Description & Technical information

An important North-Italian Royal Restoration white-lacquered and parcel-gilt bow-fronted chest of drawers after a design by Carlo Randoni (Turin 1755-1831) (Fig 1), carved by Giovan Battista Parodi, gilted by Agostino Laviosa for Palazzo Tursi, Genoa, circa 1820–21, originally part of a pendant, its twin being now at Attingham Park, Shropshire.
 
The moulded Spanish Broccatello marble top above a bow-fronted white-painted commode with two lower drawers beneath a drawer in the frieze with ormolu handles and keyhole escutcheons, flanked by cupboard doors, the whole decorated with stiff-leaf and beaded borders, foliate trails and scrolls, raised on leaf-wrapped turned legs.

Date:  1820-1821
Period:  1750-1850
Medium: Bronze, Carved, Design, Gilt, gilt-bronze, Giltwood, Lacca, Mahogany, Ormolu, Walnut, Woods, Broccatello di Spagna
Dimensions: 90 x 124 x 57 cm (35³/₈ x 48⁷/₈ x 22¹/₂ inches)
Provenance: Palazzo Doria Tursi Genova 
Private European collection
Literature: • Biblioteca Civica Centrale di Torino, Manoscritto Bosio (for the original designs in pen and ink by Carlo Randoni, fig.1);
• Christopher Rowell & Wolf Burchard, 'Italian Furniture at Attingham Park', Journal of the Furniture History Society, vol. LVI (2020), pp.107–176, esp. pp. 127–8, 137, and footnotes 78 & 79, figures 26 & 27;
• Martin Drury, ‘Italian furniture in National Trust houses’, Journal of the Furniture HistorySociety, vol. XX (1984), 38–44;
• Enrico Colle, Il Mobile Impero in Italia, arredi e decorazioni d'interni dal 1800 al 1843, Milan, 1998, pp. 260–61 (concerning a sofa, six chairs and two open armchairs of the same suite now in the Napoleonic residence in Elba island);
• Paolo Cornaglia, ‘Giuseppe Battista Piacenza e Carlo Randoni’, in I Reali Palazzi fra Torino e Genova: 1773–1831, 2012, Turin, p.227 (with Randoni documents concerning the entire suite);
• Alvar Gonzalez Palacios, Il Mobile in Liguria, Genoa, 1996, p.323 (for a later relatedexample still in the Royal Palace in Genoa).
Categories: Furniture