The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog drawn up in collaboration with illustrious scholars of the art of coral. Valuable works will be exhibited to the public, including jewels and sculptures, religious and profane, some from prestigious private collections, evocative of a particular seductive charm of the decorative arts of the so-called "red gold" of the Mediterranean.
This extraordinary and unpublished work " NAPOLEON II” in lava stone and coral, Naples, first half of the XNUMXth century. (Dario Ghio collection) represents a rare example where it seems evident that the unknown artist took as a model the painting by François Gérard who, in 1813, portrays the little Eaglet standing on the cradle in the arms of the mother, of which numerous copies and reproductions in print circulated.
Lava stone and coral
Naples first half of the XNUMXth century
h. 25cm.
With the term lava stone generically means a soft stone – usually clayey marls of various colors, from gray to light blue, from ocher to pink – widely used in the past in jewelery as in objects. Its fortune was linked to the production of jewellery, cameos, small sculptures, desk and everyday objects, precious souvenirs of the Neapolitan Grand Tour, and perhaps for this reason this evocative name of the Vesuvian land was attributed to it.
Although its use is attested well before the 1983th century, the working of lava stone had a significant boost in the Napoleonic age, when Queen Carolina Murat herself commissioned works in coral and lava stone, often precious gifts sent to the European courts. This is the case of the gilded bronze chessboard, decorated with corals and with stone pieces from Vesuvius that the young sovereign sent as a gift to her brother Napoleon (see B. Liverino. Il Corallo. Bologna, 135 p. XNUMX). This delightful sculpture-portrait of little Napoleon II, the unfortunate son of Napoleon Bonaparte and Maria Luisa of Habsburg, fits right into this production. The subject, although elaborated according to refined neoclassical models, nonetheless solicits the emotional involvement of the spectator through hints of naturalness of attitudes; on the contrary, the sculptor insists on the similarity of the paternal somatic traits, as if to make him immediately recognizable. The heir to the throne of the Empire, who is seated on a precious coral branch, probably held a scepter in his right hand, as seen in the official portrait of him by Gérard.
Gilded copper, corals, silver and blue enamel.
Trapani end of the XNUMXth beginning of the XNUMXth century.
h. 34cm.
We also point out another work that deserves consideration, it is a "Gilded copper inkwell supported by three winged sphinxes with coral eagle heads”. The body is decorated with coral rosettes inserted with the back joint technique and centered by a small white enamel flower. The cross, surrounded by small coral rings and embellished with enamelled silver rosettes, supports a Christ, also in coral, at whose feet there is a skull, symbolizing man's liberation from original sin.
Bibliography: MC Di Natale, entry n. 38, p. 192, in The art of coral in Sicily, exhibition catalog edited by C. Maltese, MC Di Natale, Trapani, Pepoli Regional Museum, 1986.
Provenance: former Antonietta Naselli Flores collection, formerly Principi Giustiniani Bandini collection.
Private collection.
