^RKBStmh>?«f THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN GIFT OF PROFESSOR HOPE GLADDING ITALIAN RENAISSANCE FURNITURE BY WILHELM von BODE TRANSLATED BY MARY E. HERRICK WITH 134 ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM HELBURN, Inc. 418 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK COPYRIGHTED 192? BY WILLIAM HELBURN, INC. Add'! ENV DESIGN DESIGN INTRODUCTION Llsmi1 For some years past, so lively an interest has been manifested in Italian furniture of the Renaissance, and also of the periods subsequent thereto, that the publication of this book needs no apology. Two books hitherto, George Leland Hunter's Italian Furniture and Inter- iors and William M. Odom's History of Italian Furniture from the Fourteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries, have ministered to the general desire for information upon this topic. Various magazines, especially House and Garden and Good Furniture, have published sundry well illustrated articles upon the subject. The museums in different parts of the country have made praisewor- thy efforts to acquire and to display appropriately the best specimens of Italian mobiliary art tbey could obtain. Architects and decorators have extensively em- ployed Italian pieces in equipping houses with whose furnishing they were commissioned, and in numerous other ways a taste for Italian furniture has been so stimulated that furniture manufacturers are producing tables, chairs, chests, and other objects of domestic appointment from designs admittedly inspired by Italian models, while industrial art schools are paying more or less attention in their courses to the work of Renaissance Italian cabinet-makers. On the one hand, in many cases where the design of houses has been per- ceptibly influenced by Italian ideas, there is naturally provided a background either suitable for the use of furniture of kindred provenance, or indeed actu- ally requiring it. On the other hand, not a few interiors of composite and eclectic inspiration are so constituted architecturally that they supply a kindly foil and invite the employment of just such movables as Italian Renaissance design affords. In either case a sound knowledge of the forms and methods practised by the Italian craftsmen is an essential desideratum not only for the architect, the interior decorator, the furniture designer, and the student of industrial art, but also for the layman of cultivated tastes and a catholic sense of appreciation. Such a volume as this cannot fail, therefore, to be a welcome addition to the literature upon the subject — a literature that is none too large — and it will sub- stantially contribute to foster understanding of a rich field of decorative art whence we may draw both pleasure and many a profitable lesson. Study of the plates and the accompanying data will reveal not only a con- siderable diversity of decorative processes, used either singly or in combina- tion, but also the workings of a marvellously fertile invention in the marshall- ing and adaptation of a wealth of decorative motifs. Each part of Italy was so strongly individual in its manifestations of the decorative arts, no less than in the developments of painting, sculpture, and architecture, that it is not sur- prising to find these local individualities plainly reflected in the furniture pro- duced, although, of course, there is unmistakably present the bond of an in- forming spirit of design common throughout the whole country at any given period. 3 7G5 The plates in the ensuing pages are so arranged that it is possible to trace both the local differences and the general underlying similarity. The reader may examine Tuscan types in one place, Ligurian in another, Umbrian in a third division, and so on through Lombard, Venetian, Roman, and all other local man- ifestations. This arrangement of the book, in a manner conducive to conven- ient comparison and analysis, will be found one of its most valuable features. Italian interiors of the period when the pieces illustrated were made, and for the appointment of which those pieces were intended, may be broadly classi- fied as being severely restrained. Interiors of the former category were elabor- ate in the composition of their fixed decorations and displayed all the wealth of polychrome treatment that could be devised in the way of either frescoes or diapered patterns for the walls; not infrequently there was the added embellish- ment of panelling composed of carved and inlaid wood, or of colored marbles; and the ceilings, whether plastered and painted with glowing designs, or beamed with carved corbels and polychrome enrichment, correspond in splendor with the walls. Interiors of the second category were simple in scheme, often to the extent of austerity, and depended for their distinction upon the emphasis of enrich- ment concentrated at one or more points where it would prove most effective. The concentrated enrichment might consist of the painted and gilt corbels, beams, and panels of the ceiling; of polychrome doors; or of an elaborately wrought fireplace. For the enhancement of the spots of color or carving, the plain walls served as admirable foils. In either case it was necessary to the best results that the furniture be rich in quality. For the ornate interior, rich workmanship was essential to render the furniture in keeping with its highly organized background. On the other hand, richly wrought furniture in a room of austere character ensured the val- uable element of contrast. Italian rooms of the Renaissance period were sparsely furnished according to the notions of many people at the present day. In a country like Italy, where it is not only possible but inviting to live in the open for so great a part of the year, and where so much use is made of the gardens, there is no occasion for houses to be so fully furnished as in more northern latitudes where a far greater proportion of the time must inevitably be spent within doors. When the domestic habits of the period, and other conditions also, dictated the employment of a relatively small number of pieces, it was possible, and in- deed natural, in accordance with the ideal of quality rather than quantity, to make each item of furniture a finished work of art, complete in itself and not dependent upon adjacent pieces to give it its value. Even when cassoni were made in pairs, to give symmetry of contour in certain places, the decorations often displayed not a little variation. The masters of the time understood har- mony without stupid iteration, and the pernicious idea of iresome "tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee" repetition in so-called suites was left to a less inventive age to exploit. Another element that contributed to strong individualism exhibited by sep- arate pieces was the fact that eminent artists in that age of manifold activities often "deemed it worthy of their best efforts to design a single piece of furni- ture and execute it with their own hands." When Botticelli or Andrea del Sar- to, and the ablest of their pupils, painted cassone panels, or when Donatello or Bernardino Ferrante wrought the carving of a chest, a table, or a cassa panca, we may well understand why each object possessed so much character. With some preliminary conception of the rooms themselves, and of the na- ture of the furniture that went into them, the student of Renaissance decor- ative art may go on to an intelligent appreciation of the pieces illustrated in this book. One fact, however, must be borne in mind. The compiler chose for illus- tration chiefly examples of what are usually called "museum pieces." Within the compass of a small book, where it is impossible adequately to illustrate the entire mobiliary development of an age, it is quite defensible to select the finest pieces of their several kinds for presentation. But we must remember that much of the simpler furniture of the period, while not possessing the sumptuous carved or painted enrichment of the master-pieces, nevertheless had a goodly share of grace of form and dignity of ornament. Those minded to pursue the subject further will finr 4 admirable collections accessible for study in the museums of the Italian cities, in the South Kensing- ton Museum in London, and in the different American museums — especially in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn and Chicago — where new acquisi- tions are continually being made and where every facility is placed at the dis- posal of the student. FOREWORD The invitation to work upon a second edition of the Manual of Italian Furniture of the Renaissance came to me from the House that published it in 1902, with an accompanying question regarding translations. This gave me agreeable proof of consideration for my efforts to bring together the widely distributed, and tor the most part neglected, material, which I have endeavored to place in its order with reference to the period and the school to which it be- longed. I know that it was only an attempt, and that it is on the whole, the first, so in many respects it needs completion and rectification. Although the value ot their art handicraft is well understood in Italy, the authorities, until now, have fur the most part hindered any consideration of it, on account of their anxiety to keep their pictures and works of art in the country. Unfortu- nately, in the meantime the ever-diminishing stock of old furniure will be so thoroughly ransacked by the art dealer that, later, what has been neglected can never be recovered. Italy is indebted to several art inspired collectors and deal- ers that there are at present in Italian museums the beginnings, at least after some correction, of a number of excellent collections. Ahead of all the rest are those of the Marchese d'Azeglio, in the Museo Civico at Turin and in his castle in the hills of Piedmont; ot Cav. Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, whose museum is the foremost art foundation of Italy; of the brothers Bagatti-Valsecchi in Milan: of the Frenchman, A. Carrand, who in his collection of small works of art and in the art craft work of the National Museum of Florence, has left behind him a priceless gift; of the dealer in antiques, Elia Volpi, who in fitting up his ad- mirably restored Davanzati-Davizzi palace in Florence, has given a wonderful example of Italian furniture and its placement. Since a satisfactorily complete assemblage of these things is no longer possible, it is the more important that those scattered about in the museums and found in the collections of other countries should be intelligently sifted and the results compiled. In order, how- ever, gradually to arrive at a trustworthy representation of the house furnish- ings of the different parts of Italy, it should be the special task of our Italian colleagues to bring together as completely as possible, the material concerning them to be found in contemporary pictures, documents, and writings; a task which I, unfortunately, on account of my age as well as my infirmity, cannot undertake. For help in my work I have particularly to thank the great Italian dealers in antiques through whose hands, for the last ten years, the most and the best ol Italian furniture has passed, and especially Messrs. Stefano Bardini, Elia Volpi, and Lu ; gi Grassi, of Florence. BODE FLORENCE AND TUSCANY In the Middle Ages the Italian living-room was, according to our present day conception, almost bare. As even now in the old Italian peasant's house (those of the Province of Venetia yet show plainly the old Longobard type) the hearth in the middle and the masonry about it form the natural abiding place of the inhabitant in the cold and damp seasons, so the chimney-piece, usually of. colossal form, was the most prominent feature and obviously the central point in the room of a medieval palace. Around the walls were benches which, by open-, ing the seat, could be used at the same time as chests and on these, at least in certain rooms, great soft cushions made the seat more comfortable. A long table (only in exceptional cases were there more) stood in front of the benches; more often it was. set up before them when it was needed, being made up of two trestles holding a heavy plank. Near by, and before the hearth, stood una- dorned stools in braided straw. In a smaller room a low bed was constructed, with high steps running around it that were used both as chests and as seats, a row of unornamented stools and chairs being the only additional furniture. To accommodate the necessary household utensils and vessels, where they did not find a place in the chests, cupboards were built into the thick walls of the rooms and chambers. These were seldom closed. This scanty furniture was of a simple form and substantial build; it was handed down from one genera- tion to another without much change or addition. The new period — the Renaissance — did not at first cause any fundamental change in this disposition of household effects; it found its task in this field in the perfecting of church furnishings. The choir stalls, the bishop's throne, the pulpit, the organ, the sacristy wardrobes and desks, the framing ot the altai pictures, and the like, had, particularly in Florence, large monumental form, and were enlivened not only by modest wood-carving and beautiful intarsia, but occasional^ also by the finest coloring through painting. Moreover the town halls, hospitals, libraries, and other public buildings, were fitted up with similar furniture, at times even very splendidly. First toward the middle of the XV century, outside Florence first in the second half of the Quattrocento, with the urge of individualism and the more pronounced cultivation of the ego, the demand for richer and more comfortable* furnishings for the house became livelier and more general. In the time of the great Medici and under their leadership the Florentine house acquired its modern furnishings; new forms, even new combinations of furniture, answer- ing to the modern demand for comfort, were found and perfected. In this de- velopment the influence of church furniture betrays itself plainly in the severe straight forms, in the frugal disposition of effective carving, as in the prefer- ence for coloring by means of painting and gilding, and notably through the use of different colored woods. The further development of Florentine cabinet work is based on the forms that were found in this time. Michelangelo's activities as sculptor and architect had, in the second and third decade of the Cinquecento, even in this handicraft, a different significance. His ''cabinet ar- chitecture," as Jakob Burckhardt in his "Michelangelos Innendekoration in der Laurentiana" and in the "Gruft der Mediceer," indicates, brought to architec- ture entirely new forms and concepts; it offered an abundance of motives for cabinet work, capable of development. Thence came the characteristic Baroque movement in form, and especially in the decoration, of the Florentine High Re- naissance. The form with movement and ornament full of expression led to abandoning the coloring of furniture, which was left in its natural hue, strength- ened, to be sure, with color pigment and the well toned gilding of certain pro- jecting ornaments. It was after the middle of the century that the forms be- came simpler and more architectural, for that reason, however, more useful and less picturesque. One of the most interesting and at the same time the most important pieces of Renaissance furniture is the chest, cassa, or cassone, which is of great significance in the life of the Italian. Since the chests by the bed were consid- ered the principal pieces in the outfit of a young married couple, the most im- portant ones were designated bride, or wedding, chests. In the Middle Ages chests were used also as portable furniture and because of the roving life led by the richer classes, nobility as well as merchants, were transformed into trav- elling baggage in many different ways. Before everything the chest carried, with the clothing, money and jewels, that on account of the uncertain condi- tions, could not safely be left at home. Serving this purpose gave to them, in Italian as well as in French the name, cassa or coffret. It was necessary to put into the "coffers" at the same time clothing, laundry, and all kinds of useful things, even to beds, carpets, weapons, cooking utensils, and so on, to take with them, as the inns, when there were any, for the most part offered nothing but bare walls and a hearth or a fireplace. On that account they took care so to arrange these cotters or chests, inside and out, that they could turn them into seats or tables. People of rank took with them on their travels numerous large and small coffers. So we find with the permanently fixed wall bench (Which was, we have said, used to hold linen and clothing), also movable chests; these stood around the sides of the room. In the fifteenth century and even until the sixteenth, these (the wedding chests) were decidedly the most valued and the most sumptuous pieces in the palace, particularly in Tuscany. Here there was an independent guild of chest painters, among whom occasionally the foremost artists undertook the decoration of chests and similar pieces, laying out on them rich compositions with antique and allegorical motives. From the unusually numerous pieces that have been preserved, Paul Schubring in his splendid work, "Cassoni," has brought out a very complete group of Early Renaissance chests and chest paintings. Their rich artistic embellishment seems notably to have come out of the great hospitals, foundling asylums, and similar institutions, such luxury indicating the possession of a considerable revenue. Among a number of such chests that came, in 1880, into the dealers' hands from the storehouse of S. Maria Nuova, were characteristic examples of such Florentine cassoni of the 3nd of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. They are mostly high and have a rounded cover, so they could not have been used as seats. On a painted ground a moulded decoration in color is applied; knights and minnesingers, conventionalized animals and plants, or ornaments, bedecked the different sides and the cover; between them were flat gaily painted iron hoops. A pair of these chests, that had been preserved in their own place and position, are now in the Museo Nazionale in Florence (111. 1). At the same time (1400) essentially smaller and lighter chests for private use were produced that were flat on the top, and on the front, toward the bottom, were arched, and had a short foot-board beneath. These were painted with the arms and emblems of the family (111. 2). Only these and similar light, plain chests could be taken on journeys. The Florentine chests of the fifteenth century have regular straight sides, flat or slightly rounded covers, and strong simple bases with or without lion feet. A frequent, very characteristic variety of these chests that originated in Tus- cany in the Cinquecento, is decorated on the front with gilded low relief in ap- plied forms of moulded plaster: plants (copied from contemporaneous patterns for stuffs), animals, emblems and fabulous beasts, all done in a very conven- tional, heraldic manner. Occasionally also there were sumptuous compositions, notably of battles, the tasks of Hercules, allegorical or mythological figures or scenes (111. 3 to 5), that were at times modelled by prominent artists, but they also were, as a rule, treated very conventionally. These appear in Florence as well as in Siena and the neighboring cities. The vaulted or curved top was cus- tomarily gilded and had a simple decoration of carving or applied low relief: on the ends were painted coats-of-arms or ornaments, and iron handles for lifting the chest. The partiality for inlaid woodwork in the Quottrocento led to the employ- ment of intarsia also, in the ornamentation of the chests, that were then of un- usually stately construction, with fine profile work, as well as consummately beautiful design. A number of the most noted Florentine architects and sculp- tors were from birth intarsia workers and kept their flourishing and remunera- tive workshops near by, even when they were among the most sought after of the architects. From these shops the stately chests went out that, as we see in pictures, were also, on account of their height, turned into tables (111. page 7); the decorations on the front of these showed putti with wreaths, or on each side ' of a coat-of-arms, city views, musical instruments, and the like; more rarely a rich composition in intarsia is shown, while the moulding consists of delicate ornament that is also done in woods (111. 8-11). How cherished the chests of this time were, and how they were valued, is best witnessed by the number of such cassoni that are decorated with paintings by the hands of the foremost Florentine painters. Among famous chest painters like Dello Delli, Marco del Buono. Apollonio di Giovanni and others, Pesellino, Botticelli, Filippino. Paolo Uccelli, Signorelli, Piero di Cosimo and other re- * nowned painters of the Quottrocento, in Florence as well as Siena, have decor- ated chests. Even in the first decade of the Cinquecento we see prominent ar- tists like Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, Granacci, Bacchiacca and Pontormc engaged in the work. "Not only in the Medici Palace and in all old Medician houses, but in ail the principal houses in Florence one finds such chests even yet," Vasari relates. The painted sides of these chests decorate today, as paint- ings, the largest museums. The favorite subjects are tales borrowed from the Old Testament, the an- cient sagas or the Italian novelle; the deeds of young David, the Trojan war, the Labors of Hercules or the adventures of ^Eneas, the story of Esther, of Luc- rezia, Judith, Virginia, Penelope, Griselda, and so on, including allegorical com- positions with love and truth as themes. Occasionally also there were representa- tions of the time, such as battles, hunts, tournaments, festivals of all kinds, and other themes that expressed the sentiment of young married couples (111. 1). This truly monumental piece of furniture, besides being a favorite wedding present among the great families of the Quattrocento, held a prominent place set up against the walls of the room, and was sometimes raised on detached, del- icately executed supports, which at the same time protected it. Unfortunately, hardly one of these most valuable chests has been preserved intact, for the paint- ings have been taken out, they being the only parts that were valued, and that the galleries wished to exhibit; the rest was regarded as worthless. Such a chest, without doubt, was the stately Strozzi cassone, which was completed for the wedding of a Strozzi with a Medici in the year 1513. It is now in the Berlin Kunstgewerbe-Museum. The painted front has been taken out and replaced by an older intarsia picture (111. 10). The same is true ol various similar large chests, the form and decoration of which permit us to infer an embellishment of painted sides. The majority of the painted chests were, however, adorned by the merry representations of the chest painter or with ornamental decoration, mostly of coats-of-arms and emblems that were simply and largely handled, with strong tints on a colored background. On the older chests of this kind, the inlaid as well as the painted ones, the carving was mostly on the strongly accented corners and on the mountings, in the form of modest ornament, confined to the egg and dart, the heart leaf, and the like. The decoration of chests through rich pictorial carving is found •C first in the time of the High Renaissance. As thereby the beauty of the woods as such, and the artistic work of the carvers, gained appreciation, coloring, through painting, intarsia, etc., was abandoned. Through strong profile work, * high relief, and lively projection the artists achieved in this time as rich and varied an effect as their predecessors had through color. At the corners we * find vigorously formed masks, armorial bearings, putti, prisoners (borrowed from Roman triumphs), or Sphinxes arising from rich plant ornament which adorned the front, while in the middle, as a rule, was a cartouche with armorial bearings or emblems. The cover is of diminished size on the top and has rich pro- file work and carving (111. 12). The front is variously decorated in high relief with representations from Roman history or ancient mythology, that are placed 10 right and left of the vigorous armorial bearings in the middle. The most sump- tuous pieces of this kind seem to have been made for Roman families by Flor- entine workmen; for this reason we shall come back to them in the discussion of Roman furniture (compare page 44 and 111. 125 & 126). With these luxurious and decorative pieces came very numerous simple low chests which being mostly adapted for seats have flat tops. The front panel, smooth or enriched with carving in moderate relief, is framed in with very fine and effective ornament, while at each end are side pieces decorated with small plaster forms or divided into several equal parts (111. 13 and 14). The ornament on these different types of oassoni of the High Renaissance is often in purr gilded — "lighted up with gold", lumeggiato in oro — as the Ital- ians aptly describe it. For this purpose the gold was as a rule toned, and the wood also, instead of being left in its natural color, was covered with a brown tone akin to that of wood, by saturating it with a mixture of transparent or opaque color with wax. By this means the gold was made to combine well with the wood and the wood with the separate colors or paintings, where such, in the beginning of the High Renaissance were yet found on the chests; by this means too, the pieces of furniture were made to harmonize in a delightful way with each other and with the color of the walls and the hangings of the room. Un- fortunately this tone, that through age has often acquired depth and a pictur- esque effect, has been lost through washing, waxing and oiling, due to lack of taste and the failure in our time to comprehend the artistic intent of the old masters. At the same time with the cassone came the cassetta, a characteristic house- hold piece from Tuscany. Gold, jewels, caps, fine pieces of linen, and the like, were in the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries kept in round or oval boxes, decorated in plaster, or with paintings, not seldom by the most noted artists, as some examples of great beauty (preserved in the South Kensington Museum, in the Figdor collection in Vienna, in the Berliner Kunst- Gewerbe-Museum, etc.; bear witness. Special favorites were the caskets decor- ated in pastiglia, of simple coffer form with rich compositions of figures in re- lief that were modelled in yellow-grey plaster (pasto da riso). These are done on a gilded ground and kept in their own color, the ornament being lightly gild- ed ; they portray triumphs, ancient myths, scenes from ancient history, or alle- gorical motives. One of the richest and finest of these caskets, that in the Ber- liner Kunst Gewerbe-Museum, is shown in illustration 17. These plaster caskets, seem mostly to have been made in Florence in the second half of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Such caskets and boxes no longer satisfied the growing demands, principal- ly because their small size and lightness made them particularly liable to tjheft; from them were evolved caskets in form and decoration very much like the larger chests. At first they were inlaid with colored woods or covered with plaster ornaments and gilded. In Florence as well as in Siena from the end of the Quattrocento they were carved in walnut in the same way as wc.c the larger chests, and were lightly toned and partly gilded (111. 15). To some extent in keeping with them, the carving is generally modest; for that reason the fineness of the profile work and the finish, as well as the proportions, are noticeable. Of the same fineness of proportion and ornament is a simple casket of about 1500 in the Berliner Kunst Gewerbe-Museum that yet shows the old toning. A similar one is found among the decorative pieces in the Kaiser Friedrich-Mus- cum (111. 16). Richer but already somewhat coarser in execution are the cas- kets of a little later origin, the sides of which are inlaid with rare antique marbles. The number of cassette of this kind preserved would indicate that they were used in all the better houses in Tuscany. Because of the separation of the chest from the bench the latter were not superflous, especially since the chests as seats were numerous only in later times. The wall bench held its place in many rooms, especially in the vestibules of the Florentine houses, even during the Renaissance. We also occasionally • find, as in the Palazzo Strozzi, even the plinths of the houses used as benches for the hospitable reception of the household attendants and the common peo- ple. The wall bench was often ornamented richly; the legs then terminated in lion feet, and :he high back, which served at the same time as a wainscot, was decorated more or less with rich designs in intarsia, similar to that of the choir stalls in the churches, though in a simpler style. After the fifteenth cen- tury we meet also the movable bench, detached from the wall. This as a rule is smaller and without a back, its lid-like seat being always movable so that the inside mav be used as a chest. The sides are curved inward as a protection against the feet, for the reception of which a small tread-board is placed below in tront of the bench. The decoration of such benches, when they were made for a sumptuous setting, is of simple intarsia ornament or decorative painting, in later times confined to strongly carved but flat ornament, as the illustration of a pair of such little benches in the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum in Berlin shows (111. 18, 19 and 20). In the middle of the fifteenth century, or soon after, yet another character- istic piece was evolved from the wall bench, which the Italians appropriately term cassapanca. It was first used as a seat, but afterward served as a chest. This piece also, the ancestor of our sofa, is specifically Florentine and did not go . beyond Florence and its neighborhood, where it was in fashion for about a hundred years. In its strong, straight, chest form, with its low sides, it con- veys to an unusual degree an impression of the serious, vigorous, and monumen- tal character of the Florentine Renaissance furniture. On a projecting foot- board the substructure stands in true chest form, and like the chests was used to hold clothing, linen and the like; on this lower piece (usually closing flat on the top) stand the back and sides. In the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries the cassapanca was almost entirely flat and the simple orna- mentation generally of intarsia. The Kaiser Friedrich-Museum in Berlin has an excellent piece of the kind and there are several still older ones in the Villa Tor- re del Gallo (Bardini) outside Florence, and in the Palazzo Davanzati (111. 21). In the sixteenth century the forms had more movement, the profile work was stronger, while the ornamentation consisted of carving, and masks and armorial 12 bearings were disposed in suitable places. These pieces became really avail- able for seating only through the use of large cushions on the seat and sides as well as at the back. Because of their large and massive construction these un- usually durable pieces of furniture have been preserved in the palaces and villas of the principal Florentine families in considerable numbers; they have, how- ever, recently, almost without exception, gone into the museums and private collections, where the armorial bearings of the Medici, Antinori, Strozzi, and others, are to be found on them, betraying their origin. We give some illustra- tions of unusually noble or sumptuous pieces as they are found in the Museo Nazionale in Florence, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and es- pecially in the collections of Paris, Berlin and other places (111. 21-25). A cas- sapanca of the kind, of unusual simplicity and modest bulk, with an exception- ally high back, is found in the collection of Baron Heinrich von Tucher, in Nu- remberg; another is in the possession of Professor Otto Lanz, in Amsterdam. What the cassapanca was in the common room, the throne, trono, was in the state drawing-room of the palaces belonging to the foremost Florentine families. From a sumptuous raised throne the high-born married couple re-' ceived their guests in Republican Florence. The throne of the princely fam- ilies of the Middle Ages, as in the Renaissance, consisted of an ample chair or a bench with some gorgeous material thrown over it, behind which a baldachino rose. By the annexation of the Bishop's Chair in the churches, Florence found a fitting model for her rich patricians: a bench approached by two steps, hav- ing a high back finished with a strong moulding. At the beginning of the Cin- quecento this moulding occasionally projected far forward and then rested on slender turned and carved pillars that were supported on the low side pieces. Of the few thrones of this kind that have been preserved, the age is shown in the inlaid ornament of the modest profile work, such as that of the throne from the Filippo Strozzi palace in Florence, now in the possession of Baron Moritz Rothschild of Paris (111. 27) ; the later ones of the first three decades of the Cinquecento have besides a certain amount of carving of the finest concep- tion and execution, as we are made to realize in the famous fresco — the Birth of John— in the vestibule of the Annunziata at Florence (111. 26). The throne of the young Giuliano dei Medici, whose statue is preserved in the Medici Chapel, is one of this kind, of very tasteful construction. From the Nuti family, into whose possession it had come through inheritance, it fell to Prince Demidoff, who allowed it to be defaced by retouching and the introduction of modern intarsia (111. 28). We have very little information concerning the form and development, in the earlier part of the Renaissance, of the most important furniture used for seating — the chair. Since, especially among the originals from the fifteenth century, comparatively few with an authentic history have been preserved, we are practically dependent upon illustrations, paintings and embroidery of the time, which in this matter are incomplete and not always trustworthy. The chairs of earlier times are generally simple; the seat is apt to be low and made of braided straw. The forms that since the beginning of the Cinquecento have 13 been m(5st clearly defined: the stool, the straight chair without arms, and the armchair, we find, to be sure, in the Quattrocento, but the rich artistic confor- mation belongs to the before mentioned time. The only known Florentine stool, sgabello, with rich decoration of the fif- teenth century, now in the possession of Dr. Figdor, in Vienna (111. 29 and 30). comes from the Palazzo Strozzi. It is ornamented above on both sides of the back, with armorial bearings that in form and get up correspond exactly with the arms on the reverse of the Filippo Strozzi medal; that also had its origin in 1480. Yet this is, particularly in its form, with its small high back, a very orig- inal piece; the decoration is confined almost entirely to armorial bearings in low relief as an upper finish to the back. In the sixteenth century the sgabello was hardly less richly decorated than the chest, especially in Florence, where this decoration was again carried out in carving, the effect of which they knew how occasionally to heighten by gilding applied to certain parts. Excepting on • the seat itself and the inside of the boards, the whole sgabello was as a rule very elaborately carved; the decoration generally characterized well the re- spective parts in their particular function. A dozen of these sgabelli close to- gether, as, for example, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has a quan- tity of the most beautiful ones in perfect condition, have the effect of being too sumptuous, overladen; but in the large rooms of the Tuscan palace, that were ac- cording to our ideas almost empty, as they were ranged along the sides and grouped about the large table, the effect was well calculated and fine. We give a few characteristic examples of the earlier sgabello as well as the richly carved ones of a later time, particularly those privately owned in Paris, where there is a greater number of them (111. 31 to 35). We find the sgabello often without a back, as a hocker, sometimes four sided and quite like the sgabello just described in construction and decoration, sometimes three sided, which was the favorite form in Gothic times. The hocker is generally somewhat lower than the typical sgabello. The Renaissance chair was evolved from the ancient folding stool. The folding chair made wholly of staves joined together, with a movable seat and a removable back, called in Italy the Savonarola chair, in modern German cabinet work designated with equal impropriety the Luther chair, had its artistic form also in the fifteenth century. In Florence, however, this X chair in its simple strong framework (generally of iron with bronze balls, compare 111. 36) was as a rule either elaborately carved or bedecked with rich tapestries, at least in the sixteenth century, among sumptuous surroundings; throughout that time it was fitted up in textiles, braids, fringes, tassels, gilded bronze nails and balls above on the back, in that luxurious yet tasteful manner, of which our modern upholstery art shows no conception. While the sgabello was used particularly