Place of Origin
Florence
Date
ca. 1463 - 1465 (painted)
Artist/maker
Apollonio di Giovanni
Materials and Techniques
tempera on poplar panel
Dimensions
Height: 43.5 cm (panel)
Width: 133 cm (panel)
Measured for the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries
Object history note
Bought in 1859 for £ 9,2
Historical context note
This panel of The Continence of Scipio, painted in the mid-fifteenth century, is a detached part of a Florentine marriage chest, known as a cassone. The identity of the patron who commissioned it is unknown, but his/her coat-of-arms is probably that portrayed on the surcoat of the man at arms on a white horse at centre/left of the scene.
For Florentine patrician families, marriage was a highly formal arrangement, embodying social, financial and political alliances. As was customary throughout Europe, a wife’s family would contribute a dowry towards the married couple’s joint estate, which remained theoretically her property. This could be provided partly in cash or the equivalent, and partly in goods – including the bridal trousseau. The wedding ceremony usually took place at the bride’s home, followed by a banquet and a procession, in which her residence was visibly transferred to her husband’s home. This provided an opportunity for the public display of the trousseau. Sumptuary laws were instituted to limit conspicuous consumption, and sometimes required that wedding goods should be carried in closed chests. When elaborately decorated, these themselves became objects of display, and by the late fourteenth century most Florentine patrician brides would transport their donora, or marriage gifts to their new home in lavishly decorated marriage chests known as cassoni or forzieri. Such items of furniture were the preserve of the elite; a pair of cassoni could cost as much as seventy-five florins, the equivalent of the annual salary of a skilled labourer. By the middle of the fifteenth century, their provision had been taken over by the husband’s family, as part of the furnishing of increasingly elaborate and expensive nuptial chambers.
The account book of Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono indicates that chests were commonly made and purchased in pairs. Two appear, for example, in the background of Titian’s Venus of Urbino, dated 1538, in the Uffizi. However, by the mid-sixteenth century, painted cassoni were regarded as old-fashioned, and were gradually replaced by other types of furniture such as the armoire. As a result, their panels with narrative scenes were often incorporated into other items of furniture, or detached to serve as easel paintings. Independent paintings which formerly decorated cassoni include works by such major artists as Uccello, Botticelli and Piero de Cosimo. From the middle of the nineteenth century, cassoni became popular with collectors, and many of ostensibly Renaissance date are actually later confections incorporating a variable amount of earlier work.
Descriptive line
Cassone panel depicting the Continence of Scipio, workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni, ca. 1463-1465
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum. London: V&A, 1985, p. 24-25
The following is the full text of the entry:
"PANEL B
WORKSHOP OF APOLLONIO DI GIOVANNI
Florentine School
CASSONE PANEL: THE CONTINENCE OF SCIPIO
Tempera on poplar, 43.5 x 133 cm
5804-1859
The Continence of Scipio (Panel B), was a subject rarely depicted by 15th-century artists, even on cassone. Classical authors relate how Scipio, whose name, 'Scipione', is inscribed on his hat, desired Lucretia as his own. However when informed of her betrothal to Allucius, Scipio nobly restored Lucretia to him, and returned to her parents her ransom of gold. Thus, beside the oriental carpet, stands a gold chest. True nobility lies, not in wealth and status - 'Seven or eight yards of scarlet will make a new citizen,' remarked Cosimo de Medici - but in the Renaissance ideal of exemplary virtue. The confident treatment of architecture and perspective in Figure B (C.1463-70) is that of Florence's leading workshop and its master, Apollonio de Giovanni. Its uninterrupted, rectangular format reflects Alberti's recommendations in Della Pittura, also a desirable affinity with classical sarcaphogi, and familiarity with Ghiberti's doors for the Florentine Baptistry. Ghiberti had abandoned cusped quatrefoils for unified compositions, one of which, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, is reflected on two other cassone in the Museum. The earlier Florentine panel (c. 1430), possibly from the vorkshop of the Master of the Grigg's Crucifixion, has a twodimensional quality. It retains the cusped divisions characterisic of the Gothic style, and medieval symbolism is perpetuated in the figure of Constancy, with column and inscribed scroll.
Muted reds and greens predominate in Panel A; gilding is restricted to the surrounding carved gesso panels. The Scipio panel glistens with gold, applied by the mettodoro after the painter had worked the colours. These are more varied, reflecting light and shade, and further embellished with punched motifs, a technique also used on small Renaissance caskets in the Museum, and by all cassone workshops.
Anne Buddle"
Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, I. Before 1800. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, p. 11-13, cat. no. 9
The following is the full text of the entry:
"APOLLONIO di Giovanni (1415-65)
Florentine School
In 1902 Aby Warburg published the records of a Florentine cassone workshop which contained a complete list of objects produced between 1446 and 1463 by the owners of the shop, Marco del Buono Giamberti and Apollonio di Giovanni. Schubring also published this list, but did not succeed in identifying any of its items with a known cassone.
In 1944 W. Stechow published a convincing identification of a cassone in the Oberlin collection with one of the items in this list, thus for the first time attaching a distinct style to the workshop. More recently, E. H. Gombrich drew attention to a poem by the humanist Ugolino Verino which describes the work of the 'Tuscan Apelles Apollonius' and which enabled him to identify Apollonio, rather than his partner Marco del Buono, as the artist of the principal works in this group: the Aeneid cassone in the Jarves Collection, Yale University, as well as the Vergil manuscript in the Riccardiana, Florence (MS. 492). E. H. Gombrich supports the view originally propounded by Offner that several of Schubring's categories - The 'Dido Master', the 'Master of the Tournament of Piazza S. Croce' and the 'Cassone Master' - all originated in the same workshop, which Berenson designated as headed by the 'Master of the Jarves Cassoni'. The evidence now at our disposal leaves little doubt that this was the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni, which was one of the busiest in mid-15th century Florence.
Lit. A. Warburg in Jahrbuch der kgl. preuss. Kunstsammlungen, 1902, p. 248 (reprinted in Gessammelte Schriften, 1932, p. 188); P. Schubring, Cassoni, 1915, pp. 88 f., 430-37; W. Stechow in Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, i, 1944, pp. 5-21; E. H. Gombrich in J. W. C. I., xviii, 1955, pp. 16-34; B. Maracchi Biagiarelli, ed., Virgilius Opera ... Manoscritto 492 della Biblioteca Riccardiana, 1969; E. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (forthcoming).
Workshop of APOLLONIO di Giovanni
9
CASSONE PANEL: THE CONTINENCE OF
SCIPIO
Tempera on poplar
Size of panel 17 1/8 X 52 3/8 (43.5 X 133);
painted surface 16 X 51 (40.6 x 129.5);
thickness 5/8 (1.6)
5804-1859
On the left Scipio (indicated by an inscription SCIPIONE) stands by the carpet, which is covered with gold objects sent as ransom for Lucretia by her parents. Scipio both returned the ransom to the parents and Lucretia to her bridegroom Allucius (Livy 26:50; Valerius Maximus IV.3.I.). The couple stand on the opposite side of the carpet, while the right half of the picture is devoted to their wedding.
Like so many others, this panel once bore an ascription to Dello Delli, presumably because Vasari had described him as the inventor of cassone painting. Schiaparelli (1908) attributed it to the follower of Pesellino responsible for the Solomon cassone (7852-1862; no. 121) and various other related works. Schubring grouped it with a cassone in the Jarves Collection, Yale University, which he described as representing the Tournament of Piazza S. Croce, Florence. Subsequent authorities have attempted to reduce Schubring's categories. Offner (1927) attributed this panel to the Dido (Vergil) Master on the grounds of its similarity with the Aeneid cassone in the Jarves Collection, and Berenson (1932) described this group as studio of the Master of the Jarves Cassoni. When in 1944 the Oberlin Battle cassone and the Jarves Aeneid cassone were firmly placed in the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni, the V. & A. Museum Scipio panel automatically followed. The Oberlin cassone is dated 1463 and it is tempting to place this work in the same period or shortly afterwards.
The Continence of Scipio is rare in 15th century painting and even on cassoni there are only a few examples. Schubring lists two (nos. 302, 541) but these are from different workshops. They are not very similar in composition and neither of them contains the wedding scene.
Condition.Cleaned in 1961.
Prov.Bought in 1859 for £9 2S.
Lit.J. H. Pollen, Ancient and modern furniture, 1874, p. 131; Duc de Rivoli in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xxxv, 1887, p. 312 (Dello Delli); W. Crane in Magazine of Fine Arts, i-ii, 1906, p. 190 repr.; A. Schiaparelli, La casa fiorentina, 1908, p. 285, fig. 168; Schubring, Cassoni, p. 254, no. 141, pl. xxvii; R. Offner, Italian Primitives at Yale University, 1927, p. 30; B. Berenson, Italian pictures, 1932, p. 346 f.; ibid., Florentine School, i, 1963, p. 18 (as Apollonio di Giovanni)."
Materials
Tempera; Poplar
Techniques
Painting
Subjects depicted
Chest; Scipio; Cassoni; The siege of Kartagenea; Livy 26:50; Valerius Maximus IV.3.1.
Categories
Marriage
Collection code
PDP
