Monumental Pietre Dure Cabinet on Stand by Bernhard Ludwig

18159: Monumental Pietre Dure Cabinet on Stand by Bernhard Ludwig
By Bernhard, Ludwig (Austrian, 1834–1897)
Height: 345cm, width: 240cm, depth: 70cm
This monumental cabinet on stand, combining cabinetmaking and hardstone marquetry, was made in Vienna by the firm of Bernhard Ludwig between about 1905 and 1910, the upper right drawer inscribed 'Ludwig Vienne' and the lock struck 'Bernh. Ludwig Wien'. Following the Florentine cabinets of the late seventeenth-century Baroque, it was conceived on a scale appropriate to a palatial interior.
The upper part is arranged with eleven small drawers, each set with a pietre dure plaque inlaid in coloured hardstones with birds, flowers and fruit. It is centred by an architectural niche housing a gilt-bronze figure, flanked by silvered and gilt columns and framed by ovoid hardstone medallions, with a mirrored interior. The pediment carries gilt-bronze figures and vases of flowers, together with silvered metal mounts and jasper cabochons, and is surmounted by a standing gilt figure. The lower part is centred by a large shell and mounted with putti and sirens supporting a garland of flowers, the whole raised on a stand carved with gilt tritons, dolphins and satyrs rising from stylised waves.
The pietre dure birds and foliage follow the tradition of the Florentine Grand Ducal workshops, in the manner of Jacopo Ligozzi, while the architectural form derives from the Roman stipo tradition. Ludwig's craftsmen travelled to the Palazzo Borromeo on Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore, to copy a pair of Florentine cabinets in the family collection, made in Naples at the end of the seventeenth century and still in their original position in the Music Room. The Borromeo cabinets are recorded in the palace's 1903 inventory, and family tradition holds that a member of the Rothschild family, around 1850, sent Count Vitaliano a signed blank cheque in the hope of acquiring them, only to be refused. The present cabinet follows the form and detail of the Borromeo models in its upper section, while a related pair supplied by Ludwig for the Romanian Crown at Peleş Castle was given a different base.
Bernhard Ludwig (1834–1897) was among the leading cabinetmakers of Imperial Vienna. Moving to the city from Saxony in 1851, he opened a drawing school in 1862 and established his own firm, winning a Gold Medal at Graz in 1870 and exhibiting at the Vienna World Fair in 1873. Already a supplier to the Imperial and Royal Austrian Household, he was appointed Royal Romanian Court Cabinetmaker in 1878, and worked on many of the buildings of the Ringstrasse, including the Palace of Justice, the Parliament and the Burgtheater. The firm was continued by his son Bernard Ludwig (1866–1939), who opened branches across Europe and the Middle East and worked for the courts of Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania.
King Carol I of Romania created the summer retreat of Sinaia in the Carpathian Mountains from 1873, and Ludwig supplied furnishings for it. A cabinet of comparable ambition and proportions, the 'Badminton Cabinet', set a world record for a piece of furniture when sold at Christie's in 2005.
$1,125,000