Cabinet and base with eleven stone mosaic panels (commessi di pietre dure) of landscapes. Panels: Florence, Cabinet and stand: England, circa 1720

Cabinet of ebonised wood, with cornices and pediment in carved and gilded wood. The door in the centre of the facade is faced with a commesso di pietre dure panel showing a landscape scene with ruins in the foreground. The central recess is flanked by broccatello pilasters with a semicircular panel above and a rectangular drawer below. To the left and right of this are two rows of four drawers each with a landscape view. The cabinet has a gilt base with four curved legs with scroll feet.

The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

These panels epitomise techniques used by the Grand Ducal workshops to produce a perfect picture. They combine soft and hardstones for enhanced pictorial impact despite the further challenge this posed during the polishing stage of production. The visual effect of the cloudy sky has been rendered by blue and pink tinted foil to the back of the stone (an alabaster). The taste for landscape panels seems to have been reintroduced by Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere (1622-1694), wife of Ferdinando II, in a shift away from the dominant flower and bird motifs of the previous decades. The Duchess commissioned furniture from grand ducal workshops for her apartments; a cabinet delivered in 1677 includes the earliest panels of the type seen here. Such landscape panels appear only very rarely in the Florentine courtly production and are more often found mounted in northern European cabinets. Here, the central panel most probably depicts the Villa Hadrian in Tivoli, a favourite stop on the British Grand Tour.

England has always been fascinated by pietre dure and a significant number of pietre dure caskets, cabinets and tables are recorded in British stately homes. These were sometimes diplomatic gifts, such as a casket given by Grand Duke Ferdinando II of Tuscany to Oliver Cromwell between 1653 and 1655, now in the Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon (Cambridgeshire); or the splendid cabinet still at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, presented by Grand Duke Cosimo III to the 5th Earl of Exeter around 1683-84.

Alternatively, pietre dure objects found their way to England as must-have souvenirs for British aristocracy from their Grand Tour of Italy. Frequently, pietre dure panels were acquired in Florence and mounted in England in accordance with the latest fashions. The earliest recorded cabinet is the John Evelyn Cabinet, now in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, (see references).

In 1644, the English writer John Evelyn (1620-1706) acquired 19 pietre dure panels from their maker, Domenico Benotti, in Florence, which were mounted in a cabinet a few years later.

The tradition continued well into the 19th century when Florentine workshops themselves reused 17th century panels in caskets and cabinets for their tourist clienteles - see LOAN:GILBERT.931-2008.

Provenance
Graham Baron Ash, Wingfield Castle.
Sale, Christie's, Suffolk, 04/10/1967.
Mallett and Son, London, 1969.

Spotlight on Conservation
This cabinet is composed of fragments from antique quarries, lapis lazuli traded from modern-Afghanistan and newly excavated Tuscan stones like calcedonio di Volterra.

The sky in these panels is made of a very thin panel of transparent calcite stone, referred to by ancient stone workshops as ‘alabaster’. The name ‘alabaster’ is commonly used, yet deceptively confusing for its definition differs depending on the field of study and attributed to a group of look-alike stones. For geologists, alabaster is a type of fine-grained massive gypsum. Archaeologists and stone workshops use ‘alabaster’ for both this type of gypsum and a type of fine-grained banded calcite. To complicate further, the calcite type – the material used on this panel – was described by ancient workshops as ‘Egyptian Alabaster’ or ‘Oriental Alabaster’ for its evident provenance from Egypt. On the other hand, modern workshops sometimes call it ‘onyx-marble’ for its banded appearance, which is similar to onyx and marble, even though they are completely distinct.

This calcite panel has been painted on the reverse a bright blue sky and pink clouds, a technique found on several objects such as Loan:Gilbert.77-2008

Pietre dure, early 18th century; cabinet late 18th century

Sir Arthur Gilbert and his wife Rosalinde formed one of the world's great decorative art collections, including silver, mosaics, enamelled portrait miniatures and gold boxes. He donated his extraordinary collection to Britain in 1996. Arthur Gilbert was also fascinated by the evolution of stone mosaic techniques and purposefully acquired 16th-century masterpieces as well as 20th-century creations.

To find out more about the making of pietre dure, watch the video Making a Pietre Dure panel: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/m/video-making-a-pietre-dure-panel.

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