Genoa,1820-1821.

Provenance

Grimaldi Doria Tursi palace, Savoy Royal Palace in Genoa, 1820-1821.
Anonymous European private collection.

Literature

Il mobile Impero in Italia, Enrico Colle, 1998, Milan, 260-261(concerning a sofa, six chairs and two open armchairs of the same suite now in the Napoleonic residence in Elba island)
Giuseppe Battista Piacenza e Carlo Randoni. I reali palazzi fra Torino e Genova. 1773-1831., Paolo Cornaglia, 2012, Turin, 227(with Randoni documents concerning the all suite)
Il mobile in liguria, Alvar Gonzalez Palacios, 1996, Genoa, 323(for a similar later related example still in the Royal palace in Genoa).
Christopher Rowell and Wolf Burchard. Italian furniture at Attingham Park. Furniture history 2020, VOL VI, the journal of the furniture history society. Page 107-176. Figure 17,42,46 and 47)

Detail Description

In 1819 the Savoy Royal couple, Vittorio Emanuele I and Maria Teresa d'Asburgo Este bought the Grimaldi-Doria Tursi Palace as their principal Genoese royal residence, now it is the townhall of the city. As first architect of the court Carlo Randoni designed all the new furniture including this bench, it was probably executed in the two following years by the genoese sculptor Giovan Battista Parodi and gilded by Agostino Laviosa.Wolf Burchard of the Met discovered that the third Baron of Berwick, William Noel-Hill as English Ambassador at the Savoy Kingdom, in 1833 bought a large part of Doria Tursi interiors, including from the same suite two armchairs, five chairs and seven stools (identical to another  set of eight that was also in our stock) now in Park Attingham in Shropshire.
Surviving pieces of the same suite formerly part of Pisa collection until 1938 are now a similar but less interesting pair of longer benches recently appeared in the London market, few armchairs and sofas in the Napoleonic residence of villa dei mulini, porto ferraio, Elba island; one sofa is still in the original Royal collections at Stupinigi royal castle,Museo dell'Ammobiliamento, sala dei cimeli napoleonici, Turin and an other sofa has been recorded in the Fenice Opera theatre, Venice; last but not least a set of 13 chairs of the same suite has been sold at Cambi's house sale palace Loschi Zileri dal Verme in Vicenza The 20th of October 2021, lot 88 exactly like the other 5 already mentioned, also originally at Doria Tursi Palace in Genoa, now at Attingham Park (NT608157).