When most recently sold at auction, the painted decoration of these exceptional doors was attributed with certainty to Giovanni Antonio and Francesco Guardi by Giuseppe Maria Pilo, an art historian specializing in the Venetian settecento. Pilo theorized, in the sale catalogue, that each door was painted by one of the Guardi brothers with scenes from the return voyage of the Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang from India, famously the inspiration for the classic Ming Dynasty novel, Journey to the West. It is now, however, believed that the painted decoration was executed by an anonymous Venetian follower of the elder Guardi brother.
These doors unite two quintessentially Rococo traditions: intimate interiors and the fascination with the East. Giovanni Antonio Guardi himself painted numerous canvases with orientalist themes. He was most intrigued by Ottoman Turkish subjects and in the years 1742 and 1743 he delivered no fewer than 43 quadri turchi to his patron Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg. Although the scenes depicted on these doors are Chinese rather than Turkish, the manner in which the paint is applied to the surface of the lower sections recalls Antonio Guardi’s style and shows the influence of his works, such as his 1743 canvas Scene in the Garden of a Seraglio, now in the Carmen Thyssen Collection (inv. CTB.1956.2). Chinoiserie in Italy was present not only in the oeuvres of painters, but was also equally, if not even more, popular in all fields of the applied arts and architecture. Lacquered and painted furniture of various types was decorated with chinoiserie scenes, and entire interiors were conceived in this new fashion. Although the most famous and impressive chinoiserie interiors of the times were constructed at the Palazzo Reale in Turin, numerous ville and palazzi in Veneto, to the east, also boast rooms outfitted solely with Chinese-inspired decoration. Among these is the celebrated Villa Valmanara ai Nani in Vicenza, decorated with fantastical chinoiserie frescoes by Tiepolo.
The doors offered here were most likely conceived as part of an interior with an all-encompassing chinoiserie theme. Based on their size, they were probably intended for a smaller, more intimate gabinetto, where jewel-like polychrome-decorated furniture would have matched the elaborately-painted walls. Mirrored halls were much-loved all over Europe in the eighteenth century but they enjoyed particular popularity in the German and Italian states where smaller and more private cabinets played an important role in the design of princely palaces. Examples of such interiors include those in the Palazzo Turinetti di Pertengo and the Palazzo Chiablese in Turin, as well as the Palazzo Reale in Caserta. The mirrored surfaces were often enhanced with etching, gilding and polychrome paint. The inset painted mirrors of the Gabinetto degli Specchi at Palazzo Colonna in Rome feature a type of decoration closely related to that seen on our doors.