This table (one of a pair with F514) was almost certainly made in Rome, and were probably the product of a workshop specialising in furniture for wealthy foreign gentlemen on the Grand Tour. They were bought in 1774 in Rome by one such English aristocrat, the 1st Marquess of Buckingham, who had them sent back to England. Decorated with ox skulls (bucrania) and classical reliefs they are self-consciously neoclassical, and would have appealed to contemporary taste at a time when architects like Robert Adam were transforming the English country house in the ‘Antique’ style. The verde antico veneer was probably obtained from excavations of Ancient Roman sites.