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Teachers' Resource TEACHERS’ RESOURCE LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE THE COURTAULD WEDDING CHESTS 12 FEBRUARY - 17 MAY 09 CONTENTS WELCOME 1 10 THINGS YOU MAY WANT 2 TO KNOW ABOUT CASSONI RE-IMAGINING THE PAST 4 CASSONI - THE MANUFACTURING 8 PROCESS GREAT STORIES FOR GREAT 10 FAMILIES LANGUAGE AND ART 14 LEARNING RECOURCE CD 17 Cover: The Master of Marradi The Reconciliation of the Romans and the Sabines (detail) c. 1480 By kind permission of the Earl and Countess of Harewood and the Trustees of the Harewood House Trust Left: Biagio di Antonio, Jacopo del Sellaio and Zanobi di Domenico The Morelli Chest (side view), 1472 WELCOME The Courtauld Institute of Art Education Programme aims to help young people understand art as a means of exploring creative ideas and cultural history in an informed and critical way. The new resources for schools are underpinned by the intellectual rigour and excellence that is characteristic of The Courtauld. The content is designed to encourage further research and experimentation and we welcome your feedback. We hope the material proves useful and inspires interest and enthusiasm for the subject itself and for The Courtauld Gallery as a unique source of learning and a fantasitic place to visit. With best wishes, Henrietta Hine Head of Public Programmes The Courtauld Institute of Art Somerset House Strand, London WC2R 0RN 10 THINGS YOU MAY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT CASSONI Above: Biagio di Antonio, Jacopo del Sellaio and Zanobi di Domenico The Nerli Chest (front view with lid open, side view and back view), 1472 ONE SEVEN Cassoni (cassone: singular) is the Paintings of ancient heroes like name given to Italian Renaissance Scipio – who returned a beautiful painted chests. female captive to her fiancé - told young husbands how to behave TWO towards their wives. They were to In fifteenth-century Italy pairs of treat them with respect, but the cassoni were often commissioned men were to remember that they at the time of marriage. were ultimately in control. THREE EIGHT Cassoni were made throughout Italy. Painted chests often stayed in However, they were particularly families for generations. They were associated with Tuscany and not just precious in themselves, but Florence. symbolised important marriage alliances. FOUR Painted chests were sometimes NINE part of the procession which a bride Children could take their first lessons made from her father’s house to her from cassoni. The pictures on their new home with her husband and his fronts were close to the ground – a family. They could contain her perfect viewing height for children. trousseau (dowry). TEN FIVE The Courtauld owns one of the few Cassoni were valuable surviving pairs of wedding chests possessions. They were generally which can be connected with a displayed in a man’s camera particular marriage. These chests (chamber), one of the most were made for the 1472 marriage important rooms in a house. of Lorenzo Morelli to Vaggia Nerli. This was a happy and successful SIX match. Their son Leonardo inherited These chests were decorated the wedding chests from his father with paintings of popular stories. and also used them to decorate his These were drawn from the most chamber. familiar literature of the day: including the works of the Italian poets Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante, the Old Testament, and ancient Greek and Roman history. 10 THINGS YOU MAY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT CASSONI Written by Caroline Campbell, exhibition curator and Curator of Paintings at The Courtauld Gallery. RE-IMAGINING THE PAST: THE VARIED HISTORIES OF THE MORELL-NERLI CASSONI The Courtauld’s two large ornate chests, manipulated to make them appealing to a known as the Morelli-Nerli cassoni (fig. 1 fifteenth century Florentine audience were and 2) were commissioned by Lorenzo di also important. Finally, the later restoration Matteo di Morelli on the occasion of his of the cassoni to fit a Victorian ideal of marriage to Vaggia di Tanai di Francesco the Italian renaissance demonstrates not Nerli. They date from 1472, and were so much the preservation of the chests or carved by Zanobi di Domenico, with their return to their original state, but an painted decoration by Jacopo del Sellaio imagined history mapped onto them that and Biagio di Antonio. They would have the current exhibition seeks to decode constituted one of the most expensive in order to understand them in a more items purchased by the groom for his authentic manner. marriage home and would then have been placed in the groom’s chamber and used The term Renaissance has been commonly for the storage of fine clothes and linen. used since the mid-nineteenth century to The accompanying panels, known as broadly describe the artistic practices of spalliere, were part of a decorative scheme the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, that included the marriage chests. centred on Italy and especially Florence. The connotations of the term (literally Examples of fine craftsmanship, the ‘re-birth’) involve the rediscovery of certain underlying structure of the chests, made ideas, imagery and traditions taken from from poplar, would have been completed ancient Greece and Rome in the fifth before the chests were then carved, century BC through to the first century painted and gilded. Although art historians AD. The Roman empire in particular was considered them minor items until about an important source and role-model for 30 years ago, they in fact demonstrate as Florentines, Florence being seen to have much artistic skill and thoughtful planning inherited its democracy and liberty from as any wall painting or altarpiece from the Rome; even the term ‘patrician’, used to era. Indeed, fine art was an integral part of describe the elite classes, derives from the typical elite, or ‘patrician’, household the name given to Roman senators. The in fifteenth century Florence. Specifically skilful modelling of the ideal human commissioned by a husband to be, used body achieved by ancient sculptors by his wife and enjoyed by his children, the was emulated by painters who, with the chests would have been an important and development of perspective, found a beautiful part of family life, to be passed means not just of copying Roman sculptors down through generations. (as the Romans had copied the Greeks), but of representing three-dimensional The passing down of history is a space and objects on a flat surface to fundamental aspect of these wedding create an almost perfect illusion of ‘reality’. chests in a number of ways, which will be Likewise, the legends and heroes of ancient discussed here. Firstly, they were made to Rome could be used as moral or ‘didactic’ last as expensive heirlooms, evidence of examples. the considerable financial wealth of Morelli and intended to prolong his reputation A major source for understanding history and ‘presence’ long after his death. The was the Roman historian Livy’s History Morelli and Nerli coats of arms can be of Rome, itself based on accounts that seen at the corners of both chests and were partly documented as fact but the identity of the families is accorded often passed on by word of mouth, in a as much importance in this respect as storytelling tradition, changed and adapted the narratives that adorn the front and by different story-tellers through various side panels and spalliere. These images eras. His work, which was an amalgamation themselves represent a re-interpretation of various sources, given a gloss that of the past to give the chests an instructive accentuated Roman virtue, constituted value: the stories and virtues depicted a poetic, legendary history rather than a would have been carefully chosen to signify source history. Patricians would often keep certain qualities that were intended to ‘chapbooks’, or manuscript compendia, teach or remind the family how to behave. which contained important stories, The ways in which the stories were visually sometimes religious, sometimes secular, historical, mythological or poetic. The his country, and courage, shown in his commissioning patrician groom chose the readiness to accept just punishment, made narratives that would be painted onto the him an heroic figure. The side panels show cassoni by the artist, who would then create the virtues of Prudence and Temperance, his own depiction of the story, thus the especially suitable for the conduct of a tales told on the sides of wedding chests young bride. All these stories combined were often hybrids or amalgamations of to encourage Vaggia Nerli as a potential aspects of different versions, manipulated mother to be fair, patient and devoted in to suit both contemporary Florentine taste her care of Morelli’s children, unlike the and the particular morals that the groom wicked schoolmaster, and the children in wished to have portrayed. turn were encouraged to be as virtuous as the pupils. The specific stories chosen for the Morelli- Nerli chests were drawn from Livy’s history. The cassoni on one level re-imagine the The Morelli chest (fig. 1) has the Morelli past by portraying narratives deemed coat of arms on the left corner and the relevant to the lives of the newly married Nerli arms on the right corner. Its front couple for whom they were made and panel depicts the Roman general and for the lives of their prospective families. statesman Camillus expelling the Gauls Placed at floor level, with intricate detailing from Rome, an heroic military tale that and small-scale imagery, they were the shows the virtue of the Roman leader, perfect ‘picture-book’ for fifteenth-century who was to become known as Rome’s children, who learnt from them important ‘second founder’; the spalliera depicts narratives and morals. Horatius Cocles defending Rome, the story emerging theatrically from between However the history of cassoni does not two painted drawn curtains.
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