Francesco Depoletti Sold at Auction Prices

AN ITALIAN MICROMOSAIC PLAQUE DEPICTING THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

AN ITALIAN MICROMOSAIC PLAQUE DEPICTING THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES SECOND QUARTER 19TH CENTURY BY FRANCESCO DE POLETTI (1779-1854) signed F. DEPOLETTI, set within a gilt-metal border. height 10 1/4 in. by width 8 in. (26 cm. by 20.3 cm.) This plaque is almost identical in composition to a table top made by a team from the Vatican Studio over the period 1814 - 1818 to a design by the Studio's director, Michele Koeck. The table was given by Leo XII to Charles X in 1825 and is now at Versailles. For an illustration of this table top, see Carlo Bertelli's, Mosaics, p. 283. The inspiration for this piece is Homer's description of Achille's shield in Book 18 of the Illiad: First he [Vulcan] shaped the shield so great and strong, adorning it all over and binding it round with a gleaming circuit in three layers... and with many a wonder did his [Vulcan] cunning hand enrich it. He wrought the earth, the heavens, and the sea; the moon also and the untiring sun, with all the signs that glorify the face of Heaven - the Plieads, the Hyads, huge Orion, and the bear...(Illiad, translated by Samuel Butler, 1898) Homer's description, continues to detail the scenes of celebration, war, field and pasture, each with complex stories, that appear as the third concentric band of decoration. This excursus is considered by many scholars to be the finest in the Illiad, not only for the beauty of the verses but for the insight it gives into the 8th century B.C. world of Homer. Though considered one of the finest craftsmen in the field of micromosaics, very few works by Francesco de Poletti (1779-1854) are known today. Working out of a small shop near the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, he was listed by Moroni as one of the nine most distinguished mosaic craftsman of the early 19th century. A plaque signed F. DEPOLETTI depicting Father Time with the three Fates is illustrated by Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel in The Gilbert Collection: Micromosaics, catalogue number 14, p. 66. Ms. Gabriel notes that a large oval plaque depicting the Shield of Achilles by de Poletti was sold at Christie's London, December 8, 1994. LITERATURE: Bertelli, Carlo, ed., Mosaics, 1988, p. 238. Gabriel, Jeanette Hanisee, The Gilbert Collection: Micromosaics, 2000, pp. 66-67, 284-285.