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 skillful artisans into plaques of mosaic patterns or pictorial reliefs. The enduring popularity and durability of the stones meant such plaques could be transferred to new settings of the latest fashion. For example, these mid-seventeenth-to-late-eighteenth-century plaques were fitted into a newly-made cabinet around 1808. The English ambassador to Saint-Petersburg, Russia, purchased this cabinet and its older pair in that year.