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By Benedetto Boschetti (1820 - 1879) Rome, circa 1840 - 1860 Notice damage to the top right-hand rim of one. They do not appear to have ever sat on a stand. Provenance: Presumably Charles Richard Banastre Legh, Adlington Hall, Macclesfield. Acquired from the family prior to the sale of the house and estate in 2024.
Benedetto Boschetti is first recorded in the 1840s as a mosaicist and then at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, winning a medal for two mosaic tables ‘remarkable for their taste and execution’. A ‘View of the Roman Court’ at the 1862 International Exhibition in London shows giallo antico marble models of ruins, an oil lamp and part of a large rosso antico marble tizzy – all models known by Boschetti.
His premises at 74 Via Condotti, Rome, are commended: 'the establishment is particularly conspicuous for its great variety of marble works, bronzes, candelabra, table-tops, etc. besides a rich collection of the best Mosaics’ (F. S. Bonfigli, Guide to the Studios of Rome, 1860, p. 101). Boschetti was also awarded at the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia, and at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, showing Corinthian bronze statuettes of Julius Cesar, Mercury and Apollo Belvedere, as well as vases, candelabra, etc.
For objets d'art Boschetti preferred to carve relatively soft marble, his favourite being Numidian giallo antico from Tunisia, from which the present scalloped bowl is so masterfully worked. The British Museum holds an ancient Phoenician or Etruscan cosmetic vessel carved from a clam shell in its collection from which these dishes may well derive.
(https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1852-0112-3)
