An Italian Pietre Dure Panel Depicting a Vase with Flower Arrangement Within a Mother-of-Pearl and Lapis Lazuli Inlaid Ebony and Ebonised Frame Mounted with Renaissance-Style Ivory Profile Portrait Medallions, Florence, Late 19th Century

This panel, depicting a vase of flowers of inlaid marble within an elaborate frame mounted with ivory profile portrait medallions of Italian Renaissance artists and writers, including possibly, Dante Alighieri, Titian, Tintoretto, Torquato Tasso, Francesco Petrarch, Ludovico Ariosto, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, dates from the second half of the 19th century and was made in Florence, Italy, where workshops continued the tradition of producing decorative panels inlaid with marbles and semi-precious hardstones. This technique, known as pietre dure in Italian, has a long history in Florence and began with the establishment of the official Grand Ducal Workshops (Opificio delle pietre dure) by the ruling Ferdinando de’Medici in 1588. This establishment still exists today and also includes a small museum.

The motif of a floral boquet in a late 16th/early 17th century style lapis lazuli vase was a recurrent one in the second half of the 19th century and formed part of a more general revival of interest in applied arts and architecture of the Italian Renaissance. A comparable lapis lazuli vase forms part of the composition of a Florentine table top dated to the late 19th century now in the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O157682/table-unknown/ (Fig.1; A. M. Massinelli, Hardstones: The Gilbert Collection, London 2000, cat. no. 29, p.97-8). Another similar example appears in the central composition of a cabinet door within an elaborate frame dating to 1879 in the collection of the Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence (Fig.2; illustrated Annamaria Giusti, Pietre Dure, the Art of Semi-Precious Stonework, London 2006, p.212 fig.169).