
Jon Baddeley
Specialist Consultant Collectors, Science & Marine
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Sold for £510 inc. premium
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Specialist Consultant Collectors, Science & Marine

Head of Department
Provenance:
From paperwork accompanying this musical box, it was sold as lot 180 at Sotheby's on the 29th May 1961.
The air from 'Il Pirata' provides a terminus post quem for this musical box of 1827, the year in which the opera premiered in the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
The lid depicts the Lion of Lucerne, a monumental stone sculpture designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen, hewn into sandstone quarry near Lucerne. The lion commemorates the massacre of the Swiss Guards during the Insurrection of 10th August 1792, at the height of the French Revolution.