20th C. Roman Tableau Tole Fornasetti Tray

A large rectangular tole tray printed in grisaille with a classical relief scene, figures caught mid-battle across a shallow stone ledge, the border ringed in a repeating disc motif. The look is lithographed onto metal rather than hand-painted, a technique Fornasetti's studio used to put museum imagery onto everyday objects at scale. 

Piero Fornasetti built his studio's output on exactly this kind of transfer, classical statuary, architectural fragments, and museum engravings lifted directly from source imagery and printed onto trays, plates, screens, and furniture rather than reinterpreted by hand. The technique let his studio produce decorative objects at a volume and consistency hand-painting couldn't match, while still reading as antiquarian and one-off. Grisaille, the restriction to grays and blacks that mimics stone or metal relief, was one of his most consistent devices across decades of production.

Style: Italian, Neoclassical Revival
Materials & Techniques: Lithographed tole (painted tin)
Place of Origin: Italy
Period: 1970s