Despite their small size, the tables are endowed with great presence by their design and masterly carving. In the centre of the surround, adorned with looped sprigs and substantial frames, is a mask with horns and leaves from which festoons run to two garlanded ram’s heads, each supported by a curved leg that arcs back to stand very close at the bottom, where they end in foliate hooves joined by a small wreath. This felicitous combination of 18th century Rococo and Neoclassicism marks a moment of enchanting transition between two worlds. 

The prints in Giovan Battista Piranesi’s Diverse maniere d’adornare i camini (1769),¹ a small codex of the taste for antiquity that emerged in Rome halfway through the century, include a fireplace with garlanded ram’s heads on curved legs or jambs (fig. 1) similar to those of the wall tables examined here, albeit differing in terms of presence and exuberance. 

They appear closer in terms of form and inspiration alike to a drawing by Jean- Charles Delafosse (1734-91) now in the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor (inv. no. 1238), datable to the 1770s (fig. 2).² 

The literature of reference for Neoclassical tables produced in Rome includes the publications of Goffredo Lizzani,³ Alvar González-Palacios⁴ and Enrico Colle.⁵ Comparison is also possible with a pair of twolegged Roman console tables of the Neoclassical period auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York on 24-25 October 2002 (lot 895), and especially the console with four supports auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York, 28 June - 13 September 2019, no. 54 (Inspired by Chatsworth: A Selling Exhibition). These items are more markedly Neoclassical than the Cerruti tables. 

Roberto Antonetto 

¹ Piranesi 1769, numbering in pencil: pl. 29, F. 863. 

² For Delafosse, see Venaria Reale 2018, p. 349, no. 107. 

³ Lizzani 1997. 

⁴ González-Palacios 1984, p. 81 pl. 153 (in the Sotheby’s catalogue), p. 118 fig. 212 (in Colle 2005). 

⁵ Colle 2005, pp. 130-131, no. 24, on the Minneapolis Institute of Arts table with five winged lions designed by Piranesi (see also pp. 132-133, no. 25).