THIS FRENCH FIREPLACE IS... A FRENCH SCULPTURE. A REAL RARITY, IF WE CONSIDER THAT ALMOST ALL FIREPLACES WITH FRENCH STYLISM AND IN WHITE CARRARA MARBLE WERE REGULARLY SCULPTED IN ITALY.
DIGNIFIED AND ELEGANT, WE BOUGHT IT REALLY AT A GOOD PRICE, AND SO WE TURN IT OVER TO YOU, AT A GOOD PRICE.
THIS MANTEL IS IN PERFECT CONDITION AND ALSO DRESSED IN A BEAUTIFUL PATINA.
ITS PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION IS BETWEEN THE END OF THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY, STYLISTICALLY BETWEEN THE JUST PAST NINETEENTH-CENTURY BAROQUE AND THE EARLY TWENTIES OF ART NOUVEAU, FROM THE FRENCH RIVIERA.
ITS NAME IS “CÔTE D'AZUR,” AND NOT SO MUCH BECAUSE OF ANY SPECIFIC STYLISM OF ITS OWN (WHICH, AFTER ALL, IS BASICALLY A NINETEENTH-CENTURY BAROQUE LIKE SO MANY OTHERS) BUT BECAUSE OF ITS, VERY RECOGNIZABLE, DISTINCTLY PROVENÇAL MODE OF SCULPTURE (IN NICE OR MARSEILLES, BECAUSE OF THEIR PORTS, THERE THIS NICE AND VERY GRACEFUL FIREPLACE WAS CARVED).
NOTES IN DEFENSE OF THE PROVENÇAL FIREPLACE
Everything can be said about the Provençal fireplace..
The charge that goes around most is that said fireplace mantel is “regionalized,” a bad term to explain how it deviates a little from the canons of classical stylism.
Generally this criticism is made from the pulpit of the “all-knowing” antiquarians, that is, those who sell from the nails of the cross of Christ to the Louis Philippe buffet via Russian icons..
Usually those who “know everything” (Leonardo da Vinci and Pico della Mirandola excluded...) do not know in depth the things they are talking about.
The good fortune of said “experts in human knowledge” arises from the fact that those who listen to them and see them so confident in their imperative claims, that is, the customer, know even less about them.
To these antiquarians who so abhor Provençal fireplaces and, as I said above, call them “regionalized” as if this term were equivalent to “plague-ridden,” I reply that, then, ALL Italian fireplaces are “regionalized,” and they certainly are much more so than Provençal ones..
From the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the nineteenth century (1800 !!) Italy was nothing more than a myriad of staterelli or communes, in essence a myriad of bell towers armed against each other, also and especially culturally.
And this myriad of bell towers created a myriad of regionalized fireplaces so much so that today we speak of “Genoese” fireplaces when we mean a certain Louis XV built there, or we coined the term “Lombard” to define a frame in approximate neoclassical style, between Louis XVI and the Directory, not to mention “Venetian fireplaces” (particular types of Louis XV . .), “Piedmontese,” or... “lumbard” (I use this adjective because this word “Lumbard” was the proper name of a Directoire-style fireplace but REGIONALIZED in Milanese land.
I, on the other hand, who of Louis Philippe consoles understand nothing and much less know how to distinguish a nail from the cross of Christ from one of those very old nails driven into the rafters of my beloved grandfather Archangel's cellar, nails from which hung a harvest of salami and cotechini “made up” by himself, I, I was saying, ignorant as I am, defend Provençal fireplaces to the sword, and I find that they are always rich in grace, always different from each other (because of the small number produced for each model . .), always rich in at least one eye-catching detail.
As is the case with this fireplace mantel, in which a very particular interpretation of the classic “Shell” becomes the leading motif of the entire fireplace surround.
BY THE WAY (A VERY VENAL NOTE, BUT ONE THAT HAS ITS IMPORTANCE ..), PROVENÇAL FIREPLACES GENERALLY COST A LITTLE LESS THAN SIMILAR MORE “PARISIAN” AND DECIDEDLY MORE WIDELY SEEN MODELS.
