BRUSTOLON, Andrea

Two impressive ebony statues of Ethiopian Warriors were carved by Andrea Brustolon for the Venier family in the first years of the eighteenth century. Nude, very tall and virile, they are armed with clubs, have very white eyes in glass paste and each has a horse’s head at his feet. The arrangement of these is possibly based on the basalt and porphyry Egyptian statues that Brustolon had had the chance to see during his stay in Rome.

The companion-piece, representing Abraham’s Sacrifice, is also in the same collection.

The most impressive of Brustolon’s works was a set of forty pieces executed around 1700 for the palace of a Venetian nobleman, Pietro Venier. The chairs were made of boxwood, carved so that the supports resembled gnarled branches of trees, laces with vines and tendrils. The front supports included moors carrying the armrests on their shoulders and moorish putti sporting on armrests themselves. The flesh of the moors was carved from ebony to convey a lustrous dark hue, and the backrests displayed embroidered allegories of vanity, fire and music, amongst others.

There were also small stands (gu�ridons) carved to look like moors supporting trays for candelabra, but the most extravagant piece was a large vase-stand of box and ebony. On this occasion, the ancient hero Hercules was called upon to perform another labour, for he appears between the multi-headed monster Hydra and the three-headed Cerberus, supporting a large platform with his club; two river-gods recline on either side of the platform between two Japanese vases while the centre is given to an ebony group of three moors supporting a further vase. Such creations were prized for their novelty and craftsmanship.