A Regency period circular centre table, the specimen marble top inlaid with radiating panels of 112 various marbles and hard stones including Malachite, Lapis-Lazuli and Harlequin Breccia, centring a micro mosaic panel depicting the Doves of Pliny. The elegantly drawn rosewood base with a bronze patinated carved column emblematic of lotus leaves, terminating on leaf-carved scrolled feet with inset brass castors.
The Grand Tour and Micro Mosaic
This specimen marble tabletop would have been acquired in Italy by a young gentleman as he undertook the Grand Tour.
The Grand Tour was trip a through Europe undertaken by young wealthy gentry to complete their education. With Italy the primary destination, the journey vividly brought to life a young gentleman’s studies at school of Greek and Roman history, language and literature. In this way, the Tour was about intellectual development and moral self-improvement, following close interaction with the great ancient philosophers.
More than this, however, the Grand Tour was about education in culture, art and architecture. Visits to Rome, Venice and Florence afforded opportunities to walk amongst the ruins of ancient civilisation, study the architecture, and collect artworks and antiquities.
Such a collecting tradition was laid down by the famous Collector Earl, Thomas Arundel, 14th Earl of Arundel, one of the fathers of the Grand Tour, who on his journey through Italy in 1613-14 acquired drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, the two Holbeins, Raphael, Parmigianino, Wenceslaus Hollar, and Dürer and excavated an important group of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, known since as the Arundel Marbles.
Many great country house collections of England have been formed this way. Between them the 5th and 9th Earls of Exeter visited Italy eight times to collect hundreds of works for Burghley House, Lincolnshire, and when the 1st Duke of Bedford travelled to Venice in 1731, famously he commissioned twenty-four works from Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, for Woburn Abbey.
While Venice is often considered the center of Italy’s glass manufactory, Rome is responsible for one of the country’s most distinguished art forms: micromosaics. Known in Italian as smalto filato, mosaicominuto, and mosaico in piccolo, this complex technique has inspired awe for centuries with its tesserae, pieces of colored glass less than one millimeter wide, laboriously assembled to create a perfectly rendered scene.
Such was the quality of pieces produced in Rome, affluent tourists purchased many items. Popular examples were pieces that depicted ‘antique discoveries’ This table is one such example, and depicts ‘the doves of Pliny’ which was discovered at Hadrian’s Villa as part of excavations in 1737.
Gioacchino Barberi (1783-1857)
The exceptional quality of this table top suggests that the mosaic was made by Gioacchino Barberi (1783-1857). Barberi worked in Rome at 99 Piazza de Spagna, near the Spanish steps, and was recorded in 1847 by G. Moroni (Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica, Venice, 1847, XLVII, pp. 79-80) as one of the leading artists of miniature micro mosaics.
His father Paolo Emilio, was a painter and his uncle, Cavaliere Michelangelo, was another famous micromosaic artist. Gioacchino is credited with the use of black enamel smalti which he used for backgrounds, a device taken from wall paintings at Herculaneum, and seen here on the present table. Having worked for Russian Tsars, the Barberis created several works now held by the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Provenance
Dr Gordon’s collection focused on antiquities and furniture, and while he collected objects from Yoruba, Inuit, Egypt, and Central Asian, the central theme of his collection were pieces that possessed a naturalistic streak, the present table being a fine example.