PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF PIRANESEUM (Lots 325-333)THE GRAND TOUR: A NEW LOOK AT AN ANCIENT SUBJECTThe Grand Tour was, simply, an education in the glorious landscape, history, architecture and art of Italy. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, young men of fortune and education traveled to Italy to be exposed to the cultural feast that country, and its Antique past, had to offer. And while these travels sometimes also included cities like Paris and, later in the 19th century, more exotic forays to places like the Upper Nile, Italy was always the primary destination.As Charles Thompson wrote in 1744, before embarking on a trip to Italy, he was ‘impatiently desirous of viewing a country so famous in history, which once gave laws to the world; which is at present the greatest school of music and painting, contains the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, and abounds with cabinets of rarities, and collections of all kinds of antiquities’.Possibly the most satisfying part of the Grand Tour was the ability to purchase works of art to bring home. Young aristocrats from Stockholm to West Sussex commissioned portraits of themselves surrounded by Rome’s famous monuments from Batoni and bought fantastical landscape paintings of the ruins of Ancient Rome – now inhabited by wild goats and woman hanging their laundry from former imperial palace windows -- by Panini and Robert as well as Piranesi’s wildly romantic engravings. They also commissioned table tops made of dazzling-colored marbles and sculpture based on Ancient Greek and Roman models and bought authentic Roman Antiquities. All of these objects were then brought home to their town and country houses – often designed by William Kent or Robert Adam or their many followers throughout Europe – which were intended to suggest an Italian Arcadia that was somehow transplanted to their soggy, gray landscapes of the North.The Grand Tour remains an appealing subject that has not faded with the centuries. Who is immune to the landscape, history, architecture and art of Italy? Not to mention the gelato. And who wouldn’t want to be reminded of their trip – especially after we’ve returned to our post-holiday lives, usually confined to modern buildings and cities that so often lack patina and history.And now, the Grand Tour objects resonate just as well in Manhattan, Minneapolis and Malibu. So there is no reason that the Grand Tour should refer to just 18th century aristocrats on a buying spree for their country estates. It can just as easily refer to the modern collector or decorator who can recreate the skyline of Ancient Rome on an empty table top.

A SIENA MARBLE AND TINTED ALABASTER MODEL OF THE COLONNADE OF AMON-OFIS III (AMENHOTEP III), LUXOR, EGYPT

ITALY AND ENGLAND, CIRCA 1830

細節

A SIENA MARBLE AND TINTED ALABASTER MODEL OF THE COLONNADE OF AMON-OFIS III (AMENHOTEP III), LUXOR, EGYPT
ITALY AND ENGLAND, CIRCA 1830
Realistically modeled as the colonnade, raised on an engraved and gilt Ashford black marble base, engraved COLONNADE OF AMON-OFIS III.
16 ¾ in. (42.5 cm.) high, 36 in. (91.4 cm.) wide, 5 ½ in. (13.9 cm.) deep

來源

Antiguus, London, 1992.
The Estate of Theodore and Aristea S. Halkedis, New York, NY.
Anonymous sale; Freeman's, Philadelphia, 6 October 2015 lot 50.

出版

Lacovara, Peter, Betsy Teasley. Trope, Theodore Halkedis, and Aristea Halkedis. The Collector's Eye: Masterpieces of Egyptian Art from the Thalassic Collection, Ltd.: Courtesy Theodore and Aristea Halkedis. Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, 2001, pg. iv.

拍品專文

This large, very ambitious model stands well outside the usual production of Grand Tour architectural souvenirs across the 19th century. Rather than depicting a well-known and documents Roman ruin, it reproduces a place which, when this model was assembled, was off the beaten path for tourists. Unlike other subjects, of which models were produced in a multitude of sizes multitude of sizes and scales, we know of no other antique replicas of this Colonnade.
The materials, especially the English “marble”, indicate dating to the first part of the 19th century, when the import of architectural models from Italy to dealers in the UK was standard practice. Thus, this appears to be a commissioned model, perhaps by some learned society or very well-heeled travelers who, dissatisfied with the trinkets available in Luxor, arranged to produce their own, much more formidable, souvenir.

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