In 1568, Francesco I de’ Medici, heir to the Grand Dukedom of Tuscany, commissioned a table designed by the artist, architect, and writer, Giorgio Vasari.

At the time, Vasari was one of the most famous artists in Florence. The Medici family had already enlisted him for projects ranging from murals in the Palazzo Vecchio to the design of the first buildings of the Uffizi.

The table was to be made with an inlay technique called pietre dure (“hard stone”), comprised of a design made from hundreds of thinly sliced, immensely valuable stones such as jasper and lapis lazuli, set on top of a piece of white marble.

It took more than 10 years to build, and cost a spectacular sum. “Putting it in terms of its comparative wealth, you could buy a painting by Titian— the greatest master of his day— for much, much less,” says Benedict Tomlinson, a London art dealer. “At its time, it was a vastly expensive work.”

It still is. Tomlinson is a director of Robilant and Voena, a gallery that will be exhibiting the tabletop at the Masterpiece London art fair, which runs from June 28 to July 4. The table carries an asking price “in the region of €10 million” (about $11.6 million), he says. Currently, the table sits on a much newer base.

How Can a Table Cost So Much?
“There’s two parts to the price,” Tomlinson explains. “First, you’ve got its history.”

By that, Tomlinson is referring to the table’s nearly unbroken stretch of royal ownership.

Thanks to European monarchs’ enduring (and ultimately devastating) tendency to marry their cousins, the table managed to stayed in the immediate Medici family for more than a century, first in the Florentine palace Casino di San Marco, then in the Pitti Palace.

After the Medicis died out (Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, who died in 1743, was the last direct heir), the duchy of Tuscany was given to Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, husband of the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa. His family then passed the table through inheritance for three further generations; by 1800, it had been moved it to the nearby Palazzo Vecchio. (No small feat, given that the tabletop alone weighs more than half a ton.) After that, it passed, also through inheritance, into the house of Bourbon-Parma.

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