All forms of expression, either intended to an ornamental use or to a functional and practical use, reflect the tastes of a society, the style of a period, the way of living.
Objects and furniture have each their own meaning and they gain so an abstract and concrete value at the same time, characterizing a man, an environment, a period.
To approach the antique means try to catch the relation between history and style.
The piece of furniture and its location, answering to practical needs, convey us immediately the culture and the taste of a period. But among the various ways of expression and interpretation there are also the individual ways, that give the personal touch of the artist, and the collective ones as the style, the formal costant that makes us recognise an epoch.
It is enough to mention the architect Robert Adam to call to our mind the slender elegance of the neoclassicism of Pompeian origin, of his furniture, with golden woods and bright materials.
If we remember Maggiolini, a cabinet-maker esteemed by Napoleon, we refer to his furniture of geometrical line, well-proportioned, of warm and dark woods, with fine inlays of coloured woods and such beautiful chromatic gradations that can be compared to the pictorial decorations of Appiani and the stuccoes of Arbeltolli.
In either cases, the precision of forms, tempered by the elegance, shows us the ideal portrait of those enlightened artists, believers in the reason, clear and steady in their purposes of thought and action.
It is not difficult to perceive the links that exist between the style of a Maggiolini's piece of furniture, a poem of Foscolo and a piece of music Bellini.
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