{"id":22563,"date":"2020-10-15T11:01:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T11:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/?p=22563"},"modified":"2020-10-15T11:04:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T11:04:22","slug":"a-luxurious-16th-century-brides-chest-in-the-museu-nacional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/a-luxurious-16th-century-brides-chest-in-the-museu-nacional\/","title":{"rendered":"A luxurious 16th-century bride\u2019s chest in the Museu Nacional"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Daniel Vilarr\u00fabias<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The chest was perhaps the container par excellence in Catalonia in the early modern period<\/strong>, since the type appears in the mid 15th<\/sup> century, coexisting with iron-bound or heavier-looking chests, and it disappears in the middle of the 18th<\/sup> century, when the wardrobe became widespread and the chest of drawers suddenly appeared, dressing room furniture that was more suitable for keeping clothes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The formal and decorative development of chests can be followed throughout the early modern period, and, as the expert Eva Pascual has pointed out, it is perhaps one of the few areas where this happens so continuously throughout such a long timespan. Both post-mortem<\/em> inventories of the goods in a house and some interiors depicted in paintings reveal that the proportion of<\/strong> chests and containers<\/strong> in houses was far greater than that of tables and other kinds of furniture<\/strong>, from the late 15th<\/sup> century onwards at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were two main types of chest, those with two panels separated by a moulded upright (mig cofre<\/em>), and those with three panels (cofre major<\/em>); we believe that the inside of the latter measured about one cana<\/em>, which in Barcelona was the equivalent of 156 cm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bride\u2019s chest with the Annunciation in the Museu Nacional<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the Museu Nacional\u2019s permanent exhibition there is a splendid example of a walnut bride\u2019s chest<\/a> \u2013 or perhaps poplar. As a mig cofre<\/em> its front has two panels separated by the upright or monjo<\/em> decorated with fretted tracery, and the entire piece was raised off the floor by a very powerful and striking high moulded and fretted plinth, giving it a maximum width of 140 cm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bridal<\/a>
<\/em>Bridal chest with the Annunciation<\/a><\/em>, second quarter of the 16th<\/sup> century<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The right-hand half is compartmentalized with drawers opening from the corresponding front panel, which acts as a door. These characteristics and the presence of moulded lozenges as the main decoration of the surface of the panels refers us to the type of flat lidded, moulded chest<\/strong> that<\/strong> originated in the 15th<\/sup> century <\/strong>and was developed during the second half of that century. Some ornamental details, however, suggest a later evolution of this model, which was made until the 1540s and even later. Supporting this hypothesis are the general gilding of the entire piece of furniture, the subtle flattening of the relief of the mouldings (strip, half cane and fillet), the presence of talon mouldings on the plinth<\/strong>, especially the one that appears polychromed in blue on gold in the centre of it, the stylization of the lozenges, which here have been flattened to occupy the entire panel, the estofat<\/em> floral motifs at different points of the piece and the paintings on the inside of the lid. The tradition of painting this part of chests meant that these pieces of furniture formed part of a well-to-do household\u2019s<\/strong> furnishings <\/strong>and that they were usually shown open, and, if necessary, a simpler second lid was made for them, in order to hide the content of the chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Parts<\/a>
Parts of the <\/em>Bridal chest with the Annunciation<\/a><\/em><\/a>, <\/em>second quarter of the 16th<\/sup> century<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This chest would be a luxurious product<\/strong> almost certainly made in workshops in Barcelona in the first half of the 16th<\/sup> century<\/strong>. To be precise, I would date the piece to between 1500 and 1520<\/strong>, but this one must have been worked on later: the year 1548 appears in the painting on the lid (quite notable in itself and which would perhaps be deserving of a separate study), in the grotesque decoration of the die the Virgin Mary is leaning against. Moreover, the moulding of this lid is quite a lot flatter and does not go with the work on the front and the plinth. In any case, done in two stages or in a single one, it is a piece of furniture typologically earlier than the chests decorated with portraits that began to appear around 1540.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Catalan bride\u2019s chests<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Of the chests decorated with portraits, the one in the Museu Episcopal de Vic<\/a>, attributed to the painting workshop of Perot Gasc\u00f3<\/a> (1526-1546), has become the paradigmatic piece and perhaps the oldest one to have survived, even though the original plinth has been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Perot<\/a>
Perot Gasc\u00f3 and workshop, Bride\u2019s chest,<\/a><\/em> 1529 – 1546. Museu Episcopal de Vic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The piece that most closely matches the chest we are talking about appears photographed in 1923 in the file on a chest in the Amatller Institute of Hispanic Art, a piece that was then conserved in the Castle of Santa Florentina in Canet de Mar<\/a> (I do not know if it is still there). The panels with lozenges and a cartouche inside are so similar that they could almost be considered to have come from the same workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Chest<\/a>
Chest in the Institut Amatller d\u2019Art Hisp\u00e0nic, 1923. \u00a9Institut Amatller d\u2019Art Hisp\u00e0nic-Mas C-32949<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Also showing close typological links to the piece we are looking at is the bride\u2019s chest in the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs in Paris<\/a>, which appears catalogued as an anonymous Cassone<\/em> from northern Italy, circa 1510-1520. I consider it to be a Catalan work contemporaneous to the one we are studying, produced in a workshop very close by and, at the most, with a lid repainted or changed very soon after the chest, which has lost its plinth, was made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we seek decorative parallels for the fretwork<\/strong> and the plinth<\/strong>, a few examples could be found in the Museu del Disseny HUB in Barcelona. For example, the continuous frieze of soufflets<\/em> that we find on the bottom of the plinth is almost identical to the one on the Saint Philip and Saint Bartholomew chest with drawers and also on the plinth of chest no. 4981 in the Museu Episcopal de Vic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mestre
Master of Viella, (Bartomeu Garcia?)<\/a> \/ painter, Saint Philip and Saint Bartholomew, 1475 – 1565 Museu de les Arts Decoratives de Barcelona. Fotografia: CRBMC – Enric Gracia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fald\u00f3
Plinth of chest no. 4981 in the Museu Episcopal de Vic. Barcelona (?), late 15th century – first quarter of the 16th century. Museu Episcopal de Vic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We find the large pronounced talons with estofat<\/em> blue gilding on the chests The Annunciation<\/em><\/a> (circa 1550) and The Nativity and the Epiphany<\/em><\/a> (between 1520 and 1550), the latter being the one that shows a greater degree of similarity to the one in the Museu Nacional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
<\/em>The Annunciation<\/em>, <\/a>16th<\/sup> century. Photograph: CRBMC – Enric Gracia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Circle<\/a>
Circle of Pere Nunyes and Enrique Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a> \/ painter, The Nativity and the Epiphany<\/a><\/em> (between 1520 and 1550). Photograph: CRBMC – Enric Gracia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, the sculpted cartouches that we find inserted inside the lozenges involve carved decoration <\/strong>along the lines of what can be seen on the chest The Annunciation<\/a><\/em>, by the circle of Pere Nunyes and Enrique Fern\u00e1ndez, which has traditionally been dated to between 1520 and 1550.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
the circle of Pere Nunyes and Enrique Fern\u00e1ndez,
The Annunciation<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/a> <\/em>1525-1550. Museu de les Arts Decoratives de Barcelona. Fotografia: CRBMC – Enric Gracia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the late 19th<\/sup> century, it was fashionable (de bon to<\/em>, to use an expression of Mn. Gudiol) to have pieces of Gothic or Renaissance furniture in well-to-do houses, and<\/strong> they were therefore highly sought after and coveted<\/strong>. Due to this fashion, they often appear greatly repaired and retouched. In the words of the museologist from Vic: \u201cFor many years it has been fashionable to possess an old piece of furniture to decorate a workshop or a lounge. That was the reason they were sought after and when something interesting was found, not only was it unearthed and restored, but it was also completed and even taken apart and used to mend capricious items of furniture that, although they contained really old parts, should be considered, if not falsifications, at least examples that are useless for the archaeologist or the artist<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our case, on the other hand, the piece has survived in a fairly original state<\/strong>. We have information about this piece going back a long way, because it aroused the interest of those who saw it. In 1881 it appeared reproduced on the pages of the newspaper La Il\u00b7lustraci\u00f3 Catalana<\/em>, in an article by Eduard T\u00e1maro, who also tells us about its owner: \u201cthis chest which is meticulously conserved in the house of D. Francisco Pl\u00e1, the well-known owner of Monistrol de Montserrat<\/em>\u201d. This person purchased part of the old palace of the abbots of Montserrat, called the \u201cPalau prioral\u201d or \u201cLa Sala\u201d, and he refurbished it to convert it into his residence according to the style of the late 19th<\/sup> century. In any case, we do not know if this chest came from an antiques dealer or whether Francesc Pla found it there when he purchased the property in Monistrol. Nor do we know how it ended up in the possession of the person who left it to the Museu Nacional in 1966, Alberto Par Espina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bride\u2019s<\/a>
Bride\u2019s chest, 16th<\/sup> century. La Il\u00b7lustraci\u00f3 Catalana<\/em>, 1881<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Related links<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

New display of Renaissance and Baroque\u00a0. Medieval inertia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Vilarr\u00fabias<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Vilarr\u00fabias The chest was perhaps the container par excellence in Catalonia in the early modern period, since the type appears in the mid 15th century, coexisting with iron-bound or heavier-looking chests, and it disappears in the middle of the 18th century, when the wardrobe became widespread and the chest of drawers suddenly appeared, dressing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":22565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1],"tags":[1493,783],"class_list":["post-22563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collection","category-general","tag-mobiliari","tag-renaixement","author-guest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/una-caixa-nuvial-del-segle-XVI-del-MNAC.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4tWCI-5RV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22563"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22582,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22563\/revisions\/22582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}