II Mobile Rococo in Italia. Arredi e decoratzioni d'interni dal 1738 al 1775

Apollo, July, 2004 by James Yorke

II Mobile Rococo in Italia. Arredi e decoratzioni d'interni dal 1738 al 1775 Enrico Colle Mondadori Electa, 2003, 200 [euro] ISBN 88 43 59 8244

Enrico Colle is one of the most productive Italian furniture historians, and II Mobile Rococo in Italia is his latest contribution to scholarship in this field. This sumptuously illustrated book is divided by chapter into the main kingdoms and principalities of Italy between about 1730 and 1775, and the reader is conducted northwards from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, through Rome, Florence, Genoa, Parma and Modena, Venice and Milan. As its sub-tide(which appears only on the title page, not the book jacket) makes clear, furnishing and interior decoration (arredi e decorazioni d'interni) are covered. Therefore each chapter is divided into a broad survey of architecture and interior decoration of each of these principalities, and a series of substantial catalogue entries on outstanding pieces of furniture in museums, palaces, private collections and auction rooms.

Colle begins his history with a summary explanation of the origins of rococo, and stresses the importance of Juste-Aurele Meissonier, whose engraved Oeuvres, published in 1734, helped spread this style throughout Europe, including Italy. Born in Turin and trained as a goldsmith, Meissonier moved to France, and by 1726 he had become 'Dessineur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi'. Indeed, it was in Turin that the rococo style first established itself in Italy, although it was not really adopted elsewhere until the early 1740s, where it flowered in Rome, soon to be followed by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and then the palaces of Venice and Lombardy, where the early influence of Jean Berain gave way to the exuberance of Ticino plaster workers, who worked all over northern Italy, Austria and southern Germany.

Colle seems well aware that Italian furniture and furniture makers are now seriously engaging the interest of non-Italian furniture specialists and enthusiasts, who can only remember a few names and most of them from the area around Turin. With this in mind, he has marked out the leading players: cabinetmakers such as Pierre Daneau and Giovanni Ermans in Rome; Ferdinando Kindt and Salvatore Landi in Florence; and Luigi Prinotto and Giovan Battista Galletti in Turin (not to mention Pietro Piffetti). In addition, there are important carvers, such as Gennaro Di Fiore in Naples; Giuseppe Corsini, Nicola Carletti and Antonio Landucci in Rome; Francesco Maria Mongiardino and Bartolomeo Steccone in Genoa; and the Fantoni and Caniana families of Lombardy, as well as Giuseppe Antonio Riva and Giovan Battista Bolgie of Turin. However, he warns us that the names of carvers and examples of their works are easier to track down than those of cabinetmakers.

In regions ruled by kings and grand dukes, it was mostly the accession of a new king some time towards the beginning of the 1740s--and about to get married--that stimulated the urge to build and decorate and bring in fashionable talent. It was the dominating personality of King Carlo of the two Sicilies (and later King Carlos III of Spain), who on coming to the throne in Naples in 1734 galvanised royal building programmes and the production of luxury goods, such as tapestries, porcelain and pietra dura largely by poaching talent from Florence after a six month stay there. It was the accession to the throne of Parma by Don Felipe de Borbon, the second son of Felipe v of Spain in 1748 and particularly his marriage to Louise-Elizabeth, daughter of Louis xv of France a year later, that made all things French virtually de rigueur.

French ebenistes worked in Parma, but the parts of chairs for the state apartments were often made in Paris and assembled and gilded once they had arrived at their destination. Such was its reputation that Carlo III thought nothing of hiring furniture front Parma for his own Palazzo Reale in Naples. In one case, the accession of a new monarch had negative effects, particularly in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Following the death of the last Medici Grand Duke, Gian Gastone, and the succession of his brother-in-law, Franz Stefan, Duke of Lorraine in 1737, the only major royal commissions for new furniture were pietra dura, which maintained their prestige as diplomatic gifts, largely owing to the brilliant collaboration between Luigi Siries, the director of the Galleria di Lavoro, and the painter Giuseppe Zocchi, his leading designer. Other than that, the grand ducal workshops only concerned themselves with restoration and repair.

In the case of mercantile oligarchies such as Venice or Genoa, the impetus for change came not so much from the Doge as from a dominating architect such as Giorgio Massari, who worked in the Palazzo Rezzonico, or such decorators as Carpoforo Mazzetti Tencalla, whose stucco work in the Scuola di San Rocco stimulated other grand families to compete with each other for prestige and refurbish their palaces as well.