A PAIR OF ROMAN GILTWOOD CONSOLE TABLES, each with Roman mosaic rectangular slab inlaid with antique glass and specimen marbles, the stylised floral rosettes upon an ivory ground within an entrelac border with further alabastro fiorito outer border, the asymetrically-carved frame centred by acanthus and trailing foliage to the frieze upon a hatched ground, on ram's-headed channelled cabriole legs joined by a double C-scroll and foliate X-shaped stretcher surmounted by confronting grotesque masks and on foliate feet, regilt, first half 18th Century, both inscribed 1592, one with further inscription TXX # 11, replacements to alabaster border

The Property of Lady Glenconnel

细节

A PAIR OF ROMAN GILTWOOD CONSOLE TABLES, each with Roman mosaic rectangular slab inlaid with antique glass and specimen marbles, the stylised floral rosettes upon an ivory ground within an entrelac border with further alabastro fiorito outer border, the asymetrically-carved frame centred by acanthus and trailing foliage to the frieze upon a hatched ground, on ram's-headed channelled cabriole legs joined by a double C-scroll and foliate X-shaped stretcher surmounted by confronting grotesque masks and on foliate feet, regilt, first half 18th Century, both inscribed 1592, one with further inscription TXX # 11, replacements to alabaster border
52¾in. (134cm.) wide; 32¼in. (82cm.) high; 26½in. (67cm.) deep (2)

拍品专文

Such flowered mosaic slabs with ribbon-guilloche borders, in the Roman-pavement manner, were much sought after by antiquarians and visitors to Rome in the first half of the 18th Century. This is true of the pair, now in the Capitoline Museum, acquired by Cardinal Furietti in 1737 from the excavations of Emperor Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. The same provenance is shared by the pair of mosaic-topped tables with flower-centred compartments at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, which the architect Matthew Brettingham Junior acquired from Furietti in 1754 for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (d.1759) (see J. Kenworthy-Browne, Matthew Brettingham's Rome Account Book, Walpole Society Journal, 1983, p.82). These slabs were placed in the saloon at Holkham upon Ostrich bases, emblematic of Coke coat-of-arms, where they remain to this day (see Viscount Coke, Holkham Hall, 1990, pp. 8 and 9).

The serpentined frame, with its trellised and flower-festooned panels, is supported on reed and stretcher-tied legs embellished with a foliated satyr and bacchic ram's-heads and typifies the exuberance of the Roman Rococo.