Carved box wood staff, thought to be a jester's staff, possibly Italian, 1450-1470

Carved staff made of a single branch of boxwood. The surface of the staff is intricately carved with a combination of secular and sacred scenes, foliage and scale pattern. The top of the staff depicts a seated lion (on a stool with 8? spiral turned legs) whose front paws rest a on a shield bearing a coat or arms, with an ecclesiastical hat above, and surrounded by cords, which continue down the staff. Beneath this shield is a prominent face with headress, perhaps representing a Black African woman, with mouth wide open as if shouting. (There is evidence of a fixing inside, now missing). Below this face, in shallow relief are scenes that depict the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt. There are several projections of figures, including a bag-pipe player, a man crouching (probably defecating), with a dog behind, the head of a jackal, and a carved bird which resembles a dove. On the lower 1/3 of the staff, on a ground of scale pattern are four shallow bulges carved with three gurning faces of men and, within a pointed arch a figure with hat or headress which may represent a Cardinal wearing the hood (cappa magna) and hat. The lower section of the staff narrows considerably and is decorated with a scale pattern; it terminates relatively suddenly suggesting that some material has been broken off or worn away.

Bought from the Landesborough collection for £105 (through T.M. Whitehead, acting as an agent for the Museum.)

In the entry given in 'Fifty Masterpieces of Woodwork' the arms at the top of the staff were identified as those of Cardinal Calandrini, Grand Penitentiary, and half brother of Pope Nicholas. In this text the staff is dated between 1449, when Calandrini became a Cardinal, and 1476 when he died. This text further states that the staff belonged at one time to Henry Benedict, Cardinal of York. It was purchased by the Museum in 1888 from the Collection of the Earl of Londesborough.

J.P. Harthan (2.6.1958) in a note on the Registered file gave the following summary regarding the coat of arms:

'I have tracked down a possible candidate for these arms in Filippo Calandrini, b. Sarzana c.1405, Bishop of Bologna 1447, Cardinal 1449, Bishop of Albani 1468 and of Porto 1471 (i.e. Portos Romanos, the bishop of which was ex-officio subdeacon of the College of Cardinals), and who died at Viterbo in 1476. The Calandrini arms are: Azure, a saltire or St Andrew's cross or, accompanied in chief by an eagle displayed argent - which exactly fit the arms on your 'bauble' though the latter lack tinctures. Filippo Calandrini was a connection of Pope Nicholas V (1447. 1455), who was also born at Sarzana. While it would be inaccurate to say that the arms are definitely those of a prelate of the Calandrini family the absence of tinctures makes it impossible to prove that they are not. The prelate's hat is a useful clue and might be equally that of a bishop or cardinal as the form and number of tassels was not standardised as early as the 15th century. There is always the tendency in heraldic identifications to choose an illustrious person whose arms correspond with those on an object, and there may well be other, more obscure Italian families bearing a saltire cross and eagle though I've not traced any. If the heraldic tentative attribution be accepted, it favours a Roman provenance for the object, which fits in (for what such a suppostion is worth) with later ownership by Cardinal York during his long residence at Frascati. The object is then dated c.1450-70.'

Supplementary information:
Cardinal Filippo Calandrini was the Camerlengo, 1454-5 (Italian: "Chamberlain") of the Sacred College of Cardinals (treasurer of that body, who administered all fees and revenues belonging to the College, celebrated the requiem Mass for a deceased cardinal, and was charged with the registry of the Acta Consistoralia. Pope Eugenius III created that post in 1150. It existed until 1995.
In 1448 Calandrini was assigned Santa Susanna (Rome) as his title church, but the unsuitability of the property attached to the church led in 1451 to his being assigned S. Lorenzo in Lucina (Rome), which had a large residence built by Cardinal Jean de la Rochetaillé (d. 1437), now Palazzo Fiano.
(see also curator's comments)

Historical significance: The purpose of this richly carved staff with a Cardinal's coat of arms is uncertain; one possibility is that it was a jester's staff or bauble (associated with a great household), of which only a very few survive, although it lacks at the top the prominent human head seen on most representations, and would be very unusual in bearing the badge of the household. The wealth of secular imagery suggests that it had no liturgical function, and it seems unlikely that such a multifarious piece of carving would be used for the specific purpose of supporting the Cardinal's hat in a procession. Boxwood lends itself to richly inventive carved work

This staff may have belonged to a jester or fool. In early representations of fools in Psalters they are frequently shown holding sticks, lopped branches, clubs or cudgels. A stick may have been required by the fool for his own protection. By the late thirteenth century representations show sticks with a fool's head adorning the staff's top, sometimes termed the marotte or bauble. The fool's-head-on-a-stick was used to deliver criticism or comments that the prudent jester might prefer to not make directly when performing, in the same way that a ventriloquist uses a dummy. Examples of baubles and staffs do survive in other collections. Malcolm Jones cites examples at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the Bargello Museum in Florence, and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin (Jones, p107).

In the Middle Ages the jester or fool was often one of the retainers of princes, nobles and ecclesiastics. He provided entertainment and merriment for the household. Representations of jesters are common in art of this period. The fool was distinguished by distinctive clothing, often hung with bells. Sometimes they are shown wearing a hood resembling a monk's cowl with asses' ears, and often they hold a staff or fool's bauble to which an inflated bladder is sometimes attached. Cardinal Wolsey's (later Henry VIII's) fool Patch is recorded. See John Southworth, "Fools and Jesters at the English Court" (Stroud, 1988).


The staff is intricately carved with scenes that are secular and religious. Among the subjects represented on the upper section of the staff are the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt. The staff also features a figure playing bagpipes. Bagpipes do feature in other representations of fools, where they are used suggestively as a phallic symbols. This combination of sacred and secular imagery is not, in itself unusual. Malcolm Jones notes that in 1520 the Abbott of the Heriberkloster in Köln-Deutz had a silver crozier made, 'the crook of which was decorated with a fool's head in the usual bellied hood' (Jones, p120).

Hollingsworth (1994) notes (p. 278-9) "The Cardinals were conspicuous spenders in Rome and prominent amongst them were nepotist appointments. Often elected at a young age and enriched by their indulgent papal relatives, they had the time, the money and, above all, the incentive to display their new rank...The prime focus of a cardinal's patronage was his palace, the setting of his court and the clearest indicator of his prestige."

Hollingsworth (2004) notes (p. 246) that on 7 January 1540 Cardinal Ippolito d'Este hosted a dinner party for Don Luis d'Avila, Charles V's envoy in Rome. "The guests were entertained by music from Ippolito's singers, and one of the pages danced to the accompaniment of two instrumentalists hired for the occasion. There was also a theatrical entertainment one evening in early February when a company of actors staged a comedy at the palace of Cardinal Niccolo' Gaddi, a Florentine and a friend of Luigi Alamanni, Ippolito's new secretary. Gaddi may have been the host, but it was Ippolito who financed the performance, giving 75 scudi to the actors for the construction and decoration of their stage."


References
Jones, Malcolm. The Secret Middle Ages (Sutton Publishing, 2002) p100-120
Mary Hollingsworth, The Cardinal's Hat. Money, Ambition and Housekeeping in a Renaissance Court, (London: Profile, 2004)
Mary Hollingsworth, Patronage in Renaissance Italy (1994), chapter 21, the Papal Court

Possibly Rome

This staff may have belonged to a jester or fool. In the Middle Ages the jester or fool was often one of the retainers of princes, nobles and ecclesiastics. He provided entertainment and merriment for the household and was distinguished by his clothing, which was often hung with bells. Sometimes the fool is shown in illustrations of the period, such as psalters, wearing a hood resembling a monk's cowl with asses' ears.

Fools are often shown holding a staff to which an inflated bladder may be attached. A staff or club may have been useful for his own protection. By the late thirteenth century representations show sticks with a fool's head adorning the staff's top, sometimes termed a 'marotte' or 'bauble'. The fool's-head-on-a-stick was used to deliver criticism or comments that the prudent jester might prefer to not make directly when performing, in the same way that a ventriloquist uses a dummy.

This staff is intricately carved with both secular and religious scenes, including the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt. At the top is a coat of arms, which may be that of Cardinal Filippo Calandrini (d.1476), in whose household the fool presumably served. Among the other subjects represented are comic faces, a bird, a castle, a figure defecating, and another playing bagpipes.

1399-1888