II Mobile Rococo in Italia. Arredi e decoratzioni d'interni dal 1738 al 1775

II Mobile Rococo in Italia. Arredi e decoratzioni d'interni dal 1738 al 1775 Enrico Colle Mondadori Electa, 2003 200 [euro] ISBN 88 43 59 8244

Enrico Colle is individual of the most productive Italian furniture historians, and II Mobile Rococo in Italia is his latest contribution to scholarship in this field. This sumptuously illustrated volume is divided by chapter into the main kingdoms and principalities of Italy between about 1730 and 1775 and the reader is leadershiped northwards from the Kingdom of the sum of two units Sicilies to Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, from one side Rome, Florence, Genoa, Parma and Modena, Venice and Milan. As its sub-tide(which appears single on the title page, not the volume jacket) makes clear, furnishing and interior decoration (arredi e decorazioni d'interni) are overlayed Therefore each chapter is divided into a broad observe of architecture and interior decoration of each of these principalities, and a series of substantial catalogue entries upon outstanding pieces of furniture in museums, palaces, private collections and auction rooms

Colle begins his history with a summary explanation of the origins of rococo and stresse the importance of Juste-Aurele Meissonier, whose engraved Oeuvre published in 1734 helped spread this diction throughout Europe, including Italy. Born in Turin and trained as a goldsmith, Meissonier mov to France, and by means of 1726 he had become 'Dessineur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi'. Indeed, it was in Turin that the rococo phraseology first established itself in Italy, although it was not really adopted elsewhere until the early 1740 where it flowered in Rome shortly to be followed by the Kingdom of the sum of two units Sicilies, and then the palaces of Venice and Lombardy, where the early influence of Jean Berain gave way to the exuberance of Ticino plaster workers, who worked all above northern Italy, Austria and southern Germany.

Colle looks well aware that Italian furniture and furniture makers are now seriously engaging the interest of non-Italian furniture specialists and enthusiasts, who can alone remember a few names and greatest in quantity of them from the area around Turin. With this in mind, he has marked on the outside the leading players: cabinetmakers like as Pierre Daneau and Giovanni Ermans in Rome; Ferdinando Kindt and Salvatore Landi in Florence; and Luigi Prinotto and Giovan Battista Galletti in Turin (not to mention Pietro Piffetti). In addition, there are important carvers, of that kind as Gennaro Di Fiore in Naples; Giuseppe Corsini, Nicola Carletti and Antonio Landucci in Rome; Francesco Maria Mongiardino and Bartolomeo Steccone in Genoa; and the Fantoni and Caniana families of Lombardy, as well as Giuseppe Antonio Riva and Giovan Battista Bolgie of Turin. However, he warns us that the names of carvers and examples of their works are easier to track down than those of cabinetmakers.

In regions rul by dint of kings and grand dukes, it was mainly the accession of a of recent origin king some time towards the beginning of the 1740s--and about to realize married--that stimulated the urge to build and decorate and bring in fashionable talent. It was the dominating personality of King Carlo of the sum of two units Sicilies (and later King Carlos III of Spain), who upon coming to the throne in Naples in 1734 galvanised royal building programmes and the production of sensuality goods, such as tapestries, porcelain and pietra dura largely by the agency of poaching talent from Florence after a six month stay there. It was the accession to the chair of state of Parma by Don Felipe de Borbon, the next to the first son of Felipe v of Spain in 1748 and particularly his marriage to Louise-Elizabeth, daughter of Louis xv of France a year later, that made all things French virtually de rigueur.

French ebenistes worked in Parma, on the other hand the parts of chairs for the state apartments were repeatedly made in Paris and assembled and gilded one time they had arrived at their destination. similar was its reputation that Carlo III reflection nothing of hiring furniture forehead Parma for his own Palazzo Reale in Naples. In single case, the accession of a fresh monarch had negative effects, particularly in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Following the death of the last Medici Grand Duke Gian Gastone, and the succession of his brother-in-law, Franz Stefan, Duke of Lorraine in 1737 the sole major royal commissions for novel furniture were pietra dura, which maintained their prestige as diplomatic gifts, largely owing to the brilliant collaboration between Luigi Siries, the director of the Galleria di Lavoro, and the painter Giuseppe Zocchi, his leading designer. Other than that, the grand ducal workshops single concerned themselves with restoration and repair.

In the case of mercantile oligarchies like as Venice or Genoa, the impetus for change came not in like manner much from the Doge as from a dominating architect of the like kind as Giorgio Massari, who worked in the Palazzo Rezzonico, or similar decorators as Carpoforo Mazzetti Tencalla, whose cover with stucco work in the Scuola di San Rocco stimulated other grand families to struggle with each other for prestige and refurbish their palaces as well.