Object details
Accession number
F26w12.1-4
Primary Creator
Italian, Piedmont or Liguria
Full title
Set of Four Armchairs (Poltrone da parata)
Creation Date
early 18th century
Provenance
Perhaps purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner’s husband, John L. Gardner, Jr. (1837–1898), from the antique dealer Antonio Settini, Venice on 26 September 1897 for 160 lire (for set of four chairs).
Dimensions
119.5 x 66.5 x 46 cm (47 1/16 x 26 3/16 x 18 1/8 in.)
Display Media
Walnut
Web Commentary
These chairs have fluted baluster legs set between blocks, the lower ones carved and set on turned top, or troupie, feet. They are connected to the simpler rear legs with an H-shaped stretcher carved in an elegant undulating form known as osso di morto (literally translated, the bones of the dead). Curved arms terminate in volutes carved with flowers. The supports are smaller mirror images of the baluster legs. The basic form of the chair was common in the seventeenth century, but the design of the arms indicates that the model was given variations in the early eighteenth century. The left arm of F25w12.3 is a replacement of the original. Both arms on F26w2.2 have been remade in pine.
Permanent Gallery Location
Titian Room
Bibliography
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston: 1935), p. 218. (Italian)
Fausto Calderai and Alan Chong. Furnishing a Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Collection of Italian Furniture (Boston: 2011), p. 254, no. 116.
Rights and reproductions
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