Good morning everyone,
my name's Mercedes Simal.
I work as a researcher in the museum's department of sculpture
and the decorative arts.
I will be talking to you about one of the jewels of the collection.
As you know, this museum
not only has a magnificent collection of paintings
but also truly exceptional examples
of sculpture and the decorative arts.
Each work that we see in the museum has numerous stories associated with it.
Its story prior to entering
the Spanish royal collection
and then what has happened to it over the course of time.
In this case we are looking at one of the world's finest
inlaid hardstone table tops,
due to its size and the materials it is made with.
As is the top of this table: authentic jewels.
This technique of inlay, in other words, assembling different fragments
stones in this case,
to make decorations for covering a piece of furniture
is a technique known since the Egyptians,
which was disseminated by the Roman, particularly for the decoration of floors and walls.
However, it was not until the Renaissance
that it began to be habitual,
even though works of
this type remain exceptional.
Some would be made using marbles.
Marbles were referred to
as "pietre tennere" in Italian.
They are soft stones.
The unique nature of this table top, known as "Philip II's table top"
is due to its size
and the exceptional quality of the materials, which are hardstones and silicate minerals,
lapis lazuli, pieces of fluorite and jasper
around these three large agate panels.
There is also some marble.
These small white stones, which is extremely characteristic of Roman works,
referred to in the documentation as "white statuary marble".
These are extremely delicate objects.
Bear in mind that they were generally constructed
over a slate base
and the different pieces were joined to each other with pitch or resins,
but this table top weighs 800 kilos.
We know that the idea of giving it as a gift to Philip II
came from Cardinal Alessandrino in 1585.
It took two years for the table top to arrive in Spain.
It arrived at the port of Alicante.
There was a lot of expectation in Italy.
The Spanish ambassador in Genoa
thought that it would be for El Escorial,
which was Philip II's great building project.
But the Spanish Viceroy in Naples,
the father of the Count-Duke of Olivares,
was sure that it would go to Aranjuez,
another of Philip's favourite royal residences.
In fact, the table top remained in the Alcázar
where the King already had other hardstone tables,
some made in Spain
and others sent from Italy, also as diplomatic gifts,
given that, as I say, these are exceptional objects.
The table top was initially rather larger than we see today.
It had an African marble frieze that is now lost.
que actualmente ha perdido.
We also know that some of the stones, two of them,
had the heraldic coat-of-arms
of Cardinal Alessandrino
and that of his uncle the Pope carved on them,
so that every time Philip saw it
he would remember who had given it to him.
This was not a free gift, to put it that way.
During this period of history
it was habitual that these sumptuary gifts
were payment for facilitating appointments
or obtaining declarations
about territorial conflicts
between duchies or leaders of Italian territories.
The Museum has numerous examples
of how diplomatic representatives
and sovereigns of these states
constantly gave Philip II,
the most powerful monarch in Spain at that date,
paintings or sumptuous pieces of furniture
to decorate his palaces
and in the hope that he would resolve
these long-standing petitions.
As I said, these workshops started to be established in Rome
in the mid-16th century in Rome
in the area round the Forum
and would come to specialise
in producing hardstone table tops.
Only the tops, not the legs, the legs are a different matter.
In this case
the table has magnificent legs:
no less than the bronze lions
commissioned in Italy by Velázquez to decorate the Alcazár.
The abundant presence of antique materials in Rome
explains why these workshops established themselves there,
and all the principal monarchs of the day sent their artists there.
Working alongside each other
in these workshops were masters of sculpture
and stone-cutting masters,
some closer to jewellery than to other types of inlay.
As I said,
this is one of the first works
to have survived anywhere in the world
from this incipient period
around the mid-16th century.
Rome would become the most advanced city for work
of this type until the late 16th century
when Florence would take over
in a perfectly systematic manner
and with a splendid archive that has provided us
with enormous detail about is productions.
Nonetheless, the Roman pieces
are also excellent and exceptional,
partly because this was the moment when this taste flourished,
which was ultimately a homage to the world of antiquity.
It was also a display of magnificence
given that, as I said, these commissions
were only at the reach of a small minority.
It should be said that in the 16th century
Philip II's collection
was one of the most important of the day
as it brought together all these diplomatic gifts made to secure these positions,
which were sometimes granted and sometimes not,
but which certainly ensured that the Spanish royal collection
of this period and the collections
of the Prado in the present day
possess exceptional examples.
Thank you very much.
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