Lot 32. Pair of peacocks, Sicily, Trapani, the second half of the seventeenth century. Estimate 30,000 - 50,000 €. Photo Sotheby's.

Dieting on a basis of a truncated pyramid; coral, golden bronze, gilded copper and enamel; 14,5x8x6 cm.

Provenance: Walter Padovani, Milano.

Note: In the Baroque manufacture of works in coral, both sacred and profane, the peacocks are a great rarity. 
Just consider that the only other pair of peacocks known studies is already Whitaker collection and published by C. Maltese in Art coral in Sicily, the exhibition catalog, Trapani 1986 p. 197, n. 43 and VP Li Vigni, MC Christmas, V. Abbate in the great masterpieces of the coral, the exhibition catalog, Milan, 2013, p. 108, n. 43. 
Our peacocks, heraldic symbol of wealth and luxury, are represented here in the act of making the wheel. If in this case express a purely secular and decorative function, the "Peacock", in pagan symbolism, was associated Arabah phoenix was thought to rise again from its ashes, and, in the Christian era, is converted into a symbol of the Resurrection. 
The processing Trapani coral is characterized by skillful union of gilded copper with the coral. The oldest technique of this method of work, dating from the late sixteenth century, is that of retroincastro, which involves inserting the back of the gilded copper, specially drilled small coral elements. 
The oldest works created by coral Trapani are often decorated with polychrome enamel, expression of another tradition Trapani lost, the goldsmith that refers to the taste of the Arab-Islamic ancestry for the ' horror vacui that remains in Sicily over the Norman period. 
the art of Trapani masters of coral is so open shows the exchange with different active workers throughout the island, gold, silver, bronze workers, demonstrating an impressive taste and polychromatic polimaterico. 
at the end of the seventeenth century to the retroincastro technique takes over that of the seam through wires of coral items on gilded copper, up to the appearance of mother of pearl and ivory that will eventually replace the coral..

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 
A. Daneu, Trapani The art of coral, Banco di Sicilia 1964, p. 150, Nos. 212-213; 
C. Maltese, The Art of coral in Sicily , the exhibition catalog, Trapani 1986, p. 197, n. 43; 
MC Christmas, Splendors in Sicily. Decorative arts from the Renaissance to the Baroque , Milano 2001, p. 56, Fig. 60; 
MC Christmas, The coral of Trapani in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries , The Brixiantiquaria notebooks, n. I, Brescia 2002, pp. 8 et seq. ; 
C. Arnaldi Balme, S. Castronovo (eds), Precious arts of the Baroque Sicily , the exhibition catalog, Milano 2008, p. 27, Fig. 16.

Sotheby's. A Milanese Cabinet Collection, Milan, 13 Jun 2016