Large Italian chest of drawers, 2nd half of the 18th century

Furniture du 18th century

Large Italian chest of drawers, 2nd half of the 18th century

DIMENSIONS : l. 55.12 .inH. 44.49 .inP. 27.95 .in

PROVENANCE : Italy

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Italy (Piedmont, Turin region)

Four rows of drawers, curved, green lacquered in carved and moulded wood, the drawers, uprights terminating in scrolls and sides decorated with fillets and rich rocaille and foliage motifs in gilded wood.

Alpha marble top surrounded by a wooden moulding.

The taste for painted furniture spread to Italy, mainly in the 18th century. :

Following the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on 18 October 1748, which put an end to the War of the Austrian Succession, Italy entered a period of tranquillity and prosperity. Italy was influenced by Dutch, English and French artistic production, which it transposed with creativity.

Throughout the century, painted furniture was produced mainly in Piedmont and Veneto.

In the 18th century, André-Jacob Roubo, a French joiner and cabinetmaker, defined this piece of furniture as an intermediary between a chest of drawers and a chest of drawers:

‘When chests of drawers have more than three rows of drawers along the top, they are called wardrobes and are sometimes three feet high’.

This type of refined furniture is now very rare, as Nicole de Reynies, heritage curator at the Inventaire général des monuments et des richesses artistiques de la France, points out in her book "Mobilier domestique, vocabulaire typologique".