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WELCOME TO PELHAM GALLERIES |
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| A Late 18th-Century Italian Painted Commode
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Sicily, Circa 1790
Height: 3 ft 2 ¾ in. (99 cm)
Width: 3 ft. 7 ¾ in. (111 cm)
Depth: 1 ft. 11 ¼ in. (59 cm)
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The rectangular moulded top above a fall front opening to reveal two long internal drawers, raised on square tapering legs, the top, front and sides all decorated with stylised birds and flowering branches within a stylised dentillated rope-twist and entwined floral vine border within a pale blue faux-marble surround.
The overall form of this commode, with its pure, uninterrupted rectilinear silhouette and square tapering legs with block feet, is entirely typical of chests of drawers produced throughout Italy in the 1780s. However, the idiosyncratic use of a vibrantly coloured turquoise marbling around the borders would seem to directly echo the characteristically late 18th-century Sicilian practice of mounting furniture with painted glass panels simulating marble and semiprecious stone. Interestingly, the most famous example of this technique is a set of seat furniture sharing the same particular form of leg as the present commode and entirely veneered with similarly blue marbled glass panels, traditionally held to originate from the celebrated Villa Palagonia at Bagheria, outside Palermo. Chairs from this suite survive in several private and public collections including the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, and the Art Institute of Chicago (illustrated in Alvar González-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Milan 1984, Vol.II, p.275, fig.629).
The bright colours and bold, simplified two-dimensional outlines of the birds and flowers are inspired by imported Chinese silks and wallpapers and probably would have formed part of a Chinese room, the taste for which remained unabated throughout 18th and 19th-century Sicily. The most celebrated Chinoiserie interiors on the island are those of the Palazzino Cinese in the Parco della Favorita in Palermo, built for the exiled court of King Ferdinand IV of Naples between 1798 and 1806, and recently re-opened after a twenty-year restoration programme. The internal decoration represents a highly particular fusion of oriental and then-fashionable neoclassical motifs, a trait also seen in the commode’s integration of a dentillated border with interlaced flowers; moreover, several of the palazzino’s salons also employ a comparable blue and yellow decorative scheme (see Francesco Morena, Chinosierie. The Evolution of the Oriental Style in Italy from the 14th to the 19th Century, Florence 209, p.210-216). Given that the palace’s original furniture has largely been dispersed, it is not outside the realm of possibility that this apparently unique commode may have formed part of its interiors during the Bourbons’ reign.
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