Artist:
|
Giovanni Battista Foggini Grand Ducal Workshops
|
Title:
|
Jewelry box
|
Date:
|
c. 1730
|
Medium:
|
Oak, ebony, slate inlaid with pietre dure (lapis lazuli, agate, and marble) and gilded bronze mounts with semiprecious stones
|
Dimensions:
|
13 3/4 x 20 3/4 x 17 in. (34.93 x 52.71 x 43.18 cm)
|
Credit Line:
|
Gift of Bruce B. Dayton
|
Location:
|
Gallery 310
|
Pietre dure ("hard stones") describes inlay made from such brightly colored stones as lapis lazuli, agate, and jasper. Carefully cut, polished, and fitted together, these stones form intricate designs. Although practiced since antiquity, the art of pietre dure was revived during the late 1500s at the Medici workshop in Florence, which continues in operation today. In 1695, the sculptor and architect Giovanni Battista Foggini became director of the workshop and designed many pietre dure objects for Cosimo III de Medici to give as gifts to other members of the European nobility. Foggini's drawings for the floral panels on this jewelry box are in Florence at the Uffizi Gallery.
Artist/Creator(s)
|
|
Name:
|
Foggini, Giovanni Battista
|
Role:
|
Designer
|
Nationality:
|
Italian (Florence)
|
Life Dates:
|
Italian, 1652-1725
|
|
Name:
|
Grand Ducal Workshops
|
Role:
|
Maker
|
Life Dates:
|
Florence
|
|
Object Description
|
|
Inscriptions:
|
|
Classification:
|
Furniture
|
Physical Description:
|
oak veneered with ebony, mounted on all four sides and lid with rectangular slate plaques inlaid with lapis, agate, and marble; design of flowers tied with ribbons, a parrot and butterflies, ormolu leaf sprays on sides, corners have female masks in agate with ormolu ribbons
|
Creation Place:
|
Europe, Italy, , , Florence and Empoli
|
Accession #:
|
86.85
|
Owner:
|
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
|
|