556 - Gilt leather wall hanging, painted panel in four parts, rocailles, flowers, birds, probably 18th c.

Gilt leather wall hanging, painted panel in four parts, rocailles, flowers, birds, probably 18th c. Leather and plywood, painted panel of four parts of a gilt leather wall hanging, probably 18th century, gold-coloured ground textured with a fine small pattern, painted on it a rocaille ornament of C-scrolls, shell-like ribbed rocailles and acanthus leaves in blue-grey, white and red, with flowering branches with blue, white and pink flowers and green leaves, lower left a blue bird sitting on a rocaille, upper right a bird on a branch, the parts mounted on a plywood board with visible joins, hanging loop on the back, condition commensurate with age, losses, rubbed, craquelure, 120x33 cm (HxW). Gilt leather wall hangings were among the precious wall decorations of the European Baroque residences: vegetable-tanned leather was covered with silver leaf, coated with a yellow-brown gold varnish, embossed or punched and then painted in colours. The technique goes back to Moorish Córdoba and spread from Spain via the Netherlands, where a manufactory in Mechelen is documented, and via Venice throughout Europe; such leather hangings were regarded as more resistant to damp than woven tapestries. At Moritzburg Castle near Dresden sixty rooms were lined with gilt leather under Augustus the Strong between 1723 and 1733, flowers and birds being among the most popular patterns. The rocaille, the shell-like asymmetrical ornament of C-scrolls, arose in France around 1730 and, as the leading ornament of the Rococo, determined interior decoration until about 1775.