VENICE, CIRCA 1700

This superb Venetian mirror, richly decorated with mother-of-pearl, typifies the fascination for the alluring products of the Orient, made available through Venice's extensive trade contacts with the East. Furniture embellished in this precious technique became a speciality of Venice, as demonstrated by the documented oeuvre of various artists, amongst whom the celebrated architect and carver Domenico Rossetti (1650-1736) recorded to have executed 'Una stanza nella casa di Angelo Nicolosi cancelliere grande, con diversi lavori alla cinse, vernici, intagli e rimessi di madreperla: opera mirabile per la rarita dell'invenzione e della esecuzione' (Zannandreis, 1891, p.349). Venetian workshops produced mirrors of this style, decorated in black or red lacca simulating oriental lacquer, faux marble, as well as and real or simulated tortoiseshell, often with contrasting giltwood trailing motifs. Such giltwood decoration also appears on a related mirror in the Museo Civico di Storia e Arte, in Trieste (illustrated in C. Alberici, Il Mobile Veneto, Milan, 1980, p.159, ill.218), while a further mirror in the National Gallery in Prague, with closely related japanned decoration and mother-of-pearl inlay, is illustrated in H. Huth, Lacquer of the West, Chicago, 1971, figs.103-4.