Before talking about the graceful (actually, “sinuous” is the first adjective that arose to my mind upon first seeing it but then, after careful rereading, I chastised this overly “sensual” adjective so as not to arouse the wrath of some demure readers) fireplace in this presented file, I would like to tell you what little I know about the history of its marble because I have become convinced that this history may also be of interest to the eventual buyers/estimators of this piece.
An art object such as this, and I am sure you will agree with me, LIVES also from its history, not just from its mere existence.
You should know that this marble, though French by birth, has a very Italian name. “Griotte,” in fact, is the Frenchification of an ancient (I really like to call it also ‘archaic’) Italian nickname: ‘Agriotta,’ which stands for the current ”amarena.”
Never was the name more apt than this, don't you think?
Doesn't this color bear an enormous resemblance to the color of the fruit that in the 1960s and later years made our canicular summers cool with the intake, via slushies by the handful, of the legendary “Amarena Fabbri”!?
Other than those very expensive and dangerous junk foods that “modern” young people guzzle towards evening in any place that resembles a bar..
But back to us.
The name “Agriotta” was coined in some sculpture workshop in Lunigiana, thus becoming a technical word, known only in the sphere of insiders, a fact that certifies the close union between French stylism (to be nitpicky in the case of our specimen we should say “Parisian” rather than “French.” Parisian stylism was in fact the most refined) and Italian sculpture (better to say “Lunense,” since in Lunigiana-and not in all of Italy-there were the best master sculptors in the whole world).
This testifies to what I have always been expressing: We Italians (in this case the Lunigiana sculptors) were “the Chinese” of the French. They were designing and we were making by working hard, they were earning florins of francs (but also pounds, dollars and rubles) and we were sweating a hundred shirts among the white dust of Apuan marble. To give you an idea: In St. Petersburg the fountains, statues, columns, fireplaces and even the floors were made in Sarzana or Carrara or Pietrasanta etc... In your opinion, who got richer? The Parisian Maison that commissioned them or the master sculptor from Carrara!
The French tried to give this marble a French name, calling it “Sang de pigeon” but to no avail, this “nick,” in fact, must have appeared rather macabre to most, and so they fell back on the Frenchification of the Italic and original “Agriotta.”
But the story of our Griotte does not end there; on the contrary, it intersects with the history of the Palace of Versailles and thus with the Sun King, Louis XIV, builder of the same mansion.
The story goes that it was the Sun King himself who told his architects with which marbles they should enrich his country residence, and the ranking was as follows:
Above all the Sarrancolin marble, then the Rouge Griotte, and third place was the marble until that day considered the most important and valuable on the globe, the mythical Carrara Statuary.
In short, we Italians ranked yes third but also first in the color white, which then is the dominant color, at least when it comes to fireplaces.
After this italic defense of office, let us return to our Griotte.
What happened to him that day!
Well, in addition to becoming the subject of so many furnishings of the most beautiful house in the world (and is that so?!), that day our marble changed.... name and became “Rouge du Roi.”
In truth, its two names, the old and the new, coexist blissfully today, and if Macron does not notice this Italian meddling in one of the most important marbles in the house that is the symbol of French Grandeur, everything will go smoothly for a few more centuries.
Now I have little space left for actual commentary, so I will summarize its salient features.
First of all, very interesting (and very rare) is the “movement” of its front, a movement very different from the lines of the classic Louis XV friezes (take a look at the fireplaces swarming in this same section and you will understand at once) in that it is designed with a particular “detachment” (eighteenth-century reminiscence), it is this element that to me makes this fireplace appear “sinuous,” elegantly sensual, certainly original.
Then the characterization, also original and very rare, of the central shell. In place of the more classical “leaf stylization,” this time our shell (unfailing in Louis XV ornamentation) becomes an open and charming peacock's tail.
A small but important detail, as details often are, the bellflower that appears under the shell is... very large, very elegant and very curious: In fact, it looks like a jester's hat!!!
PARIS, PERFECT CONSERVATION, NAPOLEON III PERIOD.
