This casket is an extraordinary example of the output of the Grand Ducal workshops and its enduring appeal among the royal families of Europe. With flowers, cornucopia, scrolling motifs and flowers inlaid in relief, the pietra dura on this casket relates closely to some of the most famous pieces of the Grand Ducal Treasury in the Pitti Palace, in particular the plaques on the doors of the Elector Palatine's cabinet, executed in the Grand Ducal workshops after a design by Giovanni Battista Foggini in 1709 (Inv. OA 1911, no. 909). The use of stone, quality of design and craftsmanship on these plaques is very similar to the plaques on the present lot. Further plaques of similar design, most probably intended for caskets are illustrated A. Giusti, P. Mazzoni, A. Martelli, Il Museo dell'opificio delle pietre dure a Firenze, Milan, 1978, figs. 166-167. A closely related casket of larger scale but similar form and almost identical pietra dura plaques formerly in the collection of the English Rothschilds at Tring Park, Hertfordshire was sold 28 October 2013, lot 1519 ($617,000).
This casket is an important survival, almost certainly from the collection of Maximilian de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg (1817-1852), in the Blue Drawing Room at the Mariinsky palace, St. Petersburg, where Maximilian resided with his wife, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (1819-1876), daughter of Tsar Nicholas I, from 1845 until his death in 1852. A label in cyrillic on the underside of the present casket identifies the casket as having been in the 'Blue Drawing Room'. A mid-19th century watercolour, now at the State Hermitage Museum (ОР-26566), St Petersburg, by Edward Hau of the Blue Drawing Room at the Mariinsky Palace confirms this provenance, as the casket is illustrated on a table in the rear of the composition. It is most likely that the adaptation of the interior of the casket, lined with costly woods, occurred at this period.
Maximilian spent much of his life as an art collector, though maintained an interest in science, metalwork and minerals, having studied under the physicist Moritz Hermann von Jacobi (1801-1874). He was known as a collector of hardstones and pietra dura, attested by a micromosaic table now preserved in the Hermitage (inv. no. EPR-552) and by other watercolours by Hua of the Duke's residence and that of his parents-in-law, the Tsar and Tsarina, where numerous objects in pietra dura are identifiable. That the present casket would have formed part of his collection seems particularly appropriate given the meeting of art and precious minerals so crucial to the art of pietra dura.
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.