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Mantelpiece

(Italian)
about 1805
Medium/TechniqueCarrara marble
Dimensions49 1/2 x 72 1/2 x 14 1/4
Credit LineJohn Lowell Gardner Fund, Charles Amos Cummings Fund, Jane Marsland and Judith A. Marsland Fund, H. E. Bolles Fund, Tamara Petrosian Davis Sculpture Fund, funds by exchange from The Helena Woolworth McCann Collection—Gift of the Winfield Foundation, and partial gift of Heidi M. Pribell
Accession number2017.2
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsDecorative arts
Collections
Provenance1805, commissioned through Thomas Appleton (b. 1763 – d. 1840), Livorno, by Thomas Perkins for John Joy (b. 1751 – d. 1813), Boston, and, in 1806, installed in Joy Mansion on Beacon Hill (present-day 34 ½ Beacon Street) [see note 1]; Joy Mansion passed by inheritance to his widow, Abigail Green Joy (b. 1760 – d. 1843); 1833, Joy Mansion was dismantled and relocated, but the mantelpiece remained and was incorporated into the design of the new house by Israel Thorndike, Jr. (b. 1785 – d. 1867); 1838, Thorndike sold the house to Robert Gould Shaw (b. 1776 – d. 1853); 1853, Shaw’s heirs sold the house to Frederick Tudor (b. 1783 – d. 1864); 1885, Tudor’s heirs sold the house to David Nevins, Jr. (b. 1839 – d. 1898); between 1885 and 1887, the house was torn down and the mantelpiece was incorporated into Tudor Apartments, the nine-story apartment house built at the same address [see note 2]; 1957, Tudor Apartments was sold by Nevins’s heirs to the Family Service Association of Greater Boston and was later converted into condominiums; between about 1999 and 2001, the mantelpiece was acquired privately by homeowners in the building, and subsequently moved to a townhouse at Mount Vernon Place, Boston; 2012, sold by the private owners to Heidi Pribell Interiors, Cambridge, MA; 2017, sold by Heidi Pribell to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 18, 2017)

NOTES:
[1] On the commission, see Philipp Fehl, “The Account Book of Thomas Appleton of Livorno,” Winterthur Portfolio 9 (1974), p. 138. [2] On the history of the property, see Robert E. Guarino, Beacon Street: Its Buildings and Residents (Charleston, SC, 2011), pp. 87-90.