Mirror

Mirrors, together with console tables, chairs and sofas, were
part of those new types of furnishings for the buildings of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries that, to meet the new requirements of entertaining, were
mostly placed along the walls. Mirrors
were used to give an impression of the subliminal and of light, created by the
illusory multiplication of space. This example has decorations in carved,
gilded, silvered and partly painted wood and was made in a Lombard workshop
active at the end of the eighteenth century. The shape, compared with the previous
period, becomes less linear and the decoration is richer. The decorative technique used is that of gilding, very
popular at the time. It was mainly done with leaf
gilding where, on a chalky preparation covered by bolus - a pigmented adhesive
substance - thin gold leaf was laid and united to the backing.