FIRST QUARTER 18TH CENTURY, IN THE MANNER OF LAURENTIUS BONUCCELLI

The present scagliola top relates to a small group of tables from the late 17th and early 18th century featuring the distinctive design of scattered and torn cards by Laurentius Bonuccelli. A top similarly depicting a flute and sheets of music amongst cards, signed on the Knave of Hearts Laurentius Bonuccelli, was sold by the Trustees of the Callaly Castle Chattels Settlement, Christie's, House sale, 22nd-24th September 1986, lot 117 (£45,000 including premium). An additional top decorated with a related design of playfully assorted and ripped playing cards, also signed, was sold Christie’s New York, 17-18 November 1999, lot 649 ($32,200 with premium). Scagliola tops were highly prized by Grand Tourists in the 18th century and further related tables, likely acquired during this period of extensive travel to the Continent, are at Wilton House, Wiltshire and at Althorp House, Northamptonshire (illustrated in 'Althorp House, Northamptonshire', Country Life, 7 May 1959, p.1022).
Bonuccelli is known to have worked in Turin between 1685 and 1707. He is recorded to have supplied four panels richly decorated with flowers for the Gabinetto del Pregadio della Regina in the Palazzo Reale in Turin between 1685 and 1689. The panels were framed by a mother-of-pearl border by Pietro Piffetti who refers to Bonuccelli in 1732: manifattura dell'ebanista attorno alle pietre dell Bonicelli (G. Ferraris, Pietro Piffetti e gli ebanisti a Torino, Turin, 1992, p. 26). He is further recorded as having executed a table top with the map of the fortified town of Turin during the siege of 1706 for Vittorio Amedeo II in 1707 (E. Colle, I Mobili di Palazzo Pitti, Il Periodo dei Medici, Florence, 1997, p. 174).