ITALIE, GÊNES- FIN DU XVIe Siècle GENOIAN CASSETTONE... Lot 9

ITALIE, GÊNES- FIN DU XVIe Siècle GENOIAN CASSETTONE WITH "BAMBOCCI" FROM THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE H. 103.5 cm, W. 149 cm, D. 73 cm Walnut wood and walnut burl Good condition Provenance Former Gismondi collection, before 1973. Bibliography Silvanno Colombo, L'arte del mobile in Italia Augusto Padrini, Il Mobilio gli ambiant e le Decorzioni des Rinascimento in Italia Augusto Padrini, Il mobilio in Ialia by Augusto Pedrini, 1948 This walnut and burr walnut cassettone is a remarkable example of Mannerist art applied to the decorative arts at the end of the 16th century. Although the Mannerist movement was born and matured in Florence, before acquiring its international character, it flourished particularly in northern Italy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Unlike the rest of Italy, which adopted classically inspired motifs very early on, the main decorative elements, specific to the Renaissance, still persist very late and even throughout the 17th century, in all the northern regions. Sculpture, now neglecting the austere setting of churches and public buildings, penetrated into private homes and adorned reception halls and study rooms. But it is in Liguria that this trend is most evident in furniture, and mainly in Genoa, where a whole category of furniture with a sculpted décor of a spectacular world of figures known as bambocci appears. This specifically Genoese furniture, due to its production centre, is nevertheless of Tuscan extraction and its source lies in mannerism. This Genoese chest of drawers is framed on both sides by small figures worked with virtuosity in a single block of walnut veneered on each upright. Inspired by bambocci, they compose a hymn to life and to the divinities of nature, creatures of the waters and woods bearing offerings, and putti in the role of an atlant. The upper drawer, with a leonine mask of strong character in the centre, gives the illusion of two side drawers. The four long drawers are