Description
A bowfront corner cupboard in the Neoclassical manner, the body in sage green with gilded edging to the top rail and base molding, standing on bracket feet. The bowed single door, set within a gilded molding, carries a painted panel depicting a capriccio landscape 1: Roman ruins with a triumphal arch and standing columns occupy the left foreground; a seated figure rests at lower left; the middle ground opens to a lake or river with rocky outcroppings and distant hillside structures; a hillside castle or fortified tower is visible at center distance. Trees frame the composition at right. The panel ground is a warm buff-gray. The top surface is painted in simulation of marble. The interior reveals three shaped corner shelves in natural pine, the case sides also in pine — consistent with northern Italian regional construction. The unfinished back is of plain board construction, appropriate to period. The painted surfaces show age-consistent craquelure and minor loss throughout, consistent with original period decoration.
Height: 47 in. (119 cm.)
Width: 31 in. (79 cm.)
Depth: 23 in. (59 cm.)
Further readings and sources:
- The capriccio — an imaginary architectural landscape combining classical ruins with invented topography — was a dominant decorative convention in late 18th-century Italian painted furniture, particularly in Lombardy and the Veneto, where painted case furniture reached a high level of production in the 1770s–1790s. wikipedia ↩
