# The Farnese Table > Designed by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola; piers carved under Guglielmo della Porta; pietre dure top attributed to Jean Menard, called Giovanni Mynardo - ca. 1565-73 per the Museum's own date line; the curatorial entry argues a floor of 1566 from the arms and a ceiling of 1573 from Vignola's death. The machine record carries a bracket beginning 1560. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/jacopo-barozzi-da-vignola/farnese-table/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-11 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Designed by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola; piers carved under Guglielmo della Porta; pietre dure top attributed to Jean Menard, called Giovanni Mynardo - **Date:** ca. 1565-73 per the Museum's own date line; the curatorial entry argues a floor of 1566 from the arms and a ceiling of 1573 from Vignola's death. The machine record carries a bracket beginning 1560. - **Medium:** Marble of different colours, semiprecious stones, Egyptian alabaster, with residue of paint of different colours on the piers - **Dimensions:** Overall 95.3 x 379.1 x 168.3 cm (37 1/2 in. x 12 ft 5 1/4 in. x 66 1/4 in.). The Museum also publishes confirmed weights for the three supports: south 1,306 lb (592.4 kg), centre 1,266 lb (574.3 kg), north 1,321 lb (599.2 kg) - 3,893 lb for the piers by simple addition of the Museum's own figures. No weight is published for the top. - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** Italian, Rome, sixteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 503 - **Attribution:** attributed ## Summary A marble table made in Rome in the later 1560s for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, designed by Vignola, its piers carved in the palace workshop of Guglielmo della Porta and its pietre dure top believed to be the work of the French inlayer Jean Menard. Every coloured stone in it is ancient. Many came out of the Baths of Caracalla, which the cardinal was excavating; the two Egyptian alabaster panels at the centre were probably stripped from Egyptian monuments in antiquity, which makes them spoil taken twice.It is dated by heraldry: Alessandro adopted the arms carved on the piers only in 1566, and Vignola died in 1573. A palace inventory of 1653 records that in the cardinal's absence a table whose three marble supports alone weigh nearly four thousand pounds was kept in a padlocked wooden box on a wool mattress under a quilted cloth, with a cover of gilded leather.It is in the Palazzo Farnese inventory of 1796 and not in the one of 1834; the next record of it is a fire-insurance paper for Hamilton Palace in Scotland drawn up shortly after 1844. The Museum offers two incompatible accounts of that gap on the same page, one a tradition about a convent in Verona and one a supposition about a grand tourist. It was sold at Christie's in 1919 to Lord Leverhulme, returned to a Roman dealer at an unrecorded date, and reached New York in 1958. A recent examination found paint residues on the piers, which the Museum says may change how the object is understood. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1566-73-1653** Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589), Palazzo Farnese, Rome `[documented]` (commission) Designed by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, the cardinal's chief architect from about 1550; piers carved in the palace workshop under Guglielmo della Porta; the pietre dure top believed to be by the French master Jean Menard, called in Italy Giovanni Mynardo. Dated by the arms, which Alessandro adopted only in 1566, and by Vignola's death in 1573. Made for the main hall of the palace and later moved to the Philosophers' Hall beside the Carracci Gallery. - **1653-1796** The Farnese collection, Palazzo Farnese, Rome `[documented]` (family possession) Listed in palace inventories from 1653 to 1796 and described in the Philosophers' Hall by every seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Roman guidebook that mentions the palace treasures. Goethe probably saw it there in the spring of 1787, after Charles III of Spain had removed most of the palace's paintings and sculpture to Naples. It is NOT in the palace inventory of 1834. - **1796-1844** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) Roughly half a century is undocumented. The Museum offers two accounts on the same page and labels both as unproven: its provenance field says 'by tradition, Convent, Verona, Italy', from which the 10th Duke of Hamilton is said to have acquired it; its curatorial essay says instead that 'we may suppose' the table was acquired by some English or Scottish grandee on a tour of Italy, and does not mention Verona. Neither is supported by a document in the record consulted. - **by 1844-1919** Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton, and the Dukes of Hamilton, Hamilton Palace, South Lanarkshire `[documented]` (country-house ownership) Recorded in a fire-insurance document drawn up shortly after 1844 and in the Hamilton Palace inventories of 1852 and 1876; descended in the family until the 1919 sale. - **1919-1925 or later** William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851-1925), The Hill, Hampstead Heath, London `[documented]` (auction purchase) Bought at Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 13 November 1919, lot 333. The Museum's own provenance string spells the buyer 'Leverhume'; the name is Leverhulme. No price is published in the sources consulted. Leverhulme died in 1925 and the Museum's chain gives no date for the table leaving his estate. - **after 1925-1958** The London art market, then Galleria Sangiorgi, Rome `[documented]` (trade) The Museum records both in square brackets, its convention for the trade, and gives no dates for either. The object therefore returned to Italy at an unrecorded point and left it again for New York in or shortly before 1958. Nothing in the record consulted states whether an Italian export licence was applied for or granted. - **1958-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (purchase) Accession 58.57a-d, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1958. No price published. Two years later Olga Raggio published it in the Museum's Bulletin as a rediscovered work by Vignola. On view in Gallery 503 in 2026; shown in Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe in 2008. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The table has been sold at public auction once, in 1919. Its other two changes of hands were private: from the London art market to Galleria Sangiorgi in Rome at an unrecorded date after 1925, and from Sangiorgi to the Metropolitan Museum in 1958 with the Harris Brisbane Dick Fund. Neither private transaction has a published price, so neither carries a hammer or a premium. - **1919-11-13** Christie, Manson and Woods, London, Hamilton Palace, lot 333 - Hammer: Not published - With premium: Not published - Sold from Hamilton Palace to William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme. No price appears in any source consulted here. Anyone who finds a figure for this lot should establish before quoting it whether it is the sum called in the room or a total including charges; this record will not print a number it cannot separate. ## Exhibitions - Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, 1 July - 21 September 2008, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2008 - On view, Gallery 503, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2026 ## Literature - Olga Raggio, 'The Farnese Table: A Rediscovered Work by Vignola', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 18 (March 1960), pp. 213-31 - NOT obtained; quoted at second hand through the Museum's own catalogue entry, which cites it as footnote 1. This is the first item to obtain for this record - Wolfram Koeppe, catalogue entry for The Farnese Table, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006, with 19 footnotes - READ in full on the object page - Wolfram Koeppe et al., Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe, exh. cat. (New York: MMA, 2008) - NOT read - John Morley, The History of Furniture - cited in the Museum's footnote 2 for a pier from a prototypical Roman table; NOT read ## Open questions - What colours were the piers painted, and over how much of their surface? The paint residues were noticed when the table was moved in 2002 and investigated by the conservator Jack Soultanian Jr.; the Museum says the discovery may change the estimation of the table and has published no pigments, no extent and no report in the twenty-four years since. - How did the table leave Rome between the palace inventory of 1796 and the Hamilton Palace fire-insurance document of shortly after 1844? The Museum's provenance field says a convent in Verona by tradition; its own catalogue essay says a grand tourist, by supposition. The two accounts are not compatible and neither carries a document. - What did lot 333 fetch at Christie, Manson and Woods on 13 November 1919? No figure is published in the sources consulted. - What did the Metropolitan pay Galleria Sangiorgi in 1958? No figure is published. - When and how did the table return from Leverhulme's estate in London to a dealer in Rome, and was an Italian export licence sought or granted when it left Italy again for New York? - Is the pietre dure top actually the work of Jean Menard? The Museum says only that it is believed to be, and names no document. - How many carvers worked the piers, and can any of the hands beyond della Porta's be identified? The Museum states that more than one person carved them and stops there. - Why do the Museum's two published weights differ by roughly an order of magnitude - some thirty thousand pounds in the gallery audio against 3,893 pounds of confirmed weight for the three supports - and has the top ever been weighed? ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for The Farnese Table, accession 58.57a-d, including the full curatorial entry by Wolfram Koeppe (2006) with its footnotes, and the provenance and exhibition tabs. Read 4 August 2026. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API, object 202115: isPublicDomain true, medium 'Marble of different colors, semiprecious stones, Egyptian alabaster, residue of paint of different colors on the piers', credit line 'Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1958'. - [3] Olga Raggio, 'The Farnese Table: A Rediscovered Work by Vignola', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 18 (March 1960), pp. 213-31. Cited as footnote 1 of the Museum's own catalogue entry and quoted there; the article itself was not obtained for this record. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art gallery audio, track 2178, The Farnese Table, with Ian Wardropper and Wolfram Koeppe, transcript read from the object page. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and Phineus, Guglielmo della Porta, accession 60.55.68. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for Mars and Venus Trapped by Vulcan, Guglielmo della Porta, accession 41.109. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.