1963, manufactured by Fonderia MAF, Milan, bronze, 3-centimetre-thick Bohemian crystal glass, black cut edges, stamped: MANZU FONDERIA MAF MILANO, height 80 cm, 261 x 125 cm. (DRAX)

A unique object.

Made for Giacomo Manzù´s own home.

Provenance:
Giacomo Manzù, continuous family ownership, Bergamo Giacomo Manzù designed this table for his house on the hill of S. Vigilio above Bergamo.
The table, which had been installed in a room surrounded by Manzù’s sculptures, was subsequently given to his daughter-in-law and during the past twenty years was conserved at the Museo Arte Moderna in Bergamo.

The solid glass top is supported on a sprawling branch with twigs. Manzù used a specially developed alloy of bronze, silver, and gold that lends the vegetal form a shimmering golden surface. Manzù chose the same alloy for other important works from this period, such as the Porta della Morte for Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome or the portrait of Pope John XXIII.

“Non abbiate paura della natura” (“Don’t Be Afraid of Nature”)
Giacomo Manzù

Giacomo Manzù became famous for the motif of the “Cardinals”, an iconographic invention associated primarily with him. In addition, an in-depth exploration of nature runs through his entire oeuvre. In this monumental table for his own house on the hill of S. Vigilio in Bergamo, which he left in the mid-1960s to settle in Ardea near Rome, but where his son Pio lived until his premature death, he made reference to the motif of a twig, which he translated into the larger format of a branch.
He revisited the twig time and again, from his botanical studies of the 1940s to one of his masterpieces, the “Porta della Morte” for the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, which was consecrated in 1964. The handle of the door has the form of a twig that closely resembles the present table in terms of style and which Manzù referred to as “Tralci di Vita” – instincts of life. Shortly afterwards he reused the “Tralci di Vita” motif for the bronze door of the Palazzo d’Italia at New Yorks Rockefeller Center. A very similar form can be found in the “Porta d’Amore” for Salzburg Cathedral. However, he not only used the motif of the twig for bronze doors. We also encounter it as a stylistically related element in another group of works by this artist, his varied chairs featuring still lifes.

Lit.:
Giacomo Manzù, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo 2004, pp. 13/14 – M. De Micheli, Giacomo Manzù. 1908–1991, Milano 1971, plates 55/56 (Sedia con aragosta, 1966), plate 57 (Sedia con ramo di vita, 1965), plate 58 (Sedia con ramo di vita e pera, 1966), plate 111, plate 117 (Porta d’Amore, cathedral, Salzburg, 1958), plate 118, plate 127 (Porta della Morte, Basilca di San Pietro, 1964)

© family photo