The most striking detail in the stylism that the French call “Boudin” is its ELEGANT SIMPLICITY of lines.
But when do these lines originate, where do these lines originate, from what architect's or artist's pencil!
I think it is only fair to give Caesar what is Caesar's and therefore, in order to tell you about its true birth, I will bore you with a little lesson in History:
This fireplace model was born around the 1830s-40s and would become very successful over the next 30 years..
It was born in Provence, in a workshop in Nice or Marseilles, where with relatively favorable costs, Italian marble (quarried in the Apuan Alps) arrived by sea and “Franco-Spanish” marble (quarried in the Pyrenees) by land. Importantly, these workshops mostly employed Basque sculptors who, by the way, were well acquainted with their marbles.
The mantel I present here is dressed in a beautiful Pyrenean marble called Nero Marquinia in its best quality, that is, the one in which its veining (sediments of marine fossils) is the whitest and thinnest.
But... missing from the roll call is the main character, WHO DRAWN THESE LINES?!
Well, what I am going to write here now will astound all French people more than Tramp's gimmicks, some will be horrified and call me crazy or, at best, a liar, but... Wikipedia docet... THE DRAWING OF THIS FINEST QUANTO BASIC mantel came from the brush of the Neapolitan painter Salvator Rosa, a man who for me can be considered the Leonardo of the seventeenth century, considering that, more than a painter, our Salvatore should be titled ARTIST OR INVENTOR, since, although he got the greatest fame because of his paintings, this man was also an esteemed writer, refined engraver, all-round poet (satirical and otherwise) and, dulcis in fundo, also a theatrical actor... He lived, nourished by Beauty, in Naples, Rome and Florence, loved Italy like few others and, despite golden invitations from the most important courts of Europe, never set foot outside his homeland. For the sake of accuracy I feel it necessary to say how this particular and revolutionary mantel, invented by our Salvator Rosa around 1650, was not born to make itself a fireplace, but rather to make itself a frame for his paintings, in contrast to the excessive decorative load of picture frames of the time. It was the Parisian architects, a few decades later and grappling with the design of the Palace of Versailles, who understood the importance of the Salvator Rosa mantel and made use of it, copying it verbatim, to INCORN almost every fireplace (we mean by “fireplace” the “chamber” of the fireplace in which the logs of wood burn) of the 1264 fireplaces in the Palace. You read that right, IN THEJUST BUILT VERSAILLES THE FIREPLACES WERE MORE THAN 1260!!! TODAY, BY DINT OF VARIATIONS DESIRED BY KINGS, EMPERORS, DOLPHINS, WIVES AND LOVERS, WE ARE AROUND “ONLY” 350-60 FIREPLACES.
Ialmost never comment on the mantels, but this time I cannot refrain from doing so because the mantel that accompanies our fireplace has a once-in-a-thousand peculiarity. Almost its entire surface is worked “A TAPISSERIE,” that is, it has a background all the same (except for the two small decorations on the plinths and the one in the center of the front), a background surface that in Italy we call “TRAPUNTATA.” Well, go to the oval decoration on the front of our cast iron insert... You see how its central part is undecorated and...smooth! Well, this area was intended, at the owner's choice of course, for the engraving of one or more initials of one's name. BY OUR LUCK the purchasers of the fireplace and its cast iron insert were not very boastful people (real gentlemen, in short) and they decided to leave this decision to our customer who bought the fireplace itself.
Villefranche-sur-Saône is the very nice town in the South of France from which we stole...er...recovered this pair of works of art (Yes, pair, because the FINEST cast iron insert of our fireplace is also to be considered a work of art and high craftsmanship).
The date of birth of our Louis XIV-style fireplace mantel can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century.
