Fine Renaissance 17th Century Style Carved Walnut Cassone / Marriage Chest / Coffer

Very good example. Sumptuously carved throughout and with paw feet to the front.

Becoming quite rare, this is one of the few examples that we have come across in the last couple of decades, please see below for more details and a short history of cassoni.

SALE – now discounted – for limited period only.

However, all reasonable ebay offers are always carefully considered.

Stunning Piece. Very good size, quite heavy and exceptional quality of carving and design.

Approximate dimensions:

Height: 19.5 inches

Width: 52.5 inches

Depth: 17.25 inches

In Very Good Original Condition

A most imposing piece of furniture. Please study the photographs carefully which convey a thousand words and constitute an important part of the description. Please also read the full description, and our few terms and conditions etc. This item has developed an incredible and beautiful warm patina over the years. We can find no significant wear or damage, which is unusual. We generally leave items as they are, as many buyers prefer them that way. However, at the Buy It Now price, we will be delighted to let our restorer give it a polish, if that is your preference.

Notable condition remarks: Excellent condition with only the odd mark as would be expected of an item of this age. This piece is very solid, strong and quite heavy. Nothing that detracts.

Any number of photos cannot do this item justice. Viewing recommended.

Please study our other auctions for other unique / unusual antiques, vintage items and curios. New items are added regularly. Many of our items, including this one, have been custom / bespoke made to order, so inevitably if you miss out on this one, that is it. However, please ask, as occasionally we have similar items.

Please note that our items are mainly antique / vintage and therefore will inevitably show some signs of their past history and usage. We endeavour to point out any major defects that we find, which are out of the ordinary. We encourage and welcome viewings, so you can ensure you are satisfied before purchase. We also welcome and encourage any questions, before the end of the auction, as we want you to be pleased with your purchase. If your preference is for unique antique / vintage items, look no further, we will be delighted to help, if we possibly can. Furthermore, if you are in the rare position that you are not entirely satisfied, please do let us know and give us the opportunity to remedy. 

We are third generation furniture designers, manufacturers, fine artists and enthusiasts. We are customer focussed, and very keen to help our fellow antique aficionados, so please bid with confidence. We have been selling antiques online for in excess of a decade and always recommend viewing if at all possible. Otherwise we understand that buying antiques online can be daunting, so we are here to help in any way we can. Please check out our ebay feedback, which we are very proud to maintain. Bid with confidence!

Delivery from just £50 for some areas of England and Wales. Please ask for a quote. Or can be collected for free, or if you prefer you can arrange collection via your own courier.

Paypal / cheque / postal order / banker's draft / bank transfer / cash on collection / cash on delivery accepted. Thank you.

Cassone

A cassone (plural cassoni) or marriage chest is a rich and showy Italian type of chest, which may be inlaid or carved, prepared with gesso ground then painted and 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.

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 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.

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 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 friezes and cornices, or with sculptural panels in high or low relief. Some early to mid-sixteenth-century cassoni drew their inspiration from Roman 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. 

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.