Casket, alder wood, Northern Italy, ca. 1500

A box decorated with moulded white lead figures and motifs, set on a gilded ground. Flat lid with wreaths, cornucopias and two masks flanked by harpies, garlands; knob. Depressed ball feet.

Scenes from Roman history:
Front: Gaius Marcius Coriolanus entreated by his wife and his mother at the foot of the walls of Rome
End: a man holding the severed head of a bearded man
Back: four carracks, three with a man, one with a woman (Helen?)
End: Judgment of Paris.

Given by Dr W.L. Hildburgh

PASTIGLIA BOXES
Gilt pastiglia boxes were mostly made in Venice and Ferrara from about 1480 until 1550. Pastiglia or pasta is the name given to white lead paste, bound with egg white. This was often scented and described in contemporary inventories as pasta di muschio (musk paste). The pastiglia figures and motifs were shaped with a lead mould and then glued to the gilt surface of the box - hence their frequent recurrence on other boxes. The boxes are decorated with legends of Ancient Rome and the scenes copied from woodcuts such as Jacobus Argentoratensis' Triumph of Caesar (Venice, 1504) or illustrations of Livy's Roman History.
(Label text, circa 2000, from old Medieval & Renaissance Galleries)

From about 1450, boxes decorated with white lead paste (or pastiglia) were widely used as love presents throughout Northern Italy, especially in Venice and Ferrara. Individual pieces of scented white lead were moulded into human figures, horses or other forms, and usually stuck to a gilt background. Virtually identical motifs can be found on other boxes, presumably from the same workshop. Legends of Ancient Rome and love stories from Greek Mythology, such as the Judgement of Paris and the Rape of Helen of Troy on this example, were popular themes on pastiglia boxes.

W.24-1953