Lacquered frame, Veneto, last quarter of the 18th century

Analyzing the compositional and carving modalities of the frame, it can be seen how it is influenced by the late Baroque taste of the upper Veneto area, where the Baroque was expressed with frames with leafy volutes with minute flowers and where these were often used to concentrate in bunches in the center of the sides ; it is a very different taste from the Roman Baroque which offered large scrolls or monumental flowers. In this regard, take a look at the Venetian frame passed to Finarte in 2009; the frame, lacquered with a fake tortoiseshell and set with mother-of-pearl tesserae, is decorated with gilded carvings which in the coping are very close to the carvings described here.

A further useful comparison is with the mirror published by Clelia Alberici, this too develops in an intertwining of leaves and flowers that are grouped in the center of the sides where in this case carved cherubs rest.
In our frame the decoration is particularly neat and arranged around a central stop, a frame of intertwined oak leaves lacquered in yellow, while the rest is lacquered in white with strokes of color, a lacquer that seems to want to be a tribute to the productions in porcelain, which became all the rage in the last decades of the 18th century. It is now known that, in the Veneto area, the influence of Baroque taste persisted for a long time even into the late eighteenth century; in this regard, think of the frame for the portrait that Bernardo Castelli made of Doge Pietro Barbarigo, now kept in Ca ‘Rezzonico. It is for these reasons that it seems correct to us to date the frame described here in the last decades of the 18th century.