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V. The Talbot Casket and Related Late Medieval Leather Caskets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

J. Cherry
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Abstract

Late medieval wooden caskets decorated with leather have attracted much greater attention in Germany and Belgium than in England. The Spitzer collection is one of the first that included examples of them, and the first major survey that mentioned them was that of Dr. H. Kohlhausen in 1926. His discussion of Minnekästchen, the romantic name given in the nineteenth century to caskets with secular subjects, included both caskets of wood alone and wood covered with leather. He discussed leather caskets now in the Deutsches Ledermuseum at Offenbach and in the Cluny Museum, Paris but, since he was solely concerned with secular iconography, he did not discuss other leather caskets whose style and technique indicated that they had a related origin. The whole group of leather caskets, including the two already mentioned and also caskets at Lucca and in the collection of Mr. Robert Martin on loan to the Cloisters, New York, was first discussed as a whole by Dr. G. Gall in his magisterial survey of European leatherwork. He assigned the Offenbach and Cloisters caskets to northern France or Flanders in the second half of the fourteenth century and the Lucca casket to Northern France or Flanders around 1400. Earlier in 1952 Mme A. M. Marien Dugardin reviewed the evidence for a number of leather caskets mainly in Belgium museums but including the example in the Cluny Museum and concluded from their use of Flemish for the inscriptions around their lids that they were Flemish in origin. In 1975 Mr. H. Bober discussed the Martin casket on loan to the Cloisters and concluded that it was of Flemish origin and dated to about 1400 or slightly earlier. In contradiction to the previously expressed views R. Didier in 1978, in the catalogue of the exhibition Die Parler und der Schöne Stil, discussing the lid of a casket preserved at Nivelles rejected a Flemish origin for the group and suggested that the caskets found an origin in the French sphere of influence, probably in Paris. This article will see how far the casket recently acquired by the British Museum (pis. xxviii-xxxin a) relates to these caskets and will review the evidence for its place of production.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 107 , 1982 , pp. 131 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1982

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References

Notes

1 Spitzer collection. Sale catalogue 17th April to 16th June, 1893 (Paris, 1893), nos. 800–24.

2 Kohlhausen, H., Minnekästchen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1928).Google Scholar

3 Gall, G., Leder in Europäischen Kunsthandwerk (Braunschweig, 1965), pp. 78–9. I am grateful to Dr. Gall for discussing the problems of the caskets with me.Google Scholar

4 Dugardin, A. M. Marien, ‘Coffrets à Madone’, Bulletin des Mussés royaux d'art et l'histoire, XXIV (1962), 101–10.Google Scholar

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6 Didier, R., Die Parler und der Schöne Stil, 1350–1400, vol. 1 (Köln, 1978), p. 84.Google Scholar I do not propose to discuss either the Offenbach casket showing St. George or the Nivelles lid which shows the Virgin and Child and St. George since they are not as closely related to the group as the Lucca and Cloisters caskets. The Offenbach casket is discussed by G. Gall, op. cit., pp. 82–4 and the Nivelles cover in A. M. Marien Dugardin, op. cit. St. George was clearly a popular subject for the decoration of chests in Flanders; see Eames, P., Medieval Furniture (London, 1977), pp. 145–8.Google Scholar

7 Jewitt, L., A Guide to Alton Towers and the Surrounding District (Edinburgh, 1869).Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 32.

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11 Alton Towers Sales, Christies, 6th July to 8th August, 1857.

12 The casket does not appear in the 1928 Alton Towers sale (W. S. Bagshaw and Sons; Staffs. County Record Office D 240/K/22) since it was presumably kept at Ingestre Hall at that time.

13 Reg. no. 1977, 5–2. 1. National Art Collections Fund Report, 1977 (London, 1978), no. 2633, pp. 94–5.Google ScholarPubMed

14 The use of this amuletic inscription is discussed by Evans, J., Magical Jewels (Oxford, 1923), p. 128.Google Scholar

15 I am grateful to Anne Payne and Margaret Nixon for their help in reading this inscription, and to David Goodger who drew it together with the map and drawing of the base.

16 Seznec, J., Survival of Pagan Gods (New York, 1953), pp. 190–1Google Scholar quoting Petrarch, Africa, III, lines 186–9. The late medieval illustrations of gods are analysed in Panofsky, E. and Saxl, F., ‘Classical mythology in medieval art,’ Metropolitan Museum Studies, IV, 2 (1933), 228–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18 The best discussion of these games is Randall, R. H., ‘Frog in the Middle’, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, X (1958), 269–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 Le Menagier de Paris, trans, by E., Power (London, 1928), p. 102.Google Scholar

21 I. and Opie, P., Children's Games (Oxford, 1969), pp. 292–3.Google Scholar

22 Randall, L. M. C., Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley, 1966), p. 111.Google Scholar The six are Bodley 264 (see below); Cambridge Dd. 5.5, f. 280; Fitz. 298, f. 98; Trinity B. 11.22, f. 143 v.; Y.T. 8, f. 92; Y.T. 75, ff. 39, 146. There are three pictures in Bodleian 264 which may be interpreted as ‘frog’ or ‘hot cockles'; see James, M. R., The Romance of Alexander (Oxford, 1933), pp. 52, 97, 130v.Google Scholar

23 Dalton, O. M., Catalogue of Ivory Carvings (1909), no. 363.Google Scholar

24 Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg, GEW 668; see Heinz, D., Europäische Wandteppiche, 1 (Braunschweig, 1963), p. 40, pl. 21.Google Scholar

25 Victoria and Albert Museum no. 5668–1859. Tournai, early sixteenth-century.

26 The iconography of the Châtelaine de Vergiivory caskets have recently been discussed by Gross, Laila, ‘La Châtelaine de Vergi carved in ivory,’ Viator, X, (1979), 311–22.Google Scholar

27 For columbines see Freeman, M., The Unicorn Tapestries (New York, 1976), pp. 152–3Google Scholar; and also Fritz, R., ‘Aquilegia, die symbolische Bedeutung der Akelei’, Wallraf Richartz Jahrbuch, XIV (1952), 99–110.Google Scholar

28 Morand, K., Jean Pucelle (Oxford, 1962), p. 14.Google Scholar

29 The iconography of t h e Annunciation in Flemish fifteenthcentury painting is discussed by Panofsky, E., ‘The Friedsam Annunciation and the problem of the Ghent altarpiece’, Art Bulletin (1935), 433 ff.Google Scholar and Panofsky, E., Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 86.Google Scholar

30 Masterpieces of Tapestry exhibition catalogue, New York, 1974, no. 6; A. Brandenburg in Bulletin monumental, 128 (1970), 172; Rorimer, J. R., ‘The Annunciation Tapestry’, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XX (1961), 145–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 The basic article on this tapestry is Guesnon, A., ‘Le Hautelisseur Pierre Féré d'Arras, auteur de la tapisserie de Tournai (1402)’, Revue du Nord, I (1960), 201–15.Google Scholar

32 The Middle Ages, Treasures from the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Los Angeles, 1970), no. 72, p. 156.Google Scholar

33 Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München: The Annunciation by Fra Filippo Lippi.

34 Op. cit. in note 4.

35 Cluny Museum Paris no. C.L. 17056. This casket is closely paralleled, as A. Marien Dugardin noted, by a casket then in the trade and now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Unfortunately it has no inscription but the hair and headdresses on these two caskets provide the closest parallels with the Talbot caskets.

36 I am grateful to Dr. F. Verhaeghe of Ghent and Miss Anna Simoni of the British Library for help with the translations.

37 Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, V (1872).

38 The map in fig. 3 shows the linguistic frontier based on the work of Kurth, Professor G., La frontière linguistique en Belgique et dans le Nord de la France (Brussels, 1895)Google Scholar, and simplified borders of states in Flanders after Engel, J., Grosser Historischer Weltatlas (Munich, 1979), p. 74.Google Scholar

39 Meiss, M., French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry (1967), vol. 2, pl. 60.Google Scholar

40 I am grateful to Mr. Robert Martin for permitting me to publish the photographs of the casket. The casket was first described by Lafora, Jean in Arte Espanol (1926), 88–92. The most recent study is by H. Bober (see n. 5).Google Scholar

41 The Parement master is discussed by M. Meiss, op. cit., pp. 99–134. The iconography of the Adoration is discussed on p. 124 and the scene is illustrated on fig. 9.

42 The Lucca casket is described and discussed by Campetti, Placido, ‘Il Cofano di Balduccio degli Antelminelli nella Cattedrale di Lucca’, Dedalo, II (1922), 240–50Google Scholar; in the exhibition catalogue Mostra d'arte sacra (Lucca, 1957), p. 20, no. 22; and by M. Meiss, op. cit., p. 51.Google Scholar

43 Anderson, M. D., History and Imagery in British Churches (London, 1971), pp. 17–19Google Scholar; and Cave, C. J. P., Roof Bosses in Medieval Churches (1948), pp. 65–8.Google Scholar

44 A notable iconographic detail in the Resurrection scene, Christ stepping backwards out of the tomb, may be seen in a Book of Hours written and illuminated at Utrecht, c. 1410–20, B.L. Add. MS. 50005, fol. 135v

45 Jenni, U., Das Skizzenbuch der internationalen Gotik in den Uffizien (Vienna, 1976).Google Scholar

46 M. Meiss, op. cit., fig. 22.

47 The crucifixion is illustrated in Gall, G., Leder im europäischen Kunsthandwerk (Braunschweig, 1965), Abb. 63.Google Scholar

48 Guidi, P. and Pellegrinati, E., Inventari del vescovato delta cattedrale e di altre chiese di Lucca (Rome, 1921), pp. 255–7. The entry in the 1492 inventory reads: ‘Una cassetta di chuoio nella quale è una cassetta lavorata et scholpita da ogni lato et di sopra e figure di Sancti et fornita di argento in 4 verghe et quattro leoncini d'argento con toppa d'argento et chiudenda d'argento rotta et con manico di sopra di argento per potere portallo, di uncie 6 in circa et piue con molte reliquie e uno bussilo d'avolio et in quello e uno bussiletto bellissimo d'argento smaltato et molte relique; elle soprascritte cose dono uno che si domanda Balduccio et di questa ne in ditta cassetta lo inventario’. This last inventory dating from the first half of the fifteenth century survived and was published as an Appendix to document XXXII. The inventory is entitled Inventario delta cose che Balduccio vuol lasciare alia chiesa di S. Martino and the casket is described as ‘uno coffero bellissimo foderato di cuogio con figure della Passione di Cristo et della Nativita et molte altre storie, ornato tucto d'ariento con due uscelli ispartiti l'uno dall’ autro, facto oltra monti; eje di pregio, di fiorini cinquanta orcircha’.Google Scholar

49 Lazzareschi, E., Libro delta communita dei mercanti Lucchesi in Bruges (Milan, 1947), pp. xxv and xxxviii. I am grateful to Dr. Christine Meek for her help with the Antelminelli.Google Scholar

50 Owen, D. D. R., Noble Lovers (London, 1975), figs. 70 and 71. The manuscript is Paris B.N. MS. Fr. 15098.Google Scholar

51 W. Abraham, Edition of Codex Vindobonensis. Vienna N.B. MS. Ser. Nov. 2652. Losbuch in deutschen Reimpaaren (1973). Written at Prague c. 1380–90.

52 Neuwirth, J., Das braunschweiger Skizzenbuch eines mittelalterlichen Malers (Prague, 1897).Google Scholar A more recent account is Kutal, A., ‘The Brunswick sketch book and the Czech art of the eighties of the fourteenth century’, Sbornik praci filof fakulty Brnenske Univ., x, ser. F., vol. 5 (1961), 205–27. I am grateful to Mr. Nigel Morgan for this reference.Google Scholar

53 Dehaisnes, C., Documents et extraits divers concernant l'histoire de l'art dans la Flandre, l'Artois et le Hainault avant le XVe siècle (Lille, 1886), p. 486Google Scholar: 1368. A Haricot du bon I coffre de mariage lxqr. One of the most convincing examples of a marriage casket is the fifteenth-century silver coffret in the church of St. Avé, Brittany. This has a man and lady clasping hands on t h e back while on one end a man offers the lady his heart and on t he other she offers him a coronet. The front shows the Annunciation. Les tré;sors des églises de France (Paris, 1965), no. 329, pl. 168.Google Scholar

54 For example: 1361, 17'escrin de cuir boilly, ou les cuervrechefs et atours madame estoient … (Account of the execution of the will of Jeanne de Bretagne, March 1361, in C. Dehaisnes, op. cit., p. 426); 1367, à Jehan Thiebault, tout l'or et l'argent monnoye1, … qui sont dans un coffret de cuir bouli (Dehaisnes, op. cit., p. 470); 1401–1, à Gilles, le coffier, demeurant à Lille pour un estuy de cuir à mettre le tableau que Mds fait toujours mener avec lui (de Laborde, L., Les Dues de Bourgogne (Paris, 1849), vol. I, p. 181, no. 607).Google Scholar

55 For these caskets see O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of Ivories in the British Museum, nos. 368–70, pp. 125–7.

56 For example G. Gall, op. cit., figs. 90, 96, pp. 102–4.

57 Panofsky, E., Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), chapters IV and VI.Google Scholar