THE TRIUMPH OF MARRIAGE. PAINTED CASSONI OF THE RENAISSANCE

THE TRIUMPH OF MARRIAGE

Cassoni is the Italian word for the chests, painted with scenes from myth and literature, central to upper-class weddings of the 15th century. Little known today, cassoni deserve recognition as masterworks of the Renaissance. Botticelli, Pesellino and other superlative artists painted them, and they are precious early examples of the mythopoetic subjects that would form the core of European art until the 20th century.

The essays in this book shed new light on the meaning of cassoni through informative discussions of Renaissance wedding rituals, male-female relations and daily domestic life. A catalogue section on cassoni in the exhibition that this book accompanies provides a unique guide to the stories of love, marriage and politics depicted on these sumptuous objects.

Forfattere: Cristelle Baskins, Adrian W.B. Randolph, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio & Alan Chong.

The Triumph of Marriage:
Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance
October 16, 2008 – January 19, 2009

In the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

In Renaissance Italy, cassoni –Italian for “large chests” – were an essential part of the rituals of elite marriages. Made in pairs and often painted with historical and allegorical scenes, these chests were paraded through the streets, like trophies, when the bride moved into the house of her new husband.  The narrative paintings with which they were decorated linked marriage to history and the roles appropriate to husband and wife. Cassoni offered artists an opportunity to develop new subjects in new formats, fusing space and time in consecutive scenes; dramatizing conflicts between love and duty; and almost always concluding with a vision of triumphant harmony.