working in the Galleria in the early eighteenth century, under Cosimo III (1670-1723) since in 1705 he was commissioned two oval plaques of the Annunciation, and in 1708 part of a clock designed by Foggini. He was still working in the Galleria in 1746 and must have died around 1751. Cappelli’s oeuvre is mostly made up of landscapes, ornithological and botanical subjects, making these delightful panels particularly rare.
The jester and the woman depicted alone in these panels are certainly eccentric in their appearance and they are executed with great detail, using particularly interesting stones, some of which are typical to the Grand Ducal workshops in Florence. Both figures are humorous interpretations of ordinary characters and closely relate to seventeenth-century caricatures that can already be found in pietra dura panels of the 1600s. Gnomes and jesters playing instruments was a popular motif in the seventeenth century and can be found on inlaid panels such as the one after drawings by Baccio del Bianco (1604-1657) in Marlborough House, London, see A. Gonzáles-Palacios, Mosaici e Pietre Pure, Milan, 1981, p. 33, and on a pair of table tops formerly in the collection of Edmund de Rothschild at Halton House and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, see A.M. Massinelli, The Gilbert Collection: Hardstones, 2000, pp. 85-86. An almost identical figure of a jester playing the guitar can be found on a Florentine table top in the Château de Versailles, see A. Giusti, Pietre Dure: Hardstone Furniture and Decorations, London, 1992, p. 83, fig. 26. This easily-recognizable figure is based on a drawing by Jacques Callot (1592-1635) entitled Le Comédien Masqué Jouant de la Guitare, published as plate 20 in his 1616 series Varie Figure Gobbi: suite appelée aussi Les Bossus, Les Pygmées, Les Nains Grotesques, see D. Ternois and B. Heckel, et. al., Jacques Callot 1592-1635, Paris, 1992, pp. 230-231, fig. 190. The figure of the woman is also Callot’s creation and it was included in his 1617 series of Capricci di Varie Figure. Similarly to del Bianco’s dwarfs, Callot’s Gobbi are grotesque figures depicted in various humorous activities. The two series were published in Florence and thus their direct influence on Florentine ateliers working in pietre dure is evident.
BACCIO CAPPELLI
The master craftsman whose signature is found on the reverse of these panels is Baccio Cappelli. Cappelli was a member of one of those families that worked for generations at the Galleria dei Lavori, the Grand Ducal Workshops. A Baccio Cappelli sr. was employed in the ducal workshops in the time of Cosimo II, and an Antonio Cappelli was active under Ferdinand II. Our Baccio Cappelli was perhaps his son. Only a limited number of his signed works survive, including panels of the iconic Badminton Cabinet sold Christie’s, London, 9 December 2004, lot 260, where his name appears with different spellings, and plaques that decorate a cabinet made in 1771 after a design by Robert Adam for the Duchess of Manchester, which was in the Castle of Kimbolton, Huntingdon, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, see E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, New Haven and London, 2001, p. 195. Interestingly, these two panels, while both signed by Cappelli, similarly to the plaques on the Badminton cabinet are inscribed slightly differently with a mixture of Italian and Latin: the one depicting the dancing woman is with a scratched cursive inscription Baccio Cappelli Fecit anno 1706 in Fiorenza, while the other is with the signature Baccius Cappellius FLorenimus FEcit Anno 1704. The Italian signature in cursive is almost identical to the signature found on the Badminton cabinet panel label, further reinforcing this lot’s attribution to Cappelli. Cappelli is mentioned in the Historia Glytographica by A. F. Gori (Florence 1767), who specified that he was working under Grand Duke Gian Gastone (1723-1737), while Antonio Zobi wrongly reduces his activity to the reign of Grand Duke Francesco Stefano of Lorraine. It is certain, that Cappelli was already working in the Galleria in the early eighteenth century, under Cosimo III (1670-1723) since in 1705 he was commissioned two oval plaques of the Annunciation, and in 1708 part of a clock designed by Foggini. He was still working in the Galleria in 1746 and must have died around 1751. Cappelli’s oeuvre is mostly made up of landscapes, ornithological and botanical subjects, making these delightful panels particularly rare.