This settee is from a large set of seat furniture, which included at least four settees and twenty side chairs. It was formerly thought to have been commissioned for the Villa Palagonia at Bagheria near Palermo, but the provenance remains undocumented, and the initials in the cipher at the center of the back, "PPL," are as yet unidentified. The reverse-painted glass panels in imitation of agate, lapis, and marble are a distinctive feature often used on late-eighteenth-century Neoclassical Sicilian furniture.

Red silk ground, with a design in white linen, of two lion like beasts affronted with a castle between them.  A narrow border at the top and bottom with a running vine design and a narrow red silk fringe across the bottom.

Line-stitch and tent-stitch or long legged cross-stitch. A towel.

1776 / 1800, Sicily

1776 / 1800, Sicily