BY GIOVANNI UGOLINI, FLORENCE, LATE 19TH/EARLY 20TH CENTURY

The inspiration for this table derives from various seventeenth-century naturalistic compositions by artists such as Jacopo Ligozzi for the Grand Ducal Manufactory. From the second half of the nineteenth century, still lives depicting birds, fruit and flowers were amongst the recurrent themes of Florentine pietre dure designs, appealing to the newly formed bourgeois’ interest in the natural world. In addition to the very fine inlay representing birds and ripening pomegranates, the table is notable for the variety of rich materials it employs, such lapus lazuli and malachite, which are superbly contrasted against a black ground. As evidenced in a photograph of Giovanni Ugolini's stand at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, works were often designed on a hinged stand to be displayed like a painting on an easel. Interestingly, the label for the present table is in French, indicating the international market for his works.

Pietre dure tops were rarely signed, but instead bore a paper label to the underside printed with the name of their creator. As the dried paper was often vulnerable to falling off, the presence of a label for Giovanni Ugolini is quite rare. Ugolini’s workshop opened in Via dei Fossi in 1868, specialising in semi-precious stone and marble inlays. In addition to the Exposition Universelle, they are recorded as having exhibited at the Bruxelles Exposition in 1897. In the twentieth century their workshop was located on the Chiasso degli Altoviti. The oldest mosaic gallery in Florence, the firm is still in operation.