An Italian painted and parcel-gilt table, Rome, Circle of Gianlorenzo Bernini, the design attributed to Giovanni Paolo Schor, second half of the 17th century

Valeria Rossi di Montelera, Rome.

The other example in the pair

A. González-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Milan, 1984, vol. II, p. 92, fig. 180.

A. González-Palacios, Fasto Romano: dipinti, sculture, arredi dai Palazzi di Roma, Rome, 1991, p. 154, fig.79, pl.XXXVI;

A. González-Palacios, Arredi e Ornamenti alla Corte di Roma, 1560-1795, Milan, 2004, p. 76.

A. González-Palacios, Il Mobile a Roma dal Rinascimento al Barocco, Rome, 2022, p.298, fig.186.

H. Fioratti, Il mobile italiano dall’antichità allo stile Impero, Florence, 2004, p.127, fig.222.

This is an exceptionally early example of a piece of Italian furniture modelled to imitate a tree, a playfully naturalistic design that would later become popular in the gardens and grottoes of the eighteenth century but is seldom observed in the seventeenth. This singular innovation and some documented examples link it to the work of Johann Paul Schor (1615–1674), a collaborator of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). It is one from a pair, with the other table thoroughly discussed in the research of Alvar González-Palacios.¹

Bernini is best known for his miraculous sculptures that seem to pulsate with life, with such works as Apollo and Daphne, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and his Bust of Louis XIV quite rightly ranking among the supreme artistic products of the Italian Baroque period. Like many polymaths, he was also active in architecture, furniture and decorative arts; indeed, he changed the history of European decorative art in a profound way based on identifiable innovations such as the popularisation of the metamorphosis motif in decoration² An example of Bernini’s work that is relevant to the present tables include his remarkable organ case for the Santa Maria del Popolo, which sees supple, parcel-gilt oak branches weave around the pipes, for which a drawing from his workshop is still extant.³ Another notable Bernini piece is the stand for his early sculpture San Lorenzo, which takes the form of a robust tree trunk that is also stained and parcel-gilt (B8. Bernini).

Rather than Bernini himself, this table is most likely a product of the fertile imagination of a designer and draughtsman he worked with in the 1660s. An Austrian by birth, his first names Johann Paul were often Italianised to Giovanni Paolo, and his surname Schor sometimes substituted for Tedesco (literally “German”). Many extant drawings by Schor testify to his imaginative skill: unlike Bernini, it seems that he only designed and was not himself a craftsman.⁴ Two designs attributed to Schor and today held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm (NMH THC 1090) show bases for tables in the form of trees that are remarkably similar to the present lot at a time when this conceit was not particularly widespread. Alvar González-Palacios has posited that the choices of oak and roses on these designs indicates possible patronage from the Chigi and Orsini families respectively, while also identifying another tree-form table from the period now in a private collection.⁵ This is not Schor’s only venture into arboreal ornament of this type, with a giltwood base for a console table from around 1670 that is now in the Getty (86.DA.7) presenting a remarkable example.

Beyond the work of these two artists, there are some additional examples of naturalistic ornament in the Baroque period that of relevance here. Trees and rockwork are integrated into two bases from the Amadeo di Castro collection that were made between 1610 and 1630,⁶ while a few prie-dieux carved to resemble rockwork have been identified.⁷

¹ See the Literature field for the illustrations of the other example in the pair. See Fasto Romano, p.154 for “Questo tavolo (e il suo compagno) di quel gusto naturalistico in voga a Roma” (my emphasis).

² S. Walker, ‘The Artistic Sources and Development of Roman Baroque Decorative Arts’, in S. Walker and F. Hammond (ed.) Life and Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome: Ambiente Barocco, New York, 1999, p.4.

³ Reproduced in G. Bauer and L. Bauer, ‘Bernini's Organ-Case for S. Maria del Popolo’, The Art Bulletin, vol 62, no. 1 (March 1980), p.118. The drawing is in the Vatican Library (MS Chigi, P. VII. 10, fol.29r)

⁴ S. Walker, op cit, p.9.

⁵ A. González-Palacios, Il Mobile a Roma dal Rinascimento al Barocco, Rome, 2022, p.297 (also fully pictured in colour in his earlier publications).

⁶ G. Lizzani, Il Mobile romano, Milan, 1970, p.64, figs. 98 and 99.

⁷ A. González-Palacios, op. cit., pp.300-301.