Grande salade décorée à l'eau forte, celata... - Lot 54 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Grande salade décorée à l'eau forte, celata all'italiana, dans le style italien vers 1480-1500, époque XIXe siècle. A large etched tailed sallet, celata all'italiana, in the Italian style circa 1480-1500, 19th century. The skull formed in one piece and drawn-up to a low narrow comb flanked by subsidiary ridges and decorated with an etched scale pattern, fitted with large brow plate embossed with a raised border about the face-opening, the border fluted at the front, embossed with a herringbone pattern over the sides and etched with scrolling foliage throughout, the inner edges of the brow plate cut with a pronounced cusped design and its borders etched with scrolling flowers and foliage matching the outer border, with pointed tail of three articulated lames, the upper lames with etched guilloche borders and the lower lame embossed and etched en suite with the brow plate. H: 28 cm - L: 36 cm - W.: 22 cm - Wt.: 2360 g. This sallet is entirely identical to the example formely in the collection of Graf Wilzcek at Kreuzenstein castle, near Vienna, sold, Sotheby & Co., May 26, 1933, lot 83 (£720), and subsequently entered into the Luigi Marzoli collection, Brescia (Inv. E 32). The Wilzcek sallet, despite its loss of condition and losses to its decoration since the sale in 1933, acquired a prestigious provenance in Bartolomeo Colleoni (circa 1395-1475), the famous condiottere. This belonging seems to be published for the first time in 1963 by James Mann in an article on Luigi Marzoli, included in "Great Private Collections" (p.54), where Mann reports "There is a quite lovely sallet... It is said to have been a gift... from the Emperor Franz Joseph from the Waffensammlung at Vienna... which is, rightly or wrongly, attributed to the condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni..." Later, only Mario Scalini asserted without reservation this information previously given cautiously by Mann. It is noteworthy that Lionello Boccia did not include the Marzoli sallet in his publications on Ital