LARGE TWENTY-FOUR-LIGHT CHANDELIER

This extraordinary neoclassical chandelier, very richly sculpted in gilded wood and metal and highlighted by rock crystal and cut crystal garlands, was executed circa 1780, very certainly in Milan, after drawings by the reknowned architect of Swiss origin Giocondo Albertolli (1742-1839), who published in Milan, betweeen 1778 and 1782 a book entitled Ornamenti Diversi. Inventati, disegnati ed eseguiti da … Albertolli [ — Alcune decorazioni di nobili sale ed altri ornamenti — Miscellanea per i giovani studiosi del disegno ] who influenced many of his contemporaries.

This chandelier stands out due to its central shaft adorned with the figure of a vestal virgin, richly wraped into an Antique-like drapery and holding onto her head, with her arms up, a foliated cap supporting a succession of flared corolla forming the upper part of the chandelier. This last part is formed by a bell beaker dome composed of giltwood palmettes and crystal garlands joining a large wood and gilded metal disk with half knotwork.

Giocondo Albertolli

The son of Francesco Saverio, architect in Aosta, and of Margherita De Giorgi, Giocondo Albertolli was born in Switzerland, in Bedano, not far from Lugano in the Canton of Tessin, on July 24^th, 1742. He became a famous architect, sculptor, decorator and painter, renowned in Italy, and more particularly in Milan, between the end of the 18^th century and the beginning of the 19^th century.

Albertolli trained at the Academy of Parma where he won prizes in 1766 and 1768. Throughout these years, he worked on the decoration of various churches in Parma and of the Triumphal Arch of the wedding of Duke Ferdinand (1769). Between 1770 and 1772, he worked in Florence where Pietro Leopoldo commissioned him the stuccos of the grand-ducal apartments of Poggio Imperiale, while in Parma, he decorated the Palazzo Grillo and executed the stucco of the saints Peter and Paul for the cathedral of Casalmaggiore. In 1772-1774, he went to Rome, then to Naples, where Carlo Vanvitelli commissioned him to create some of the capitals for SS. Annunziata (maybe under the direction of Giuseppe Piermarini).

In 1774, Piermarini called him to Milan to decorate the interiors of the Royal Palace. The fruitful Piermarini-Albertolli collaboration continued with the Villa Reale of Monza, the Teatro della Scala and numerous patrician palaces of Milan: Belgiojoso, Greppi or Casnedi. In the meantime, Albertolli’s commitments in Florence regarded the renovation of the rooms of the Pitti palace, of the room of the Poggio Imperiale and of the Sala della Niobe at the Uffizi. In 1779, he executed the adornments of the gallery of the ducal palace (now ‘Reale’) of Mantua. In Milan, where he decorated the Palazzo Busca-Arconati in 1789, he became a professor of ornamentation at the Academy of Brera from 1776 to 1812: the precious printed albums document his teaching activities; in 1807, he entered the Commission of Public Ornamentation.

The influence of his training (the restrained classicism of Petitot) can still be seen with the stuccos of the Palazzo Grillo in Parma and those of the Poggio Imperiale in Florence. Albertolli was, with Piermarini, the inventor of a very Italian taste for neoclassicism, made of sobriety, formal rectitude and didactic intention. This orientation matched the attitude of the Habsburg-Lorraine towards the Enlightenment and could easily be developed in the Milan of the Theresian period at the end of the 18^th century. Even the late florentine works, such as the decorations of Palazzo Pitti, draw their inspiration from the Palazzo Reale of Milan. Through his cycles of decorative stuccos, his academic teachings and the clear plates of his albums, Albertolli became the instigator of a full maturation of Italian adorning, where architecture, decoration and furnishings interlocked. Albertolli responded with brio to the French archeological and eclectic taste, with a restrospective take on the tradition of the 16^th century, seen as an alternative to the classical world.