A GEORGE III GILTWOOD DEMI-LUNE SIDE TABLE WITH A SCAGLIOLA-INLAID MARBLE TOP

THE TOP ATTRIBUTED TO DOMENICO BARTOLI, CIRCA 1780

Details

With a D-shaped white marble and scagliola top depicting concentric berried wreaths, stylized paterae, fan-pattern and festooned bell-flowers headed by trailing ribbon, the confirming frieze carved with rams' heads, leaf-tips, beading, paterae, intertwined berried leaves and bell-flowers, on square tapering molded paneled legs carved with pendant bell-flowers and with cuffs carved with gadrooning and beading, on toupie feet
35 1/2 in. (90 cm.) high, 52 in. (132.1 cm.) wide, 26 in. (66 cm.) deep
Provenance

The Property of a Gentleman; Christie's, New York, 20 April 1995, lot 168.
Acquired from the above sale.


Lot Essay

THE SCAGLIOLISTO: DOMENICO BARTOLI
The scagliola-inlaid white marble top of this table is a superb example of the work of Domenico (Dominic) Bartoli (c.1740-c.1810). Inspired by Robert Adam, they incorporate many original design features by one of the two great scagliolisti of the 18th century and the only one, since we have so little documentary evidence for Pietro Bossi’s work, to whom we can confidently attribute pieces.
Bartoli, born in Livorno, Italy, around 1740, had emigrated to London and was working as a marble carver by 1761. In 1763 he was employed as a scagliolisto by William Constable at Burton Constable in Yorkshire where, over the subsequent four years, he produced four major works in scagliola inlay, one of which, the State Bed Dressing Room chimneypiece, is the first recorded instance of inlay work on white marble. He also produced the Constable family Coat of Arms in scagliola which, since we know the intended colors, has proven useful in determining how colors in the scagliola deteriorate over time – red colors becoming brown and greens fading to blue as a result of the failure of yellow pigment. It was during this commission that Bartoli first met Robert Adam, with whom he subsequently worked for many years.
In 1767 Dominic Bartoli, with his son Giuseppe, formed a partnership with John August Richter (fl. 1767-96), sharing premises on Great Newport Street, London. They worked primarily for Robert Adam (d.1792), architect to the King’s Board of Works and leading exponent of the prevailing neoclassical style whose Works in Architecture was published in 1777 (2nd ed.). Richter took out a patent protecting his technique (1770, no. 978) (Conor O’Neill, 'In Search of Bossi’, Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, 1998, vol. I, p. 152). The first pair of tables that the partners made to Adam’s designs, for the Earl of Coventry, were inlaid on a colored rectangular slab in the Italianate manner, but Adam soon invented a new fashion using semi-circular or D-shaped slabs of white marble.
All the subsequent tables Richter & Bartoli produced to Adam’s designs follow the same template consisting of three running bands of decoration, a border, a central band, and an inner band with a stylized fan at the center of the straight (back) edge so that if two tables are placed back to back they form a continuous pattern. Tables of this pattern designed by Adam and produced by Richter & Bartoli were supplied for Syon House and Osterley House, both in Middlesex, and Nostell Priory, Yorkshire.
Bartoli’s partnership with Richter lasted until about 1777 after which he worked on his own account, producing both inlay and architectural scagliola for a number of patrons. His most prolific and longstanding patron was the architect James Wyatt for whom he undertook a number of commissions including making columns for the Pantheon in Oxford Street in 1772, for the saloon at 15 St. James’s Square in 1794, and for the entrance hall at Castle Coole in Co. Fermanagh in 1795; and pilasters for Cobham in 1791. When Wyatt died in 1813 among his many debts was one of £3000.00 ‘to the plasterer Bartoli’.

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