A Set of Four Italian Neoclassical Giltwood Armchairs, Probably Rome, Circa 1780

Sotheby's, New York, 4 May 1999, lot 359;

Christie's New York, Rooms as Portraits: Michael S. Smith; A Tale of Two Cities, New York & Los Angeles, 26 September 2018, lot 44.

Michael S. Smith with Diane Dorrans Sacks, Elements of Style, New York, 2004, p.133-134

By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Italy was, like the rest of Europe, in the thrall of Neoclassicism. This new aesthetic mentality, which advocated a return to the glory of Antiquity after the frivolity and excess of Rococo, encompassed other many art forms beyond furniture, including painting and sculpture. However, despite the fact that Italy was the cradle of Ancient Rome, it is not necessarily true to think of eighteenth-century Neoclassicism as a fashion driven by the Italians: while almost all furniture historians note the importance of both contemporary excavations of ancient sites in Italy and the etchings of Piranesi in igniting Europe’s passion for Antiquity, it is also true that its adoption by tastemakers in the French royal court was significant in its move to widespread popularity across Europe. In his seminal History of Italian Furniture, William M. Odom writes that Neoclassicism did not become popular in Italy “until it had been filtered through France”, but he also notes favourably that its Italian variation has a “striking individuality” that can be lacking in the “correct, finished” Louis XVI style and the “insipid” Adam style.² The different regions of Italy, still almost a century away from their unification, all also adopted the Neoclassical style at different rates and with regional differences.

The most distinctive feature on the present chairs is the outset top rail, which creates a protruding corner that is not unlike the form of the ‘Kent frame’ in Britain during the early eighteenth century. Another example is pictured in Colle’s Mobile Neoclassico in Italia,³ which is either the same chair or from the same set as the chair sold at Sotheby’s Milan, 4 October 2000, lot 515. Other chairs also exhibiting these corners and catalogued as Roman are a pair at Sotheby’s London, 10 June 1998, lot 59, and a suite in the Villa Borghese pictured in Gonzales-Palacios’ Gusto dei Principi.⁴

¹ See, for instance, Giacomo Wannenes, Mobili d’Italia, Milan, 1984, p. 134 and Judith Miller, Furniture, London, 2005, p.130.

² William M. Odom, A History of Italian Furniture, 2^nd ed, New York, 1967, p.244.

³ Enrico Colle, Il Mobile neoclassico in Italia, Milan, 2005, p.92

⁴ Alvar Gonzáles-Palacios, Il Gusto dei principi, Milan, 1993, vol II, p.241, figs. 482 and 483.