Fireplace

Cardelli Lorenzo

(Roma 1733 ca. - 1794)

De Rossi Antonio

attivo ultimo quarto del sec. XVIII

The mantelpiece of this fireplace has a plain architrave in red porphyry and a white marble, slightly projecting shelf with dentils that rests on two fluted, porphyry columns. The latter have a white marble base and a gilt bronze Doric capital. The front is decorated with gilt bronze festoons of leaves held up by ribbons. In the middle, there is a head of Bacchus between two cornucopias, and on the cubes to the sides, there are two masks, all in gilt bronze. The taste for polychrome is in keeping with the redecoration of the Palazzina in the late eighteenth-century style commissioned by Marcantonio Borghese.

Object details

Commentary

This French-style fireplace in red porphyry and white marble is stylistically similar to the giallo antico marble and white marble fireplace in Room XIX. The documentation for these works is kept in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano and was published by Ferrara (1987) and González Palacios (1993). The metal decorations were described by De Rossi in a document dated 3 June 1783: ‘gilt copper decoration for a fireplace in the Palazzo Nobile of Villa Pinciana as follows 2 capitals with their small parts attached in keeping with the order of the column and Pillar  … to the porphyry fireplace … 48 scudi 2 pieces … (?) attached to said fireplace … the decoration … for the shelf of the architrave of said fireplace comprising 2 cornucopias with their flowers, fruit, leaves … 8 scudi … a Bacchante mask in the middle of said cornucopias in copper 6 scudi … 4 cascading festoons with 4 knotted ribbons, with 4 cascades of festoons and another 4 straight festoons between the cornucopias and festoons [to said fireplace architrave … 16 scudi … 4 masks … attached to said fireplace … 16 scudi 16’. A bill issued by Cardelli in September 1782 (‘the carving of three fireplaces in statuary marble’) refers to the three oldest fireplaces, which are this one and the ones in Room XIX and Room XX. The simple mantelpiece is decorated with motifs similar to those of the Monument to Thrasyllus in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, specifically a series of simple festoons hung from bows, which was published in The Antiquities of Athens by Stuart and Revett (1762). The columns, which have fluted shafts and plain capitals decorated with rosettes, reflect Vignola’s codification of the Doric order, drawn from the Theatre of Marcellus. Similar capitals had already been used in a design for a fireplace published by Chippendale in 1760. These references to ancient monuments are not literal, drawing instead on widespread knowledge of famous models. And so, while the spiral that frames the opening of the fireplace was a very common motif, it could also have been a direct citation of Piranesi’s ‘Etruscan friezes’ (Ferrara 1987). According to the inventory of 1809, there was a clock designed by Giuseppe Valadier, with mosaics by Cesare Aguatti, on the shelf: ‘The porphyry and white marble fireplace with its fireguard in painted wood, tongs and shovel. On the above, a clock in stone and gilt metal with a carriage pulled by two horses, and two Egyptian figures in metal with broken spheres, and a glass bell’.

Five of the Villa’s six fireplaces, which were made by the team of artists working on the redecoration of the interiors commissioned by Marcantonio Borghese and headed by the architect Antonio Asprucci, still have their original metal backplates (the exception being the fireplace in Room XI, which has an older one). They were supplied by De Rossi, four of them in 1783: ‘On the day 31 July 1783 … a large brass backplate, with festoons, altar in the middle, palm trunks … On the day 29 December 3 brass backplates similar to the first one, having changed the bas-relief of the oval in the middle’ (AAV, Arch. Borghese, 5342, no. 5205). These four backplates seem to be the ones in the fireplaces in Rooms IX, X, XIX and XX, since the only difference between them is the decoration in the central oval.  The tiles were made by Domenico Cialdi, a ‘Majolica maker’ based in S. Gallicano.

The opening of the fireplace is framed by moulding decorated with acanthus leaves. The interior is covered with square majolica tiles measuring 21 x 21 cm and arranged in groups of four to create different motifs, in a palette of blue, yellow and white on a dotted sky-blue background. The backplate is decorated with a volute with a Medusa’s head of the Rondanini type (named after the example in the Glyptothek of Munich), between two laurel festoons tied with ribbons. In the middle, there is a sacrificial scene in an oval frame. Set in a natural landscape, there is a sacrificial altar with a lit flame and, on the left, a sphinx on a high socle.

Paola Berardi