Further Media
The delicate table, made in Italy, is adorned with elegantly curved fittings in antique decorative forms on the legs. The table top, a coloured, very fine mosaic picture, shows four doves on the rim of a golden bowl in a naturalistic style. This motif goes back to the famous dove mosaic discovered in 1737 during excavations in the Villa Hadriana. After that discovery the dove motif in mosaic became extremely popular, both in the sense of a revival of the ancient mosaic technique and also as a decorative motif for furniture and other objects. Ancient mosaic fragments became sought-after souvenirs that travellers took home with them after their “grand tour”. Responding to this trend, mosaicists trained in the Vatican workshops in Rome increasingly developed such micro-mosaics.