View source for Cassone

{{Short description|Italian chest}}
{{More footnotes needed|date=September 2024}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}
[[File:Sala del crocifisso, cassoni dipinti.JPG|thumb|Some ''cassoni'', in the [[Museo Bardini]], Florence]]
[[File:Arca de la Batalla de Anghiari (M.A.N. 51936) 01.jpg|thumb|[[Republic of Florence|Florentine]] cassone from the 15th century ([[National Archaeological Museum of Spain|M.A.N.]], [[Madrid]])]]
[[File:Italian - "Cassone" - Walters 6535.jpg|thumb|Walnut ''cassone'' in the form of an Antique [[sarcophagus]], Rome, 16th century ([[Walters Art Museum]])]]
A '''cassone''' (plural ''cassoni'') or '''marriage chest''' is a rich and showy Italian type of [[Chest (furniture)|chest]], which may be [[Inlay|inlaid]] or [[Carving|carved]], prepared with [[gesso]] ground then painted and [[Gilding|gilded]]. ''[[Pastiglia]]'' was decoration in low [[relief]] carved or moulded in gesso, and was very widely used. The cassone ("large chest") was one of the trophy furnishings of rich merchants and aristocrats in Italian culture, from the [[Late Middle Ages]] onward. The cassone was the most important piece of furniture of that time. It was given to a bride and placed in the bridal suite. It would be given to the bride during the wedding, and it was the bride's parents' contribution to the wedding.
There are in fact a variety of different terms used in contemporary records for chests, and the attempts by modern scholars to distinguish between them remain speculative, and all decorated chests are today usually called ''cassoni'', which was probably not the case at the time. For example, a ''forziere'' probably denoted a decorated chest with a lock.<ref>Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta; Dennis, Flora, ''At home in Renaissance Italy'', 2006, Victoria and Albert Museum, {{ISBN|1-85177-488-2}}, {{ISBN|978-1-85177-488-3}}</ref>
Since a cassone contained the personal goods of the bride, it was a natural vehicle for painted decoration commemorating the marriage in [[heraldry]] and, when figural painted panels began to be included in the decor from the early ''[[quattrocento]]'', flattering allegory. The side panels offered a flat surface for a suitable painting, with subjects drawn from [[Romance (heroic literature)|courtly romance]] or, much less often, religious subjects.  By the 15th century subjects from [[classical mythology]] or history became the most popular. Great Florentine artists of the 15th century were called upon to decorate ''cassoni'', though as [[Vasari]] complains, by his time in the 16th century, artists thought such work beneath them.  Some Tuscan artists in [[Siena]] and Florence specialized in such cassone panels, which were preserved as autonomous works of art by 19th century collectors and dealers, who sometimes discarded the cassone itself. From the late 1850s, neo-Renaissance cassoni were confected for dealers like [[William Blundell Spence]], [[Stefano Bardini]] or Elia Volpi in order to present surviving cassone panels to clients in a more "authentic" and glamorous presentation.<ref>Ellen Callmann, "William Blundell Spence and the Transformation of Renaissance Cassoni". ''The Burlington Magazine'' '''141''' (June 1999:338–348).</ref>
A typical place for such a cassone was in a chamber at the foot of a bed that was enclosed in curtains. Such a situation is a familiar setting for depictions of the [[Annunciation]] or the [[Visitation (Christianity)|Visitation]] of St. Anne to the Virgin Mary. A cassone was largely immovable. In a culture where chairs were reserved for important personages, often pillows scattered upon the floor of a chamber provided informal seating, and a cassone could provide both a backrest and a table surface. The symbolic "humility" that modern scholars read into Annunciations where the Virgin sits reading upon the floor, perhaps underestimates this familiar mode of seating.
At the end of the 15th century, a new classicising style arose, and early [[Renaissance]] cassoni of central and northern Italy were carved and partly gilded, and given classical décor, with panels flanked by fluted corner pilasters, under [[Frieze|friezes]] and [[Cornice|cornices]], or with sculptural panels in high or low relief. Some early to mid-sixteenth-century cassoni drew their inspiration from Roman [[sarcophagus|sarcophagi]] (''illustration, right''). By the mid-sixteenth century [[Giorgio Vasari]] could remark on the old-fashioned cassoni with painted scenes, examples of which could be seen in the palazzi of Florentine families.<ref>Vasari, ''Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori''..., ed. G. Milanesi, vol. II p 148,  noted in Ellen Callmann 1999:339 and note 7.</ref>
A cassone that has been provided with a high panelled back and sometimes a footrest, for both hieratic and practical reasons, becomes a ''cassapanca'' ("chest-bench"). ''Cassapanche'' were immovably fixed in the main public room of a [[palazzo]], the ''sala'' or ''salone.'' They were part of the ''immobili'' ("unmoveables"), perhaps even more than the removable glazed window casements, and might be left in place, even if the palazzo passed to another family.
In the east part of [[Emilia-Romagna|Emilia Romagna]], the "cassone" term is also used to describe a local food, which is a round flat bread cooked on a special pan called "testo".
==Notes==
{{reflist}}
==References==
* Wilhelm von Bode, ''Italian Renaissance Furniture''
* ''Civilta del legno: mobili dalle collezioni di Palazzo Bianco e del Museo degli Ospedali di S. Martino, Genova,'' Palazzo Bianco, 1985. Exhibition catalogue {{ISBN|88-7058-149-7}}
* Heinrich Kreisel, ''Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels'' vol. I, "Von der Änfangen bis zum Hochbarock" 1968. Comparable German ''kast''.
* Frida Schottmüller, ''Wohnungskultur and Möbel der Italienischen Renaissance'', (Stuttgart, Verlag Julius Hoffman) 1921. Interior decoration and furniture of the Italian Renaissance. Still indispensable.
* Paul Schubring, ''Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen frührenaissance'' (Leipzig) 1914, and Supplement, 1923. An unequalled photo repertory of cassoni and cassone panels, often given unrealistically early dates.
* Peter Thornton, ''The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400–1600.'' (New York: Abrams) 1991
* "Cassone - Italian Renaissance Marriage Chest" in ''Eclectique'', 23 September 2009.
* Helen Webberley, "Marriage, fertility and courtly love in Renaissance Italy: cassone" in Art and Architecture, mainly, 1 February 2011
* Helen Webberley, ''Love, sex and family wealth in Florence'' in Art and Architecture, mainly, 25 June 2013
* Susan Grange, 'The cassone - the Renaissance "bottom drawer", in Cassone: The International Online Magazine of Art and Art Books, June 2011 http://www.cassone-art.com
==External links==
{{Commons category|Cassone}}
* [http://www.larsdatter.com/chests.htm Medieval & Renaissance Chests and Trunks] Includes cassoni of the 14th-16th centuries
[[Category:Chests (furniture)]]
[[Category:Furniture]]
[[Category:History of furniture]]
[[Category:Italian art]]