Cabinet (one of a pair) (Left side)

From the Renaissance, art connoisseurs valued naturally colorful and rare hardstones, known as pietre dure, especially when they were arranged by artisans into plaques of mosaic patterns or pictorial reliefs. Often, the more splendid plaques were mounted into custom made and suitably grand cabinets.

The pietre dure plaques on this cabinet date from the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s; they were probably made by Italian craftsmen working in Rome, Florence, or Paris at the Gobelins manufactory. This particular cabinet passed through the Revolutionary-era Parisian art market in 1790 and 1793 before being acquired by the English ambassador to Saint-Petersburg, Russia, in 1808.