Angel Musicians

This ivory plaque, showing angels musicians, is probably made in Venice, Italy, in the middle of the nineteenth century. The plaque duplicates part of the top half of the right side of a marble altar frontal of about 1480 in the church of San Trovaso in Venice. The sides of this frontal were much copied, and a number of examples in terracotta survive. The plaque and frame, with the Gritti arms, would have greatly appealed to the Grand Tourists of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and they were probably made only shortly before their appearance for sale in Paris in 1857.