This rare and unusual table belongs to a small corpus of grand and beautifully worked table tops incorporating 17th century pietra dura plaques from the Grand Ducal Workshops arranged symmetrically on a background, here a rich grey granite. It appears that tables such as this found favour in foreign courts north of the Alps, incorporating archetypally Florentine plaques of birds, landscapes and animals arranged symmetrically against a marble background.
The circular landscape panels on an Alberese ground of the present table are of very high quality, similar to those incorporated into room schemes like the Margravine of Baden’s Florentiner Zimmer in Rastatt. These are arranged symmetrically and harmoniously alongside rectangular panels on a black Belgian marble (paragone di Fiandra) ground inlaid with birds and parakeets after designs by Jacopo Ligozzi. Indeed in the centre of the Florentiner Zimmer in Schloss Favorite in Rastatt is a Florentine pietra dura table top of similar composition. This table also incorporates large circular landscape plaques alongside rectangular plaques of birds against black backgrounds, arranged symmetrically and harmoniously across the table, though at Rastatt the table is not rectangular and the plaques are inset into a base black background inlaid with flowers.
An even more closely related table top in the château de Versailles (inv. no. OA 5093) with pietra dura plaques of a similar date and arranged in a similar manner was formerly in the collection of Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon-Condé, dite mademoiselle de La Roche-sur-Yon (1696-1750) and was acquired in the first half of the 18th century. The Versailles table shows a closely related harmonious design to the present lot, with a rectangular top with grey marble background inset with square panels of animals against an Alberese background, interspersed with black Belgian marble panels with figures after designs by Jacques Callot. This marble top is bordered with Spanish brocatelle while the present table is bordered with striking alabastro fiorito. While it is not known whether the plaques were mounted into table tops in Rome or Florence a table top in the Musée du Louvre (inv. no. OA 5237) in Paris perhaps provides a clue. Like this and the Versailles table, it is of rectangular form and reuses older panels with vases of flowers executed around 1610. The border is of alabaster and a similar width to that on the present table and it was assembled in the late 18th century, as evidenced by neoclassical plaques in the centre of the table, in the Grand Ducal Workshops in Florence (illustrated A. Giusti, Pietre Dure and the Art of Florentine Inlay, London, 2006, pp. 48-49.).
THE GRAND DUCAL WORKSHOPS
The Medici passion for hardstones and intarsia began under Cosimo I Medici (1519-1574) who acquired numerous works in pietra dura from Rome, the centre of lapidary production in the 16th century. While there were artisans of pietra dura in and around Florence from around 1550, it was only under Cosimo’s sons Francesco I (1541-1587) and Fernando I de Medici (1539-1609) that Florence was able to compete with and eventually exceed the output of the Eternal City. Fernando I founded the Grand Ducal pietre dure manufactory, known as the ‘Galleria dei Lavori’, in 1588. The workshops would provide works of art in hardstones and porphyry not only for Grand Ducal commissions but also for foreign princes and collectors and from its early stages it distinguished itself from the Roman lapidaries for its varied production and particularly its specialism in scenes uniting nature, art and science. While Florentine pietra dura utilised stones occurring naturally in Tuscany, such as pietra paesina and Alberese, the workshops also imported valuable and costly stones from across Italy and Europe, including Sicilian jasper, Bohemian agate and black marble from Flanders. Plaques to be incorporated into cabinets, caskets, clocks, tabletops and panels for display produced by the Florentine workshops depicted complex images including birds, vases of flowers, landscapes, narrative scenes and trophies which differed from the geometric patterns favoured in Rome. The Grand Ducal Workshops attracted skilled artisans and designers from across Italy and Europe including gem-cutters from Milan and cabinetmakers from Germany and the Low Countries. Superintendents of the Galleria dei Lavori included celebrated draughtsmen and designers like Jacopo Ligozzi (1547-1627) and Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1725), the latter who, under the auspices of Cosimo III (1670-1723), originated rich baroque designs often incorporating flowers and birds on black paragone grounds, the culmination of which can be considered the famous Badminton Cabinet. The death of Gian Gastone (d. 1737), the last Medici Grand Duke did not spell the end of the Grand Ducal Workshops but from the mid-18th century the baroque repertoire of the manufactory, now under Habsburg control, was exchanged for realistic figures and landscapes based closely on formal paintings by artists like Giuseppe Zocchi (fl. 1750-67) and eventually for neoclassical compositions with the approach of the 19th century, by which point the workshops were known as the Opificio delle pietre dure, the name it retains to this day.