Luigi Manfredini

Exhibited by Galleria Carlo Virgilio & C.

Material Gilded bronze and lapis lazuli

Dimensions 80 x 39 cm

Place of Creation Milan

Price Price available upon inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

Inspired by the famous bronze Tripod discovered in Pompeii and engraed by Giovan Battista Piranesi (Naples, Museo Nazionale), this refined modern version of the classical prototype was part of a series commissioned for Palazzo Reale of Milan by viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais to Luigi and Antonio Manfredini. The two brothers had created a very high-level manufacturing, promoted by the sovereign and installed in the Regio Stabilimento della Fontana. A specimen of the tripod was donated by Eugène to Napoleon's second wife Maria Luigia of Austria as a basin holder for the baptism of the King of Rome.

Our version was instead sent to Munich where, after the Restoration, Eugène retired with his wife Augusta of Bavaria. Finally, with the descendants, it reached the Leuchtemberg Palace near St. Petersburg, to be then sold in 1917 in the imminency of the October Revolution.

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Provenance

Milan, Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais ; Munich, Eugène de Beauharnais, duke of Leuchtemberg, and princess Augusta of Bavary collection, from 1815; Munich, Bavarian Court, 1880; Serghievka, near St. Petersburg, Leuchtenberg Palace; Stockholm, Nordiska Kompaniet, 1917; Buenos Aires, Paula de Koenigsberg; Argentina, private collection; Germany, private collection, from 1960 to 2019; Germany, private collection