Important set of four Italian decorative panels in grisaille on a blue background
Tuscany, Italy - Late 18th-early 19th century
Decorated with arabesques, foliage and garlands of flowers
Oil on canvas
H 283 cm
This very fine ensemble should be compared with the painted panels adorning the music room of the Villa Royale de Marlia in Lucca, which were made for Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, sister of Napoleon I. In fact, these decorative panels have the same characteristics and details, and are undoubtedly by the same hand. They must therefore have formed part of a very similar decoration in an aristocratic villa in Tuscany. Although the author of the Marlia panels is not formally known, we do know that the painters Stefano Tofanelli (1752-1810) and Luigi Catani (1762-1840) worked on them under the direction of the architect Théodore Bienaimé (1762-1726), as they did in Florence at Palazzo Pitti.
