Side chair (part of a set)

1790-01-01T00:00:00Z

This chair, together with the settee in the Florence Gould Galleries, originally belonged to a large set of seat furniture that included at least four settees and twenty side chairs. It was formerly thought to have been commissioned for the Villa Palagonia at Bagheria near Palermo, but the provenance remains undocumented, and the initials in the cipher at the center of the back, PPL, are as yet unidentified. The reverse-painted glass panels imitate agate, lapis, and marble. They are a distinctive feature often used on late-eighteenth-century Sicilian Neoclassical furniture.