The present table top with more than 180 marbles is probably representative of the production emanating from the region of Campania particularly around Naples in the late 18^th century and early 19^th century.
Indeed, this specimen marble top displays the art of Italian marmisti (marble workers) who are not only showing their skilled craftsmanship but also the breadth of marbles native to their country and their beauty.

The fashion for specimen marbles in Europe

The taste for marbles, driven by the craze for Antiquity and for cabinets of curiosities, encouraged the creation in Italy throughout the 18^th century of several types of objects, veritable libraries of samples, taking the form of cabinets, caskets or table tops where aesthetic pleasure was skillfully combined with scientific pretensions. The selection of marble samples was generally based on aesthetics rather than on scientific criteria, giving more importance to chromatic harmonies rather than the mineralogical interest of the samples: the same marble could be repeated several t.mes s across one table top for example. Additionally, excavations and the discovery of Ancient Roman sites favoured the creation of table tops which no longer only celebrated the type of each marble but also promoted the historical and geographical interest of each sample’s provenance.

In the 18^th century, Roman workshops had the supremacy in the production of specimen marble table tops but by the late 18^th century Neapolitan table tops like the present soon rivaled them and both types were collects ed by wealthy Englishmen during their educational Grand Tours in the 19^th century.

Specimen marbles table tops from Campania

The composition of the present example relates to a top from the late 18^th century with marble samples excavated from ancient pavements in Capri (within the region of Campania), illustrated in Alvar Gonzalez-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Roma e il Regne delle Due Sicilie, Milan, 1986, Vol. II, p.46, no. 64 (fig. 1).

According to the inscriptions around the latter top, the polychrome opus sectile pavement from which it derives was found in Capri by Nobert Hadrawa, the secretary of the Austrian Ambassador to the court of Naples, in 1786 and sold to Ferdinand IV of Naples (1751-1825) as fragments. Some of these fragments were arranged around the main altar in Capri’s cathedral. Other fragments were fitted in a geometric fashion into the gallery of the Villa Favorita at Resina, near Portici (in 1877 it was removed and transferred to the Capodimonte Palace). An inventory of the Villa Favorita drawn up in 1800, states that, at that date, there still existed ‘cinquete pezzi d’avanzo del pavimento della Galleria’ in the storerooms (Gonzalez-Palacios, Alvar, “The Furnishings of the Villa Favorita in Resina” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 121, no. 913, 1979, pp. 226–45).

Alvar Gonzalez-Palacios suggests that other table tops were likely made up of the same fragments of the ancient pavement. He further adds that the aforementionned table top from the late 18^th century (illustrated Alvar Gonzalez-Palacios, ibid., 1986, p. 46, no. 64) was probably executed by Stefano Atticciati (d. 1798) or Giuseppe, another family member, who succeeded him as Court marble worker. The Atticciati family had worked for the Court since the reign of Charles III. Stefano Atticciati was particularly active at the Villa Favorita in the restoration and cleaning of marbles as well as the execution of new tops and consoles and commodes (Gonzalez-Palacios, Alvar, ibid., 1979, p. 239).

Other table tops from the late 18^th century and early 19^th century with similar geometric patterns have been recorded in private collects ions, some including lava samples from Mount Vesuvius, near Naples:

- one dated from the second half the 18^th century with lava samples sold at Christie’s, London, 13 December 2018, lot 15 (sold £40,000).

- one table including specimen lava samples like the above on a base attributed to Etienne Levasseur, in a private collects ion illustrated in Sophie Mouquin, “Entre curiosité et science : lithothèques et marmothèques sous l’Ancien Régime”, Revue d'histoire de l'art de l'Académie de France à Rome, Paris, 2012, p. 83, fig. 10.

- a top sold at Replica Shoes ’s, London, 29 May 1998, lot 198.

- a pair of tops offered at Replica Shoes ’s, New York, 1 October 1997, lot 344.