Pair of marble specimen centre tables

These centre tables are part of a richly layered family tradition of stocking Burton Constable with luxurious continental furniture. They illustrate the final phase of Grand Tour collecting. The Roman version of the Empire fashion has never appealed widely to British connoisseurs and is therefore only scantily represented in this country. There are few more expressive examples of this style than these tables. Monumentally scaled and polychromatic (thanks to the marbles), they could be represented as the last gasp of the Roman baroque tradition, bold, sculptural and palatial. These works were acquired with assistance from the Wolfson Foundation.