Luigi e Antonio Manfredini – Tripod Basin Holder

Tripod Basin Holder • 1811-14

Gilded bronze and lapis lazuli, 80 x 39 cm

Basin in gilded bronze, modern

The tripod, designed as a support for a bowl, is part of a group of pieces of furniture of the same shape and size produced, from 1811, by the then flourishing manufacture of gilded bronzes founded in 1806 in Milan by the brothers Francesco (d. 1810), Luigi (1771 – 1840) and Antonio (d. 1838) Manfredini. Originally from Bologna, the Manfredini brothers were summoned to the capital of Lombardy by the Viceroy, Eugène de Beauharnais, after having worked in Paris from 1803, where Luigi had opened a workshop of “Jewellery, gilding of metals and watch making.”

From 1786, when Pietro Paolo De Giusti drew up his plan for general reform at the Accademia di Brera, there was the intention for Milan to have a school of bronze casting or “Gitto in bronzo,” entrusted to the Mantuan Giuseppe Bellavite. However, the proposal, which was to resuscitate an art for which Milan became famous during the Renaissance, was not taken up, and only twenty years later, thanks to the good offices of the French government, did De Giusti’s project come into being with the opening of the Manfredini’s workshop. In Milan, bronzists conceived their industry as a modern school in which to train new generations of artisans according to the wishes of the Viceroy, Eugène de Beauharnais, from whom the new establishment took its name of ‘Stabilimento dell’Eugenia’ or ‘della Fontana’. Indeed, the sovereign not only appointed them “King’s Watch Maker”, but also decreed the foundry premises as the “Regio locale della Fontana in Milano”. From here issued – as stated by an anonymous reviewer in Milan’s gazzette ‘Appendice Critico – Letteraria’ of the ‘Gazzetta di Milano’ on 9 November 1819 (n. 313)  – “pieces of work such that we no longer envy foreign countries for their exquisite metal carvings, the shine and finish of enamel, the splendour of gilding, and at the same time the purity of design in every particular, united to an elegance we only knew of in productions of the inventive industry from abroad” since besides “every article of goldsmithery we have seen produced by the Manfredini factory, furniture of every type, made of rare woods, is constructed with such skill as to bear comparison with the most precious production of England and France.”

The products from the foundry, as far as can be seen from exhibition catalogues and the reviews of the period, were for the most part watches, candelabras, table centrepieces, candlesticks, paraphernalia for altars, spade handles, statues, vases and, not least, the popular series of tripods launched with the model made in 1811 and conserved at the Schatzkammer in Vienna (Fig. 1). It is basin holder model whose bronze supports were shaped like the tripod found at Pompeii (fig. 2), then displayed at the Museo di Portici, and whose image – which enjoyed huge popularity from the late eighteenth century into the early decades of the nineteenth – was spread by means of an engraving by Piranesi published in 1778 in his repertoire Vases, candelabra, grave stones, sarcophagi, tripods, lamps, and ornaments (fig. 3) to then be copied by the Roman bronzist Luigi Righetti (fig. 4) no later than 1816 for a similar decoration provided for the court of Naples (made known by A. Gonzàlez – Palacios, Il tempio del gusto. Le arti decorative in Italia fra classicismo e barocco. Roma e il Regno delle Due Sicilie, Milan 1984, p. 141, figs. 276 – 277).

Unfortunately the Vienna tripod, signed inside “INVENTATO ED ESEGUITO DAI FRLI MANFREDINI NELLA RA MANIFRA DELLA FONTANA NELL ANNO 1811” (designed and made by Bros Manfredini in the Royal Factory  della Fontana, in the year 1811) has unknown provenance, just as the destiny is not known of the one made in silver and cited by Achille Viscardi in his Discourse given at the celebration of the Manfredini Mutual Labourer Society on the occasion of the inauguration of the copper bust of Luigi Manfredini, head of the company, 8 February 1880. The author, drafting the first complete history of the factory, alleges that at the turn of the century the foreign press expressed approval of a “grandiose gilded silver Tripod, from Stabilimento MANFREDINI, sent in September 1813 to decorate the most conspicuous apartment of the French Court.” On the date of the publication of Viscardi’s text, this tripod, “presented to Marie Louise by ANTONIO MANFREDINI commissioned by Prince Eugène” was located in Parma, most likely taken there by Marie Louise herself.

It was Viscardi again who informs us that towards the close of the nineteenth century he knew of “four gilded bronze tripods decorated in lapis lazuli and two in verd antique” then “found at the Royal Court of Bavaria” where Eugène de Beauharnais and his consort Augusta of Bavaria, daughter of Maximilian I, found refuge after the abdication in 26 April 1814. In Munich the ex sovereigns had a palace built to house their collections of art and it cannot be ruled out that some of the tripods cited by Viscardi were kept in the rooms of the new residence, subsequently displaced by the children. These last married into the major ruling houses of Europe, among which the house of Romanoff, given that Maximilian Beauharnais (1817 – 1852), the youngest of the couple’s seven children, married one of the daughters of Tsar Nicholas I. And it is precisely in the palace of Pavlosvsk that one of the basin holder tripod with lapis lazuli inserts is found (fig. 5), while another identical (dated 1813) was conserved in England and for a while displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, to then be sold at auction at Christie’s on 7 July 2011 (fig. 6). Of the two described “in bronze and verd antique” we know of only one (fig. 7) conserved in the Musée Massena in Nice (published by A. Ponte, 1780 – 1820, in C. Paolini, A. Ponte, O. Selvafolfta, Il bello ritrovato. Gusto, ambienti, mobili dell’Ottocento, Novara 1990, p. 29) but which, although having the same shape as those cited in gilded bronze, does not have lapis lazuli inserts or lavish bowl (designed as an incense burner) so described, again cited in the 1819 article:

“Another of the recent works by the Brothers Manfredini is a tripod and bowl in gilded bronze and gold leaf, a triangle covered in lapis lazuli serving as its base. The tripod’s much-lauded shape is precisely copied from the famous one at the Museo di Portici, excavated at Herculaneum. I believe it unnecessary to describe because it is already too well known, and is one of the finest and most elegant remains of antiquity. The basin holder is lined with a base of lapis lazuli. In the concave centre of the bowl is a medallion of Neptune and Venus on a chariot pulled by seahorses, on the inner sides are another six ovals showing the main rivers of Italy – the Po, Arno, Tiber, Mincio, Ticino and Reno – linked together with a continuous festoon of mermaids, naiads, dolphins etc in bas-relief. On the edge or rim of the bowl are other medallions, also round and in bas-relief, displaying the images of the main mythological deities, and these are also strung together with a decoration of various zephyrs. I wouldn’t know whether to praise more the masterpiece’s excellence of design or the fineness of workmanship, it is certain that neither could be more perfect, and that this piece of furniture would be unique among modern works, if it had not been preceded by a similar work the Brothers Manfredini made some years ago as an ornament for the toilette of an august princess.”

The images described coincide with those on the basins of the tripods in Vienna and the Victoria and Albert (fig. 8). Hans Ottomeyer, analysing the Vienna tripod, includes the information that a basin similar to that present in the Schatzkammer tripod was listed in the estate of the King of Bavaria, Maximilian I, and that it came from Milan as a gift from his son-in-law Eugène de Beauharnais. In the light of Ottomeyer’s research, we might suppose that the lost bowl were an integral part of our tripod, in effect today missing this accessory. It would lead us to think that the present article is part of the four pieces cited by Viscardi in the court of Munich of which one could be identified as the the tripod now at Pavlovsk, today transformed into a small table with the addition of a marble top, and the other as the tripod previously at the Victoria and Albert.

The Manfredini brothers’ firm, which Giovan Battista Viscardi joined in 1823, was active for a lot of the nineteenth century producing gilded bronzes not only for the leading Milanese families but also for the Piedmontese court, becoming a well-known establishment throughout Europe above all for the production of elaborate clock cases and for the popular model of tripod basin holder, still being praised in 1832 by Defendente and Giuseppe Sacchi in their authoritative almanac dedicated to fine arts and industry, Le Belle Arti e L’industria. Indeed, the brothers had the chance to see two of the mentioned “tripods for handwash” claiming that their piece, imitating “the shape of antique altars,” were of such “exquisite design and precise execution” that those could have been made in the “time of Pericles”.

Annotated Bibliography:

During the first half of the nineteenth century there is information about the Fonderia Manfredini in the catalogues of the Industry Exhibition held in Milan from 1805 and in reviews that appeared in city magazines.

The first to draft a genuine history of the factory and its founders was Achille Viscardi in his Discorso pronunciato nella festa della Mutua Società Operaja Manfredini in occasione dell’inaugurazione del busto in rame battuto a Luigi Manfredini titolare della Società, l’8 Febbraio 1880, published that same year.

But it is only in the latter part of the twentieth century that studies on the Manfredini have been carried out with any frequency. Starting with F. Mazzocca, Le esposizioni d’Arte e Industria a Milano e a Venezia (1805 – 1848), in “Quaderni del seminario di storia della critica d’arte”, 1, Pisa 1981, p. 87 and A. Gonzàlez – Palacios, Il tempio del gusto. Le arti decorative in Italia fra classicismo e barocco. Il Granducato di Toscana e gli Stati settentrionali, Milan 1986, p. 257, followed by H. Ottomeyer P. Proschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Die Bronzenarbeitendes spatbarok und Klassizismus, Munchen 1986 p. 402, n. 5.19.1.

More recently, E. Colle has several times written research on products from the Manifattura Manfredini in the following publications: Pelagio Palagi e gli artigiani al servizio della corte sabauda, in ‘Arte a Bologna bollettino dei musei civici d’arte antica’, 1999, 5, pp. 58 -109; in the lists of works published in E. Colle, A. Griseri, R. Valeriani, Bronzi decorativi in Italia. Bronzisti e fonditori italiani dal Seicento all’Ottocento, Milan 2001, pp. 286 – 291; 350 e ss.; in the essay Le arti decorative, in F. Mazzocca, A. Morandotti, E. Colle, Milano Neoclassica, Milan 2001, pp. 559 – 563 and in the catalogue Bronzi dorati, in Musei e Gallerie d’Italia. Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan 2009, Tome V, pp. 398 – 404.

Further in depth archival analysis has been made known by B. Gallizia di Vergano, La manifattura dell’Eugenia dei fratelli Manfredini, In Gli splendori del Bronzo. Mobili e oggetti d’arredo tra Francia e Italia 1750 – 1850, exhibition catalogue, Turin 2002, pp. 27 – 43; Nuovi documenti per i Manfredini, in ‘Rassegna di Studi e Notizie del Castello Sforzesco’, 2002, pp. 239 -245; Le pendole di Palazzo Reale: un’ipotesi per i Manfredini, in ‘Rassegna di Studi e Notizie del Castello Sforzesco’, 2004, pp. 67 – 77; Candelabri per l’uso della Corte. Da Parigi a Milano, i primi anni di attività dello stabilimento dell’Eugenia, in ‘Rassegna di Studi e Notizie del Castello Sforzesco’, 2010,  pp. 219 – 233.