The Italian fashion for Eastern decoration, manifest in the present pair of mirrors, began with the expansion of trade with China, leading to intensified taste for chinoiserie throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Designers and architects to the courts created interiors that drew heavily on exotic styles based on the ceramics, furniture, and paintings imported from the East, and by the 18th century these items were being produced in a number of European centers.
Painting of Vestal by Pietro Saja, now in the Palazzo Reale, Caserta. Pictured in "Civiltà dell'Ottocento: Le Arti Figurative."
We have just discovered a painting very similar to one of our own, in the book Civiltà dell’Ottocento: Le Arti Figurative. This painting by Pietro Saja (1779-1833), depicting a Vestal condemned to death for breaking her vow of chastity, apparently won the artist great praise and recognition when he presented it in Rome in 1803: within a month Saja was invited to join the prestigious Academy of Saint Luke. The neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, another member of the Academy, wrote to a friend to “make many praises of [Saja]… assuring me that he is a youth of highest ability… and that he is going to make great profit and progress.” 1
Here at Carlton Hobbs we are in the final week of “ON TOPS: An exhibition of rare tabletops from the 2nd century AD to the 19th century,” which closes this Friday, May 22nd.
We have had a great response to the exhibition, thanks in part to this wonderful article by Wendy Moonan in the New York Times: Adorned Tabletops. From the moment the article came out, we’ve had a constant stream of visitors–some so eager to see the tops that they even arrived during the set-up!
The present paintings combine historic, heraldic, and mythological references. While the central painted portions appear to represent historic figures, the flanking painted areas and carved panels are reserved for mythological elements. All three pictures are rife with allusions to Roman mythology and Virgil’s Aeneid; Maximilian I Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519) and his grandson, Charles V Holy Roman Emperor (1500-1558), began the precedent of tracing their genealogy to Troy, proclaiming a descendance from Aeneas.
Fine and decorative art, as we know, is littered with symbolism intended to lend clues about a piece’s history and subject matter. We have recently acquired a fantastic group of three paintings that represent a chapter in the history of the Habsburg dynasty. One large and two smaller in size, the works are most mysterious both in construction and in theme. To begin, each of the three paintings are comprised of a framed canvas; however, they also incorporate hinged polychrome panels of carved relief, which, unlike traditional diptychs or triptychs, are directly integrated into the scenes. These panels open to reveal vivid lacca povera on their undersides, and blank areas on the canvas they conceal. The paintings have been re-lined and it is probable that the pictures were once mounted to the wall, the panels concealing hidden niches where the blank areas are now situated.