Exceptional headboard

The plaque, of splendid workmanship, is inserted in a precious frame enriched by important and rare plating with sumptuous corner applications and centering, with decorations cast in bronze and gilded and chiseled copper, with cherub heads and flowers in silver. The profile of the frame hosts a series of large and medium precious and semi-precious stones, including amethysts and carnelians set in great relief, while a row of stones and turquoises run to define the internal light. The frame is surmounted by apex with glory of putti, silver curtain holder on a sunburst and volutes in cast and embossed copper and gilded bronze, in the display of the holy face in Sicilian coral kept in a small relic under a silver crown. The composition is presented in a second arched and moulded box frame with a double order of carvings and friezes, in mixed gilded wood.

The sumptuous baroque machine represents an example as extraordinary as it is rare of the applied and composite arts of goldsmithing, silversmithing and sculpture that were decidedly alive in the enlightened Neapolitan commissions destined for private religiosity in the period between the second half of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, in which Spanish, Flemish and Sicilian experiences and influences found a rich and peculiar reworking according to baroque styles codified in papal Rome.

Louis XIV, manufacture between Rome and Naples between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century