拍品專文
The magnificent golden marble slab is lozenge-trellised in a varie-coloured mosaic around a tablet, whose minute tesserae depict a trompe l'oeil 17th century print of an exotically plumed parrot; while its serpentined green reed border of verde antico is triumphally arched in the centre in 1770s neoclassical fashion.
During the second half of the 18th century, this revived 17th century fashion for pietre dura tablets of branch-perched birds was a speciality of Rome-based lapidaries such as the celebrated Giacomo Raffiaelli (d.1836) of the Rue du Babuinon (see J. H. Gabriel, The Gilbert Collection: Micromosaics, London, 2000). A sideboard-table top, likewise encrusted with a bird medallion and almost certainly executed in the same workshops, is amongst the works of art that were almost certainly introduced to Arbury Hall, Warwickshire by the connoisseur Sir Roger Newdigate, 5th Baronet (d.1806) (see S. Pitt, World of Interiors, January 1985, p. 69, fig. 1).
During the second half of the 18th century, this revived 17th century fashion for pietre dura tablets of branch-perched birds was a speciality of Rome-based lapidaries such as the celebrated Giacomo Raffiaelli (d.1836) of the Rue du Babuinon (see J. H. Gabriel, The Gilbert Collection: Micromosaics, London, 2000). A sideboard-table top, likewise encrusted with a bird medallion and almost certainly executed in the same workshops, is amongst the works of art that were almost certainly introduced to Arbury Hall, Warwickshire by the connoisseur Sir Roger Newdigate, 5th Baronet (d.1806) (see S. Pitt, World of Interiors, January 1985, p. 69, fig. 1).