Betrothal Chest with Leopards
Florence, first half of the fifteenth century
Study
This circular chest, gilded and polychromed throughout, and adorned with medallions containing leopards, against a background of vine motifs, is a very fine example of the chests produced in Florence at the beginning of the Renaissance and generally associated with betrothal. The presentation of gifts to a future bride was part of the established ritual after negotiations for marriage had been concluded. A man would offer his wife-to-be a forzerino, a small chest containing betrothal gifts such as jewellery, items of gold or silver, or precious fabrics.1 In January 1438, the Bolognese merchant Petenonio di Vidale imported from Florence 16 round gilded chests that could have resembled the work studied here. In May of that year, he imported a further “18 small chests for brides, silvered and circular” (“18 cofaneti da spoxe arzentada tondi”).2 This kind of chest was certainly crafted ahead of time, and could be personalised on its purchase, with the addition of a coat of arms on the reserved shield in the centre of the lid. Similar containers could also be presented to a young mother after childbirth.3
Even if these chests must have been produced in substantial numbers during the Renaissance, surviving examples are now rare. Among these we may distinguish two different types. The first is principally accompanied by painted decoration and the presence of pastiglia work as no more than a complementary embellishment. In this first group of chests, the finest example is without question the one painted by Giovanni di Paolo in 1421, now in the Musée du Louvre.4 The second group, to which the chest presented here belongs, consists of circular containers without handles and decorated with gilded pastiglia in low or high relief, generally formed, as in our case, of vine patterns and round medallions most often enclosing animals. Nine other chests of this type are known, four in the Victoria and Albert Museum, one in the Ashmolean Museum, one in the Musée Jacquemart-André,5 and three in private collections.
Betrothal chest, Florence, first half of the fifteenth century. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.
Among the Victoria and Albert Museum’s chests, one of them, unfortunately in a bad condition, presents an extremely close decor, composed of alternately blue and red leopards made in high-relief on the body of the box.6
See Bayer, A. (ed.), Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, exhib. cat. (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 11th, 2008–February 16th, 2009), New York, 2008, pp. 107–108, cat. 38 a–b.
See Warren, J., Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, II, Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, Oxford, 2014, p. 374.
According to Jeremy Warren, the motif of a putto playing the trumpet in the central medallion of the lid in the Ashmolean Museum chest could indicate that this was more likely a gift celebrating birth rather than marriage. See Warren, 2014, pp. 373–376.
Musée du Louvre, OA 2517. An example of this kind of painted chest, but considerably inferior in quality, is housed in the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (47.116); we may also cite a chest combining painted decoration and the principle of pastiglia medallions, formerly in the Figdor collection and now in a private collection. See Schubring, P., Cassoni, Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Frührenaissance. Ein Beitrag zur Profanmalerei im Quattrocento, Leipzig, 1915, p. 230, figs. 48–50.
