Gilded And Embossed Leather With A Dragon Motif, Rocaille Decoration, Northern Netherlands, 3rd Quarter Of The 18th Century

Large decorative panel in embossed, painted, and gilded leather, blue and gold, featuring a fire-breathing dragon, foliate scrolls, organic shapes, flowers, and flowing curves and counter-curves, in the purest French Rococo style that decisively influenced the ornamentation of leathers produced in the Northern Netherlands and this taste for fantastical creatures between 1730 and 1770. It is mounted on blue fabric and a frame, glued with hide glue, a technique respectful of traditional methods and reversible. There are losses, cracks, fissures, and previously detached sections, all marks of age visible in the photographs. It should be noted that transferring the photos to Proantic weakens the colors for reasons unknown to us; they are therefore more vibrant in reality. Challenged by less expensive wall decoration solutions (textiles, painted canvases, wallpapers), the production of gilded leather declined rapidly in the Netherlands, disappearing completely by the end of the third quarter of the 18th century. This piece is therefore historically important in the history of this craft, which is over a thousand years old and was inherited from the Muslims of Al-Andalus. It reached its ornamental and technical heights particularly in this northern region of Europe, which was a major and highly regarded producer in the 17th and 18th centuries. A similar example, with variations in polychromy, is held at the Deutsches Tapetenmuseum in Kassel.