Table; Rome, 19th century.
Marble, hard stones and ebonised wood.
One of the bronze sconces is missing.
Measurements: 75 x 51.5 cm (diameter).
Round top table made of ebonised wood with bronze appliqués on the four warped legs. The top is decorated with coloured hard stones which are combined with small micro mosaics representing different buildings in the city of Rome.
The art of micro-mosaic mosaic flourished during the 18th and 19th centuries. The term was coined by Sir Arthur Gilbert to refer to mosaics made with small pieces of enamel. The use of birds was common in Florentine mosaics to represent the seasons as early as the Renaissance, becoming more frequent during the Baroque period, as emblems of purity and the soul. The art of micro mosaic was born in the Vatican to cope with the deterioration of its collection of paintings. Realising that architectural mosaics retained their colour over time, the papal workshops began experimenting with the technique of glass mosaic to reproduce the masterpieces. The Vatican kept the secret of the formula that allowed an exact reproduction with micro-mosaics whose dullness and chromatic quality made the copy indistinguishable from the original painting. As early as the 19th century, private workshops began to proliferate in Rome in response to the demand of the tourist market. Commercial mosaics became available in a variety of decorative pieces. Many of them are preserved in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, in the Gilbert Collection in London and in the Vatican itself.