Live Auction 8055Living With Art - A Private European Collection, Day Sale
AN ITALIAN CARVED WALNUT AND BURR-WALNUT VENEERED 'BAMBOCCIO' CABINET
Lot 777

AN ITALIAN CARVED WALNUT AND BURR-WALNUT VENEERED 'BAMBOCCIO' CABINET

CIRCA 1820-40, RE-USING LATE 16TH/EARLY 17TH CENTURY CARVED ELEMENTS

Closed10 February 2012

Price Realised

GBP 17,500

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AN ITALIAN CARVED WALNUT AND BURR-WALNUT VENEERED 'BAMBOCCIO' CABINET
CIRCA 1820-40, RE-USING LATE 16TH/EARLY 17TH CENTURY CARVED ELEMENTS
Carved overall with classical and mythological figures, the upper section with projecting cornice supported by putti and centred by a cartouche with the arms of Madrid depicting a bear climbing a tree below three stars and with helmet crest, flanked by two drawers, above a fall-front enclosing drawers and architecturally-carved doors concealing further drawers, the base section with one drawer above a cupboard enclosing shelves, on a foliate-carved and gadrooned plinth with scroll-bracket feet
72¾ in. (184.5 cm.) high; 38 in. (96.5 cm.) wide; 18¼ in. (46.5 cm.) deep

The Pizza Family, Mallorca.
Valdes collection, Bilbao.
Don Braulio, Madrid, 1980.

Specialist note

The decorative scheme of this cabinet is based on that of the Intaglio A Bambocci, popular in Liguria and Genoa in the late 16th and 17th centuries. A related example in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, also featuring a cartouche flanked by putti to the central upper frieze is illustrated by S. Colombo in both L'Arte del Mobile in Italia, Milan, 1975, fig. 98, and L'Arte del Legno e del Mobile in Italia, Turin, 1981, fig. 271. In the case of the present example the arms carved to the central cartouche are those of the city of Madrid with a knight's helmet crest, suggesting perhaps that when this cabinet was re-constructed in the first half of the 19th century using the carvings of an earlier cabinet it was done so in Spain and on the orders of a noble family of Madrid.