Style Neo-Renaissance / Ref.3431

Rare walnut carved fireplace attributed to Panciera Besarel, Italy, late 19th century

This rare walnut carved fireplace was made in Italy at the end of the 19th century. Attributed to Valentino Panciera Besarel, this Neo-Renaissance style fireplace is characteristic of the carved wood work of Besarel which was in this field one of the most famous artists in northern Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Monumental - almost four meters high and three meters wide - this fireplace is richly ornated with a carved decoration in a very fine and elaborate way. This fireplace is faithful to Renaissance style fireplace’s structure : it consists of two parts. On the jambs, columns inspired by the doric roman order support a frieze finely decorated with flowers and foliages, typical of the Renaissance style, and which are surrounded by beaded edgings. The colossal hood also consists of two parts. On the lower part, we find again the flowers and the foliages, whose finesse and high relief are typical of the Florentine production, where Besarel had the opportunity to teach himself. On both sides, two phantasmagoric creatures – a mixture of volatiles and dragons – are sitting at the angles. Their wings are raised and their torsos are bent : they seem to be ready to leap. Chimeras which resemble griffins or sphinxes are recurrent and much appreciated in the 19th century especially in the Empire and Neo-Renaissance styles.

The Neo-Renaissance style appeared in the 1830s with the historicism, in which past styles are rediscovered, and persisted until the end of the century. Besarel took thus its patterns from the Renaissance style, but also its technique : carved wood, and others techniques as painted enamel, live model for ceramic or polychome glass, were revisited by the artists of the time who were making a point of continuing traditional and artisanal techniques in the very industrial 19th century.

In the upper part, miniature columns, similar to those adorning the jambs, frame an alcove in which is represented a man face. Wearing two wings, this man, whose features are sculpted with a certain realism, is also inspired by the Renaissance style fantastic repertoire, and reinforces the mystery of this fireplace. His face is richly decorated with foliages, oak leaves and, on both sides, rosettes, encircled with a beaded edging, are carved in the wood.

Valentino Panciera Besarel, born on July 29, 1829 in Astragal, in Belluno province in the Veneto region of northern Italy, and dead in Venice on December 11, 1902, was an Italian sculptor. He came from a family of sculptors : his great-grandfather, Valentino, was a Giovanni Paolo Gamba Zampol student and the Andrea Brustolon disciple, his grandfather, Giovanni, was also a sculptor, as his father, Giovanni Battista, who enjoyed a certain notoriety, responding to orders from churches around Belluno province. His daughter Caterina will be too a sculptor. Besarel, despite everything of modest origins, could not receive a good education, but he trained with his father and met during a church decoration the architect Giuseppe Segusini. Thanks to him, he studied at the Venice Academy from 1853 to 1855. After having worked for a long time in his province of origin, where are located thus a lot of his works in churches and in palaces, he moved to Venice and acquired a great renown in Europe and had very important orders, like Vittorio Emanuele II apotheosis, made in 1880, at Antonio Borgogna’s request. Besarel belongs to a generation of artists who have seen Italian unification and were present at the first Industrial Art Exhibition in 1861, thus becoming representatives of a vast Italian crafts revival. The national exhibitions purpose was to strengthen the national spirit and to present the most innovative productions in the industry and commerce fields.

This fireplace, both sculpture and cabinet-making, is thus representative of the Besarel wood carved production and of the Neo-Renaissance style.

This fireplace is sold without any fireplace insert nor marble floor but could be made to order.