Although in drawing attention to some of the salient features of Italian furniture of a decorative character made in the seventeenth century and later, the special work of Florence, Venice, and Milan has been particularized, it should of course be understood that these were only local influences on the general character of Italian work in many other cities. Mr. Hungerford Pollen attributes to the excavation of Pompeii the pseudo-classic designs which were prevalent, at first in France and afterwards in England during the first years of the nineteenth century, the kind of furniture described in the latter part of the chapter on French furniture and in that of England of a contemporary time. In such a manner does the fashion of one country act and react upon that of another.

The marqueterie furniture of Italy differs from that of France, Holland, or England. The earliest work was the inlay of small pieces of ivory or a single coloured wood in geometrical pattern; subsequently this gave way to more complicated and varied designs, but Italian marqueterie was never •developed to anything approaching the extent to which it was carried by the great French ebenistes during the reigns of Louis XV and XVI. The veneers employed were few in number, and the whole character of the work was much simpler. As a rule the shapes of the commodes are severe, that is, straight-fronted and without mounts, but when not straight they have bevelled sides, as distinct from the bombe forms of the French commodes of the Louis XV period.

Figures and landscapes were sometimes rendered in marqueterie, but generally enclosed in a cartouche. Sometimes the top of a table or chest of drawers would be ornamented by round or shaped panels, divided from the groundwork by lines, and inside the lines scrolls with figures of cupids were inlaid. A reddish-coloured veneer was fashionable in the early part of the eighteenth century, and marqueterie commodes of quite plain box-like form, mounted on four short square tapering feet, are attributed to a maker named Maggiolini.

Some of themore ambitious Renaissance cabinets of the seventeenth century, already alluded to in the first chapter of this book, were veneered with tortoise-shell and enriched with brass and mother-of-pearl. The stands and the framework of the cabinets were generally of ebony or ebonized wood. The elaborate interiors of these have been described.

Decoration of furniture by painting was also an Italian fashion, and a pale green relieved by paintings of flowers and scrolls was a favourite method of enrichment.