I have been waiting for a long time to be able to post this mantel, UNIQUE IN THE WORLD because of its many peculiarities inherent primarily in its very rare marble, but also in its design and decoration which we will discuss below..
LET'S START FROM ITS MARBLE: In a few months Artis will be 50 years old and I (who of course was present since I am guilty of this undertaking) in the half-century since then had heard some old insiders talking about a certain and unidentified “Carrara Cremo Statuary marble” but... I had never seen it, this mysterious CREMO, and I always doubted that it existed, maybe I had misunderstood those words of the “oldies” or maybe they had misspoken, as I got older I got senile too, so... who knows...
THEN, HE CAME, THE FIREPLACE LOUIS XVI “OLIVE BRANCH” ARRONDI’ THAT I AM PRESENTING HERE... As soon as I saw it, dressed in that mantle that appeared to be light beige but contained, here and there, “little spies,” ‘slices’ of a VERY WHITE STATUARY CARRARA MARBLE, I knew that the “fables” of the old men were well-founded, THAT WHAT I HAD BEFORE ME WAS THE FIRST (AND STILL THE ONLY) FLOODED fireplace IN STATUARY CARRARA CREM MARBLE THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN. At this point it seemed right to me to delve deeper into the subject and I did so by questioning two other “old” marble craftsmen, one in Lunigiana and one in Sant'Ambrogio Valpolicella (these are the two Italian areas richest in marble and sculptors) and they confirmed the existence of several quarries (not only of Statuary marble) in which pockets of “SO CALLED CREMO MARBLE” are formed, and they explained to me that this “beige” coloration occurs at points where the quarry is affected by major water flows/passages, which water drags with it mineral oxides (of iron and sulfur in particular), which oxides, if and when they are in sufficient quantity, yield their coloration to the marble blocks that they have been gently caressing for a few millennia .. But this combination happens rarely and only in very restricted arease. HERE UNRAVELS THE MYSTERY OF THIS VERY STRANGE AND VERY RARE FIND...
THIS ABOVE IS ITS FIRST PECULIARITY.
This fireplace is part of the large family of neoclassical styles, basically the most important in the Napoleon III period (1850-80) and in particular this mantel, although with all the adaptations of that period, undoubtedly makes reference to the Louis XVI style (last quarter of the 1700s). And up to there, all is well.. But(and here falls the donkey) its front, whose surface houses the most important sculpture of the entire mantelpiece, is not linear, not square and firm like a cuirass, but (HORROR!!) is “curved” (or, if you prefer “arched”). Not only that, if you look closely, even the legs, in order to accompany the curvature of the front they are supporting, are not in a Teutonic 90° right angle(DOUBLE HORROR!!) but wider (with more degrees in width, in short) because they have to fit, collimating, with the rounding of the front.. A kind of “Novelty Desire” for the architects who designed it, a Blasphemy for neoclassical purists. At this point it was also necessary to change the name of the fireplace itself.... One could not just call it “Louis Seize” because there is (cannot be) a Louis XVI with an arched front, and so it was given the name “Louis Seize Arrondi” (ARRONDI' is a French adjective meaning “rounded”) (which would be like saying. Yes, he is from that good and beautiful family, but he has some problems, mica is normal..).
THIS ABOVE IS HIS SECOND PECULIARITY.
Another “strange” (but to me ameliorative) thing about it is its extraordinary height, not at all in keeping with the neoclassical fireplaces of that Antique era. Its Napoleon III brethren with an average width of about 150 cm like ours were almost all 108-110 cm tall.. They had risen 4 or 5 cm over the course of the previous century, following the growth of man's height (which is normal and still happens today (see my son, who I stopped measuring when, at 18, he began the overtaking at my expense) and instead our likeable if somewhat unhinged CREMO is 116 cm tall!!!!
THIS ABOVE IS HIS THIRD AND FINAL PECULIARITY.
I DID SOME RESEARCH AND FOUND THAT MAN'S HEIGHT FROM THE LATE 1800S TO THE PRESENT DAY HAS RISEN AT LEAST 6-7 CM ... EXACTLY AS MUCH AS WE, MEN OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM, WILL NEED!!! Which means that, fortunately, the designer of our HIGH fireplace was not wrong, but rather ... thought of us, too....
“TECHNICAL” DATA: PARISIAN FIND (RUE DE VERSIGNY, AT THE FOOT OF MONTMARTRE),NAPOLEON III PERIOD, PERFECT PRESERVATION, MODE AND QUALITY SCULPTURE CLEARLY PIETRASANTINA (ITALY).
