Italian pietra dura tabletop with harbour landscape

The central rectangular panel of this tabletop depicts a coastal landscape executed in beautifully inlaid pietra dura. The inset marble of a variety of types and colours is composed to produce a detailed panorama of an Italianate seascape. In the distance, below a lone cloud and a pair of wandering seabirds, the towers and steeples of a small town rise into the sky. The green-tinged sea occupies the left middle ground, three sailing ships idly floating in its waters, while the right middle ground includes a complex of fragments of buildings. Classical columns support a broken entablature immediately adjacent to a Norman era tower, all of which serves to demonstrate the layered antiquity of the location. The foreground is populated with four figures in historicising dress, each of whom looks out across the seascape.

This pictorial panel is framed by inlaid purple-red veined marble that is bounded with an orange-gold marble border. The table is edged with a scrolled profile, pietra dura scallop shells inlaid at each of the four corners. The dark marble that forms the outer surfaces of the tabletop is inlaid with scrolling arabesques formed of orange-gold marble. A pietra dura medallion is inset at the centrepoint of each of the four sides.