Galleria Antonio Esposito di Chiara Esposito Armchairs

This beautiful pair of cabriolet armchairs is in pristine condition with no flaws. They are also very sturdy. There is no wear on the fabric or the wood. The colors of the fabric and...

We are delighted to offer for sale this rare original 18th century Northern English hand carved from solid oak Wainscot armchair circa 1720 A highly decorative and original piece ...

Mid-18th Century baroque hand-carved 1750 Venetian walnut armchair. Straw seat not original. The 18th Century was in Venice the Golden Age and this armchair is a remarkable work by ...

Important French 18th Century Pair of Louis XVI Armchairs or Fauteuils, Stamped - Signed This exceptional pair of Louis XVI period armchairs, dating to the late 18th century, bears ...

Antique 18th Century Louis XVI Giltwood Fauteuil armchair. This lovely chair is a genuine antique and feature a genuine giltwood finish. It is beautifully worn and the silk upholster...

French pair of Louis XVI style marquise bergère armchairs, gilt wood, 19th century. In the clean and classic Louis XVI style, the name Marquise is attributed due to their exceptiona...

An attractive & very comfortable pair of giltwood fauteuils, both frames decorated with carved & molded foliate motifs, showing arched crest-rails with upholstered backs, sided by padded armrests...

The structure is made out of carved wood enhanced with floral detailing at the top and Greek Key motif at the base of the seat. Striped crushed fabric, in the Italian Louis XVI neocl...

Fine tall German late 17th century Baroque walnut throne armchair with a rectangular arched padded back and seat covered in 17th century Gobelin depicting ‘Susanna and the Elders’ wi...

19th century Spanish revival high back armchair with red velvet upholstery.

Set of four fauteuils, with painted fielded frames, each rounded caned back flanked by bowed arms, on down-swept terminals, crown seat of linen with nailheads, raised on round taperi...

A very fine pair of palatial Venetian walnut carved mid-19th century Baroque figural throne armchairs, attributed to Valentino Panciera Besarel (Venice, 1829-1902) in the manner of Andrea Brustolon (1662-1732). The ornately carved thrones, each flanked with figures of standing males supporting a branch-carved armrests with vines. Raised on cabriolet scrolled legs. Provenance: The Castello di Giove in Umbria, Italy, circa 1870-1880. Height: 54 1/4 inches (137.8 cm.) Width: 37 1/4 inches (94.6 cm.) Depth: 32 inches (81.3 cm.) Andrea Brustolon (20 July 1662 – 25 October 1732) was an Italian sculptor in wood. He is known for his furnishings in the Baroque style and devotional sculptures. Biography He was trained in a vigorous local tradition of sculpture in his native Belluno, in the Venetian terraferma, and in the studio of the Genoese sculptor Filippo Parodi, who was carrying out commissions at Padua and at Venice (1677). He spent the years 1678-80 at Rome, where the High Baroque sculpture of Bernini and his contemporaries polished his style. Apart from that, the first phase of Brustolon's working career was spent in Venice, 1680–1685. Brustolon is documented at several Venetian churches where he executed decorative carving in such profusion that he must have quickly assembled a large studio of assistants. As with his contemporary in London, Grinling Gibbons almost all the high quality robust Baroque carving in Venice has been attributed to Brustolon at one time or another. In the Venetian Ghetto, at the Scola Levantina, Brustolon provided the woodwork for the synagogue on the piano nobile, where the carved, canopied bimah is supported on Solomonic columns, which Brustolon had seen in Bernini's baldacchino in the Basilica of St Peter's. His furniture included armchairs with figural sculptures that take the place of front legs and armrest supports, inspired by his experience of Bernini's Cathedra Petri. The gueridon, a tall stand for a candelabrum, offered Brustolon unhampered possibilities for variations of the idea of a caryatid or atlas: the familiar Baroque painted and ebonized figural gueridons, endlessly reproduced since the eighteenth century, found their models in Brustolon's work. His secular commissions from Pietro Venier, of the Venier di San Vio family (a suite of forty sculptural pieces that can be seen in the Sala di Brustolon of the Ca' Rezzonico, Venice), from the Pisani of Strà, and from the Correr di San Simeone families encourage the attribution to him of some extravagantly rich undocumented moveable furniture. Andrea Brustolon's elaborate carved furniture aspired towards the condition of sculpture, such as the Dutch bases for console tables which look like enlargements of the work of the two Van Vianens, Paulus and Adam, perhaps the greatest Dutch silversmiths of the period. These carved pieces display the baroque tendency to develop a form three-dimensionally in space. Brustolon's walnut, boxwood and ebony pieces transcend ordinary functional limitations of furniture; they are constructed of elaborately carved figures. The framework of Brustolon's chairs, side tables and gueridons were carved as gnarled tree branches, with further supports of putti and male figures carved in ebony. Backrests of the chairs, which were never touched in the rigidly upright posture that contemporary etiquette demanded, were carved with allegories of vanity, fire and music, etc. The most extravagant piece delivered for Pietro Venier was a large side table and vase-stand of box and ebony, designed as a single ensemble to display rare imported Japanese porcelain vases. The eclectic allegories include Hercules with the Hydra and Cerberus, males and reclining river-gods (see ref.). For the Correr, less extrovert chairs bear female nudes extended along the armrests. For the Pisani, he carved a suite of twelve chairs (now at the Palazzo Quirinale) with flowers, fruit, leaves and branches to symbolize the twelve months of the year. Work by Brustolon is at the Villa Pisani at Stra. In 1685 Brustolon returned to the house where he was born at Belluno, and from that time devoted himself mainly to tabernacles and devotional sculptures in walnut, boxwood or ivory. His polychromed ivory Corpus from a crucifix is in the Museo Civico di Belluno, which preserves some of Brustolon's preparatory drawings for frames to be carved with putti displaying emblems. A pair of boxwood sculptures, The Sacrifice of Abraham and Jacob Wrestling with the Angel...