Coin cabinet with drop-front desk and internal drawers, entirely inlaid in polychrome woods on all its surfaces, with traces of gold highlighting.
City of Venice.
Period: 2nd half of the 16th century.
Venetian Renaissance.
Dimensions: width 48 x depth 35 x height 47 cm.
Excellent condition.
The coin cabinet is intact, original in all its external and internal parts, without any minimal modification or replacement.
This extraordinary masterpiece of Venetian cabinet-making art, as magnificent as it is rare, is one of the most important artifacts of the Renaissance in Venice. It is precisely at the beginning of the 16th century, during the maximum expansion of the Serenissima Republic and at the height of its economic power, that the workshops of goldsmiths, glassmakers, and cabinetmakers began to create the most precious objects for an increasingly wealthy clientele.
Chests, cabinets, and coin cabinets become of unparalleled beauty and, in addition to an inlay of unequaled level, in the most important creations they highlight the influence of Oriental Art in a continuous economic and cultural exchange that united the Serenissima with the lands of the East. In fact, among the countless floral, vegetal, and animal depictions, at the center of the open drop-front stands an Ottoman warrior on horseback, surmounted by a crown. But it is the entire structure of the refined Certosina inlay, typically Venetian, that gives the coin cabinet a charming oriental image that was so fashionable and that in the following centuries would fill furniture, glass, and porcelain with decorations.
Considering its excellent condition and absolute integrity, the coin cabinet assumes a historical and artistic value of enormous interest and evident museum, as well as collector's and decorative, value.
