Italian, Siena, 14th century

C. Guerzi, Painting and Goldworking in Conversation. A Rare Fourteenth Century Sienese Casket, Milan, 2019

This beautiful and rare casket encapsulates the innovative artistic world of 14th-century Siena that was so brilliantly presented to audiences in London and New York last year in the exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350. In these exhibitions sculpture in marble and ivory, metalwork and textiles were shown alongside the painting - as they were in the landmark 1982/3 exhibitions Il Gotico a Siena and L’Art Gothique Siennois - because to understand Sienese painting it is necessary to explore the interdependence of all forms of artistic expression. To have been an artist in Siena in the first half of the fourteenth century was to experience a vibrant environment of artistic creativity stimulated by enthusiastic state, private and religious patronage. Vividly imagined in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s street scene in his Good Government fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico (1338-9), the shared influence of such a golden age created masterpieces in every field of artistic production.

A monographic study by Prof. Chiara Guerzi (available on request) has examined the importance and context of this outstanding casket. She notes that it is ‘attributable to a Sienese artist belonging to the close circle of the Lorenzetti brothers active in Siena before the mid-14th century and characterized by strong archaizing tendencies in the interpretation of the ornamentation [it] is currently the oldest work belonging to the rare typology of architectural caskets with a tapered lid, also known as ‘pagoda-style’ (op. cit. p. 23).

As an object made of moulded wood prepared with plaster, with gold and silver-gilt leaf on orange-red bole, burinated and painted in tempera with black and light blue pigments, the highly-skilled craftsman who created it has sought to challenge the boundaries between different artistic disciplines. It is simultaneously painting, woodwork and simulated metalwork. As Guerzi observes: ‘the abundant use of granulation, against which the plant motif is rendered in reserve in the areas left free of paint … confirms the desire to give this casket the precious and translucent appearance typical of gold objects. The entire surface of the casket was once gilded, with the exception of the dark borders framing the sides of the base and lid, and the outlines and light blue grounds of the medallions containing the gilded and reserved figures, which stand out like genuine champlevé enamels on a blue ground’.

Beyond its mimicking of gold and enamel works, the beautifully conceived images in quatrefoils of the Madonna and Child and five saints extend its definition as a wooden casket to be six miniature monochrome early Sienese paintings, in the manner of Lippo Vanni.

RELATED LITERATURE

L’art gothique siennois. enluminure, peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture, exh. cat., Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais, 1983; Il Gotico a Siena, Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, 1982; Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, exh. cat., London, National Gallery, 2024 and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025