Lot n° 43
Estimation :
10000 - 15000
EUR
ENRICO SCALABRINI (1843-1881)
Ewer and its... - Lot 43 - Coutau-Bégarie
ENRICO SCALABRINI (1843-1881)
Ewer and its basin
Milan, 1874; Signed and dated on the neck of the ewer: "
E. Scalabrini fece - Milano 1874".
Steel and silver work.
Height 31cm - Diam. 34 cm
Provenance:
Commissioned by Senator Alessandro Rossi, 1874
Exhibition:
Philadelphia, 1876, World's Fair
Bibliography:
L'Esposizione Universale di Filadelfia del 1876 illustrata, Milan, 1876, reproduced p. 22-23
Enrico Colle, Angela Griseri and Roberto Valeriani, Bronzi decorativi in
Italia: bronzisti e fonditori italiani dal Seicento all'Ottocento, Milan, Electa, 2001, reproduced p. 315 and quoted p. 328 note 77
Our ewer bears witness to the apogee of Italian industrial arts at the end of the 19th century. A silver bas-relief freely inspired by Antiquity decorates the body of the steel ewer, highlighted by gold inlays, between two friezes of acanthus and water iris. Lovers riding tritons accompany the figures of Neptune, recognizable by his trident, and Venus anadyomene, nude on a shell. The cove features a female figurehead, a Nereid, her hands joining two dolphins and her feet resting on a goat-headed hybrid. This marine theme is continued on the side of the basin, where the chariot of Bacchus, drinking greedily, and that of Ceres, with a sheaf of wheat in hand, invite themselves amidst the little lovers. The procession is bordered by a light frieze of pearled gadroons.
This set, created by Enrico Scalabrini (1843-1881) in 1874, was commissioned by the great industrialist and politician Alessandro Rossi.
Alessandro Rossi and was exhibited two years later in Philadelphia in 1876. The artist drew his inspiration from the great bronzemakers of the Florentine Renaissance, from Ghiberti to Cellini, in search of fantasy nourished by scholarly culture. His contemporaries praised his exquisitely refined metal objects, and the Queen herself commissioned him to create small caskets such as the one presented at the Vienna World's Fair in 1873.
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