ANTIQUE 19thC ITALIAN GRAND TOUR MICROMOSAIC & BLACK MARBLE TABLE c.1870

DESCRIPTION

Antique 19th Century Italian Grand Tour Micromosaic table top on an ebonised base, the central medallion with a view of St Peter’s Square, surrounded by reserves with views of the Pantheon, Tomb of Cecilia Metella, Temple of Vesta, Forum, Coliseum, Arch of Titus, Castel Sant’Angelo, and Capitoline Hill, with a large grey key frieze along the boarder. The ebonized and ormolu base decorated with fluted pilars terminating with ram's head ornamentation above, acanthus leaves rosets, bands and gilded festoons underneath.

This Micromosaic top is attributed to Cesare Roccheggiani, perhaps the most important mosaicist in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Cesare Roccheggiani (fl. 1860) hailed from a line of renowned Vatican mosaicists including Antonio Roccheggiani, who participated in the International Exhibitions of London in 1851 and Paris in 1855 and Lorenzo Roccheggiani, a late eighteenth-century master mosaicist at the Vatican, whose work included the altarpiece, Crucifixion of St. Peter after Guido Reni. Nicolo Roccheggiani, possibly Lorenzo's son, was also a principle artist at the Vatican, involved in executing the famous tabletop Achilles Shield commissioned by Napoléon Bonaparte, and later gifted by Leo XII to Charles X of France in 1825, and now preserved in the Museum of Versailles.

He was believed to have been apprenticed to maestro Michaelangelo Barberi (1787-1867) and refined his composition skill by copying many of Barberi's designs. Cesare Roccheggiani became the leading supplier of micromosaic works to American and North European visitors on the Grand Tour.

Establishing his own workshop on the Via Condotti in 1874, a late nineteenth-century guide book to Rome lists him as a supplier of mosaic pictures, tables, cabinets, paper weights and gold ornaments. His extensive retail production indicates that Roccheggiani ran a large workshop of mosaicists, as well as goldsmiths and craftsmen. The finest and most costly objects were tabletops (such as the present circular table) and large scale pictures acquired by wealthy and important patrons and displayed at international exhibitions; today they are in possession of discriminating collectors and museums.

The attribution of this table top to Roccheggiani can be made based not only on the subject matter but the refined execution and his signature detail of the trompe l'oeil Greek key border within red bands and the intrecate central acanthus leaf boarder.

This table has all the charachteristics of the finest work by Rocchegianni, incorporating-and improving on- components also used by his master, Michelangelo Barberi. His extraordinary skill is evident in his very large and rectangular mosaic of St. Peter's Square, signed and dated C. ROCCHEGGIANI /ARTISTA/ VIA CONDOTTI NO. 15 / ROMA 1879 that sold Christie's, London, April 2010, lot 268, his matching view of the Roman Forum, identically signed and dated, sold Christie's, London, December 2010, lot 245. A smaller table top, presenting the same scenes and displaying the characteristic eight reserves enclosing a trompe l'œil Greek key is recorded in a private collection (see Grieco & Gambino, 2001, p. 184); while a signed Rocchegianni table top similarly exhibiting these fine qualities was sold Sotheby's 2015, lot 59.

CONDITION

In Great Condition - wear consistent with age.

SIZE

Height: 78cm
Width: 90cm
Depth: 90cm