Enfilade

From the PMC:

Wolf Burchard, Italian Royal Furniture at Attingham Park
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 2 October 2018

Attingham Park, Shropshire was home to eight generations of the Berwick family, before it was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1947. Its collection comprises a remarkable assemblage of early 19th-century Italian gilt-wood furniture, acquired by William Noel Hill, 3rd Lord Berwick during his diplomatic missions in Sardinia, Turin, and Naples between 1808 and 1833. The pièce de résistance of his furniture is a neo-classical daybed, which—for generations— was thought to have belonged to Caroline Murat, sister of Napoleon. New research, however, reveals that it actually belonged to Maria Theresa, Queen of Sardinia and niece of Marie Antoinette of France. Wolf Burchard’s lecture disentangles the fascinating history of Maria Theresa’s furniture—which is associated with two palazzi in Milan and Genoa as well as the leading architects of the day, Giocondo Albertolli and Carlo Randoni—and how it came to Attingham.

The Fellows Lunches are a series of free lunchtime research talks given by recipients of Paul Mellon Centre Fellowships and Grants. All are welcome, but please book a ticket in advance. 1:00–2:00pm, Seminar Room, Paul Mellon Centre.

Wolf Burchard is Furniture Research Curator at the National Trust. In 2015, the Trust’s Furniture Research and Cataloguing Project received generous funding from the Paul Mellon Centre and the Royal Oak Foundation. Burchard was previously Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Collection Trust from 2009 to 2014. He studied history of art and architecture at the universities of Tübingen, Vienna and the Courtauld Institute of Art, from which he holds an MA and PhD. He is the author of The Sovereign Artist: Charles Le Brun and the Image of Louis XIV (Paul Holberton Publishing 2016), publishes and regularly lectures on the art and architectural patronage at the British, French and German courts; he is on the board of trustees of the Georgian Group and the Furniture History Society as well as on the vetting panels of TEFAF Maastricht and New York, and Masterpiece Art Fair.