(active in Florence, around 1380–1420)
A painted Cassone, a Wedding Chest,
tempera on panel, shaped, set into an Italian repoussé-decorated metal-mounted, gilt patiglia and polychrome painted cassone, decorated overall with scrolling foliage and geometric patterns, the domed lid above a rectangular corpus, the front decorated with a ribbon border cartouche flanked by the arms of Florence and Genoa, and the sides with roundels above a lambrequined plinth, the painted cartouche, 34.3 x 114.8 cm, the cassone overall 66.1 x 144.8 x 57.2 cm

Provenance:
Josef Salzer (1846–1923) collection, Vienna;
his sale at Wawra, Vienna, 17 October 1927, lot 411;
bought by Pollak, Paris;
with Siegfried Drey (1859–1936), Munich;
A. S. Drey forced sale, Paul Graupe, Munich, 17–18 June 1936, lot 222 (as Florence, early 15th century);
Walter Bornheim, Munich, until 1944;
acquired from him by a private collector; thence by descent;
Restitution to the heirs of A. S. Drey, April 2011;
sale Christe’s, London, 6 July 2011, lot 190;
Private European collection.

Literature:
C. E. Rava, Mobili d’ogni tempo, Milan 1947, p. 2;
J. Miziolek, Soggetti Classici sui Cassoni Fiorentini alla vigilia de Rinascimento, Warsaw 1996, p. 47, no 28 (as Master of Charles Durazzo)

The present cassone or wedding chest has survived in exceptional condition, with a well-preserved original structure. It is a work by the so-called Master of Charles of Durazzo, a Florentine painter active in the last decades of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

The present work was recognised as a work of the artist by Jerzy Miziolek in 1996 (see literature) and the attribution was subsequently confirmed by Everett Fahy, Andrea De Marchi and Lorenzo Sbaraglio.

The artist is considered as the principle initiator in the production of compositions of profane subjects in Florentine art and he takes his name from a panel in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (No. 07.120.1) depicting the conquest of Naples by Charles III of Durrazzo in 1381. This composition is related to many chest fronts and some deschi da parto or birth trays, some of which are in museums (see E. Fahy, Florence and Naples: a cassone panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in: Hommage a Michel Laclotte, Paris 1994, pp. 231-43). Stylistically, the works of the artist appear similar to those of Agnolo Gaddi and even closer to the works of the so-called ‘Master of San Martino a Mensola’, identified by some as the Florentine painter Francesco di Michele (documented in 1385).

On the front of the present chest, a rich decoration in the form of paste work gilded with racemes and spirals encloses a kind of cartouche which is bordered by a frieze of faux gems, between which a narrative sequence is depicted, which recounts an unidentified legend. It is probably a story of a classical subject in which the protagonist appears to be a virtuous, high-born lady.

The structure of the cassone, reinforced at the edges with engraved iron strips, also presents a rich decoration of paste work in relief on the sides. Two medallions depict a lady accompanied by two gentlemen and surrounded by winged cherubs playing musical instruments. A similar wooden construction and decoration can be seen in the chest by the same artist depicting the Stories of Messer Torello from Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Here we find similar paste work in relief on the sides, and two tondi depicting the same subject.

The present cassone can also be compared to other works by the Master of Charles of Durazzo. It would appear to be later in date than the eponymous chest front in the Metropolitan Museum, which has been dated to around 1382, but before other works such as the chests in the Czartoryski Collection in Kraków and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (see J. Miziolek, op.cit., 1996, 7a, 10), which appear to belong to his late period. The calm, neo-Giottesque tone of the figures in the present work reflects the style of Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, and the simplicity of the costumes, which do not yet reflect the rise of a courtly fashion, seem to suggest a date of around the last decade of the 14th century.

Additional images:
Pastiglia (pastework), on left side
Pastiglia (pastework), on right side