Italian Cassoni

Fülszöveg

THE PRESENT VOLUME
ACQUAINTS THE READER WITH THE COLLECTION
OF ITALIAN WEDDING CHESTS, CASSONI,
HOUSED IN THE MUSEUMS OF MOSCOW,
LENINGRAD, KIEV,
AND OTHER CITIES IN THE SOVIET UNION.
The Renaissance in Italy was marked by a great upsurge in applied
arts: wood carving, bronzework, majolica, and other crafts. Cassoni
occupy a special place among the works created at the time. The
artistic value of the cassoni lies in their beautiful decoration, which
was usually made by outstanding painters and wood-carvers.
About seventy cassoni and separate front panels decorated with
painting, intarsia, pastiglia (stucco) work, and carving are preserved
in the museums of the Soviet Union. The work of such renowned
masters as Jacopo del Sellaio and Bernardo Fungai are found among
the painted panels. The chests designed by the well-known Floren-
tine architect Bernardo Buontalenti stand out of the large group of
carved cassoni. Some of the finest Roman furniture-makers of the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE PRESENT VOLUME
ACQUAINTS THE READER WITH THE COLLECTION
OF ITALIAN WEDDING CHESTS, CASSONI,
HOUSED IN THE MUSEUMS OF MOSCOW,
LENINGRAD, KIEV,
AND OTHER CITIES IN THE SOVIET UNION.
The Renaissance in Italy was marked by a great upsurge in applied
arts: wood carving, bronzework, majolica, and other crafts. Cassoni
occupy a special place among the works created at the time. The
artistic value of the cassoni lies in their beautiful decoration, which
was usually made by outstanding painters and wood-carvers.
About seventy cassoni and separate front panels decorated with
painting, intarsia, pastiglia (stucco) work, and carving are preserved
in the museums of the Soviet Union. The work of such renowned
masters as Jacopo del Sellaio and Bernardo Fungai are found among
the painted panels. The chests designed by the well-known Floren-
tine architect Bernardo Buontalenti stand out of the large group of
carved cassoni. Some of the finest Roman furniture-makers of the
sixteenth century are represented in Soviet museums by quite
» excellent pieces, among which are cassoni with reliefs from the life
of Julius Caesar done by craftsmen from the circle of Michelangelo./
A beautiful example of pastiglia decoration is a gilt stuccoed panel
executed after an engraving by a master of the school of the fa-
mous painter Antonio Pollaiuolo.
The collections of cassoni in the museums of the Soviet Union, the
most significant of which is in the Hermitage, allow us to charac-
terize the products of the major artistic centres of Italy: Florence,
Ve nice, Siena, Rome, and Northern Italy.
This volume is the first publication of the complete collection
of cassoni housed in Soviet museums. Vissza