Object details
Accession number
F26n8.1-2
Primary Creator
Italian, Northern Italy
Full title
Two Chairs with Pietre dure (Sedie da parata con pietre dure)
Creation Date
mid 19th century
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the antique dealer Consiglio Richetti, Venice on 13 September 1897 for 160 lire.
Dimensions
111.8 x 47 x 39 cm (44 x 18 1/2 x 15 3/8 in.)
Display Media
Painted and gilded pear wood, with lapis lazuli and various jaspers
Web Commentary
Examples of eclectic furniture made in the mid-nineteenth century, these chairs are based on northern European models of the seventeenth century. Their severity, reinforced by the ebonized pear wood, sets off the plaques of beautiful and semiprecious stones. Set into the splats and front aprons are pieces of lapis lazuli and red, green, and yellow jasper. The beveling around the stones is gilded to simulate metal mounts often given such stones in the Renaissance. Indeed, the chairs were probably made to display the pietre dure. The backs have arched crests that end in volutes. The stiles, legs, and stretchers are all turned.
Acquiring these chairs may have been an attempt on Isabella Gardner's part to represent, if only in token fashion, an important category of Italian art, pietre dure. There is only one other object in the museum inlaid in this fashion, a small ebony frame made in northern Europe in the seventeenth century (F25n11).
Permanent Gallery Location
Titian Room
Bibliography
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston: 1935), p. 227. (Venetian)
Fausto Calderai and Alan Chong. Furnishing a Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Collection of Italian Furniture (Boston: 2011), p. 264, no. 126.
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