Cypress wood chest with engraved decoration featuring 'The Fountain of Love', Italy, about 1430

Rectangular boarded chest, with balustrade lower rail above shaped feet at the front and the sides cut with a cusped arch, the surfaces decorated with pyrographic (pirografata) designs, drawn with a hot needle, with small areas of shallow relief containing the remains of colour composition infill. The design of the front is divided into two tiers above a balustrade composed of a series of half spindle-shaped balusters which link it to a rail, nailed to the side at the left end and resting on a carved foliate bracket with a gothic cusp at both ends. (Note, the balustrade and brackets were restored 2012.) On the lower one is an arcaded series of figures, mostly slaughtering beasts, and on the upper one, musicans playing for the royal couple in the far left, courtiers grouping round the 'Fountain of Love' and a lion hunt nearer the centre, and the shooting of one of the courtiers by the king with a bow and arrow in the far right. In the centre of the front panel is a verticle strip, at the top of which the wood is cut to accomodate a lock. Below the lock the wood is incised in the shape of a lockplate with concave sides and a keyhole; below the incised "lockplate" is a tournament shield with a profiled female crest.

On each side is a foliate pattern encircling a blank shield and sprigs of leaves, sprouting towards the four corners. At the bases of both sides are trefoil arches cut into the boards. The lid is plain on the outside, with old accretions of plaster near the corners, pieces of wood attached at the back right, forming a crude repair. On the inside of the lid is a carved tournament shield with a profiled female crest in a circular, foliate frame, with substantial traces of vermilion red pigment. Above the left hinge is a gash curving towards the centre.

Construction and materials
The chest is constructed from boards nailed to each other, with wooden caps covering the nail heads. At the front of the lid is a strip of wood, which has been subsequently cut back.

Samples from the interior of the front left and right panels were taken and analysed by Jo Darrah of the V&A Conservation dept. (16/5/1986), and identified as Cupressu sempervirens L.

FTIR analysis of the green inlay decoration showed that wax (probably beeswax) contained copper palmitate. Brenda Keneghan, V&A Science Section 21/2/2006. Jo Darrah (1986) identified the red infill as wax with vermillion and a little chalk.

This chest was bought in 1864 for £92 from William Blundell Spence (1815 - 1900), an Anglo-Florentine dealer based in Fiesole, although its previous provenances remain unknown.

Object sampling carried out by Jo Darrah, V&A Science; drawer/slide reference 1/114.

Historical significance: The decoration of this chest is associated with North Eastern Italy, particularly Friulli and the northern parts of the Veneto. The style is similar to manuscript illustration of about 1400. The costumes date from about 1400 and predate the fashion for all things Burgundian, that began to prevail in Italy by about 1450. Most surviving chests with this distinctive engraved and shallow-carved decoration in public collections are stylistically associated with Giovanni Pisanello and date from the 1460s. This is a rare example that predates this type of chest.

This chest is decorated like those that came from Friulli, a region north east of Venice and bordering on the Tyrol. Various floral patterns and medieval romantic themes would have been incised or carved shallowly on the wood with various knives, gouges and chisels, and were sometimes shaded with hot needles and ink. The hollowed out space was often filled with green (verdigris) or red (cinnabar) beeswax, so these objects would originally have looked highly colourful. Large chests like this were placed in bed chambers, most often against a bed used for storing clothes and valuables. Storage chests were often referred to in inventories as laborati (worked on), and the term may possibly refer to this sort of decoration. An item like this would most certainly have been used for storage, although not necessarily as a marriage chest, a piece of furniture with much more symbolic significance, as far as we know, in Tuscany, particularly Florence, than in the far north east of Italy. On this chest and a number of others in public collections, such as one in the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence (ref. Gian Franco Fiaccordi, p. 225 - 226), the shields are left blank, although they may have once been painted on and subsequently removed, once the colours had irreparably faded and the original owners been forgotten.

Woodwork with engraved and shallow-relief carved decoration was characteristic of north- eastern Italy, particularly the areas of Friulli and the Veneto, from about 1390 until 1470. Medieval courtly romances, such as the 'Fountain of Love', were more popular themes than classical myths. Cypress wood and cembra pine were most often used. The wood was chiseled or sometimes engraved with a hot needle. The recessed areas were often filled with chalk mixed with verdigris (green) or vermilion (red). The majority of figures on this chest wear clothes than would have been fashionable between about 1390 or 1430. Many similar chests, of slightly later date, show figures dressed in the style of Burgundy, France, which became popular in Italy, or in the style associated with the painter Pisanello, who lived from about 1395 to 1455.

80-1864