Galerie Kugel, Paris

A-M Massinelli,  Giacomo Raffaelli (1753-1836), Maestro di stile e di mosaico, Florence, 2018, p. 81, fig. 67.

Artist, entrepreneur, technical innovator, tastemaker – Giacomo Raffaelli was at the centre of artistic life in Rome at the turn of the 18^th century, a period incredibly rich in political and sociological changes throughout Europe. Despite these changes, Rome maintained its role as the ultimate reference for artistic sources and inspiration and consequently the trade with foreign visitors, who flocked to the Eternal City, continued to boom. Giacomo, having studied painting and sculpture from a young age and believed to have originated from a family who provided smalti at the Vatican Mosaic Workshop, alongside fellow mosaicisti such as Cesare Aguatti, soon developed the technique of minute mosaic pieces, which allowed for an expansion of the 🍰number of colour tones used in order to create small pictorial plaques, a technique☂ which later became known as micromosaic.

With his studio in via S. Sebastianello just off the Piazza di Spagna, he attracted important foreign clients to whom he supplied a variety of objects, from candelabra and vases to surtouts de table, which incorporated reductions of classical monuments. He also produced exquꩵisite marble carved chimneypieces, incorporating ෴antique marbles, hardstones and micromosaic panels.

Influenced by the requests of English patrons and agents, and by the designs of architects such as Robert Adam, but also Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Roman chimneypieces developed from the more subtle white carved architectural examples into rich ornamental frames which accommodated micromosaics and marble panels, both plain and colourful and of which talented sculptors like Francesco Antonio Franzoni and Lorenzo Cardelli supplied impressive examples. As a record of their popularity, it is known that Frederick Hervey, 4^th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, commissioned at least 18 chimneypieces for his residences, including for the large villa he built in Suffolk called Ickworth Housꦍe. Some were made by Cardelli which incorporated micromosaics by Cesare Aguatti, but one of the chimneypieces remaining at Ickworth can be attributed to Raffaelli (Massinelli, p. 77, fig. 62).

Due to their obvious similarities, the present pedestals need to be understood within the context of the production of micromosaic chimneypieces during the period, but aꩵs pedestals they are rare examples of their type and are possibly unique –🅰 this also raises the probability of them being a specific commission to hold a particular work of art.

What is particularly striking in our pedes༺tals is the high quality of the design, which was inspired by the classical ornamental sources available, and the display of all the characteristic hallmarks of Raffaelli’s work: the superb technical virtuosity is typical of his style, observable in the placement of the tesserae in the background to blend with the statuary white marble, as are his signature ornamental motifs of butterflies and flaming atheniennes on the central medallions. The richness and vibrancy of the colours, in an enormous array of tones, is a testament to the heights of mastery which Studio Raffaelli reached in the micromosaic technique. 

Annamaria Massinelli, in her groundbreaking monograph on the artist, has identified three stylistically different groups of chimneypieces and friezes in Raffaelli’s oeuvre, and the present pedestals can be placed in the second of her groups, which also includes a chimneypiece at Palazzo Braschi, Rome (Massinelli, p. 82., fig. 68). This has uprights with similar design, though with central medallions that are left blank. Another chimneypiece within this group is at the Marmor✨palais in Potsdam, a summer residence built in the Neuer Garten for Frederick William II of Prussia between 1787 and 93 (Massinelli, p. 83., fig. 69).

Although Raffaelli moved to Milan in 1804, to direct a mosaics workshop which had been established b🍨y Eugène Beauharnais on orders from Napoleon the previous year, his Roman studio nevertheless continued its operations.

During his career, Raffaelli’s entrepreneurship led him to establish strong👍 relationships with royal patrons such as the Tsar of Russia, King Stanislas Poniatowski of Poland and the new Imperial French family, with his fame continuing to spread throughout Europe. Raffaelli also travelled to Vienna during the 1814-1815 Congress that took place there following the fall of the Napoleonic rule, where he also established a small exhibition space to advertise and sell his꧃ goods amongst the visiting dignitaries.

Raffaelli returned to Rome 𒀰from Milan between 1817 and 1820. He died in 1836, at his home at 92 via Babuino, in a house designed b🌱y Valadier.