Oak chest front, carved with biblical scenes and an inscription, Germany (Bremen), 1584

Oak chest front with central figural panel flanked by two projecting panels carved with coats of arms (unidenitifed 2015), and bordered top and bottom with the text DAT GESETTE IS UNS DORCH MOSEN GEGEVEN DE GNADE UNDE WARHEIT IS DORCH IHESUM GEGEVEN WORDEN NEMANDT HEFT GODT IVWERLE GESEEN DE EIN[i] GESOHN
['Law is given us by Moses. Grace and Truth is given us through nobody else but God's own son.' John, I, 17]

The chest front is constructed with two horizontal planks (one narrow, one wide) jointed (pegged tenon and mortise) to wide lateral stiles. The chest from which it comes was originally of joined construction, with the chest ends and bottom held by a rebate on the front. The chest front retains grooves that would have held a till at each end, and is fitted with a lock (with the keyhole in the lion's mouth).

The panel is divided in the centre by a lion mask above a tree, the left branches of which are barren and the right covered with leaves. Against the trunk is a seated figure of man with the words 'Ecce Home' above and the date 1584 below on the plinth on which he sits. The seated man is flanked on the left by a standing, old bearded man (Moses) of the old dispensation, and on the right by a younger, bearded man carrying a book (John the Baptist) of the new dispensation.
The left half of the panel is carved with the following objects:
Moses and the tablets of the Law, pointing to the brazen serpent set up before the 12(?) tents and the figures of Israelites (Numbers xxi, 7-9); and below a skeleton in a tomb in the foreground Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge and the inscription below, set within a cartouche IN ADAM OMNES MORIUMTUR (sic) ITA ET IN CHRISTO OMNES VIVICASUNTER [taken from I Corinthians. XV-22].
The right half of the panel is carved with the following objects:
A cityscape with many towers and spires, and the Crucifixion in the background, witha standing, blindfolded (?) figure representing Faith to whom approaches an angel bearing a cross (needs to be checked again), and in the foreground an angel bearing a scroll with the inscription GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO appearing to the shepherds guarding their sheep. To the far right Christ with a tall cross, rising from the tomb above a sleeping solider, with the word VICTORIA on a cartouche above and the inscription below on a cartouche O MORS EROCVA [ie EROTUA MORS ET MORSUS TUUS INFERNE]

The projecting stiles at either end are carved with coats of arms. On the left per pale, three roses and two bends undy; Crest, a dagger-hilt or cross in pale, hilt in chief rising out of the helmet. On the right a fesse between three roses: Crest, a rose slipped between two horns barry. In 1912 Dr Brinkmann, Director of the Hamburg Museum stated that the coat of arms on the left are those of Brand (which appear on the front of the Town Hall in Bremen). The arms on the right are those of Meier, also a Bremish family (several members of whom appear in the senate of Bremen). Three unions between these families took place in the 16th and 17th centuries. Of these the marriage connected with this coffer is probably that of Johan Brand auf de Rucksburg with Gesche (Gesa) Meier, daughter of Jurgen Meier, who became senator in 1562, and died in 1570. The actual date of the marriage is not known, but probably took place betwen 1580 and 90.

Three short sections of moulding with inscription were missing (2015)

Bought for £85 from Edward Parker, 4 Bishopsgate Street, London EC.
RF 1910/5662

At least ten other Bremen carved chest fronts with the same scenes exist or have been published:
FALKE, Otto von, Deutsche möbel des mittelalters und der renaissance, hrsg. von Otto von Falke, mit 600 abbildungen (Stuttgart, 1924), p.241 (one located in Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and another recorded as Früher Sammlung H. Allmers).
KREISEL, Heinrich: Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels (Munich, 1970)
Vol. 1. Von den Anfagen bis zum Hochbarock, fig.284 (dated 1559)
VON STÜLPNAGEL, Karl: Quellen und Studien zur Reigionalgeschichte Niedersachsens Band 6: Die gotischen Truhen der Lüneburger Heideklöster. (Museumsdorf Cloppenburg, 2000), no.780 (present whereabouts unknown).
W.A.Thorpe 'Spruce and Danske: the origins of Baltic chests' in Country Life Annual, 1951, pp.152-162 (FWK F4781), showing fig.1 a view of the Bullock chest at Abbots Langley church, Hertfordshire - a Bremen, painted chest-front rebuilt into a later chest, reputed to have come from Faulkbourne Hall, Essex, possibly commissioned by a member of Bullock family.
The Focke Museum, Bremen has five chest fronts of this type (correspondence with Uta Bernsmeier, Curator Furniture, Textiles and Fashion, Ceramics, Glass; October 2005)

The presence of pigments on the Abbots Langley church chest raised the interesting possibility that such chests were originally painted. No traces survive on the V&A chest.

Between about 1550 and 1650 the 'snitger' school of wood-carvers in Bremen produced decorated woodwork used on large chests, many of them apparently made to celebration a marriage. Favourite subjects were Old Testament stories like Esther and Ahasuerus, the Judgement of Solomon,the Prodigal Son and the Law versus Grace. Kreisl (fig.281) illustrates a Lüneberg chest dated 1545 where the narrative scene extends without structural interruption across the front legs, but on other examples dated 1559 to 1592 more closely associated with Bremen, the main narrative is confined to the front panel, with the front legs which extended 15-20cm to the floor (or panels mounted onto the front legs) bearing heraldry, suggesting that this was the distinctive Bremen product produced over several generations. Some of the arms have been identified (the groom's family on the right hand side, the bride's family on the left) and support the thesis that these chests celebrated marriages among the nobility. The arms on the V&A chest have not yet been identified.

The theme 'Der Mensch zwischen Gesetz und Gnade' (Mankind between Law and Grace) refers to the Lutheran thesis of 'Werkgerechtigkeit und Glaube' (the work of justice and belief). The iconographic origins of all these scenes probably derives from images by Lucas Cranach the Elder, but the print that was perhaps used by the carvers has not yet been identified.

For a study of this group of chests see:
Die bremischen Truhen mit reformatorischen Darstellungen und der Ursprung ihrer Motive, by Ernst Grohne (Abhandlungen und Vorträge herausgegeben von der Bremer Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 10. Heft 2, August 1936) [copy on FWK green catalogue]
See also V&A 246-1869
A chest front (30.5" x 77") with Biblical scenes and text along the top and bottom, dated 1568, offered by Period Oak Antiques, 8/2015

This panel originally formed the front of a large storage chest. From the evidence of the coats of arms at either end (on the right that of Brand (or Brant); on the left that of Meier) it was probably made to celebrate a marriage between members of the two families. It is likely that they lived in or near the German city of Bremen, where this type of chest was a speciality.

The complex biblical scenes carved across the front show Adam and Eve, and Moses and the brazen serpent on the left, and on the right the annunciation to the shepherds and Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. They derive from images designed by the artist Lucas Cranach in the first half of the 16th century. These scenes elaborate the Christian theme developed by the religious reformer Martin Luther - the new covenant of salvation by grace through Christ, as opposed to the old covenant of salvation by observance of the law of Moses. This is made explicit by the inscription in the top and bottom borders DAT GESETTE IS UNS DORCH MOSEN GEGEVEN DE GNADE UNDE WARHEIT IS DORCH IHESUM GEGEVEN WORDEN NEMANDT HEFT GODT IVWERLE GESEEN DE EIN[i] GESOHN which may be translated as 'Law is given us by Moses. Grace and Truth is given us through nobody else but God's own son.'

W.5-1909