Hexagonal Casket

This lidded, hexagonal box is composed of a wooden structure overlaid with panels of bone, horn, and strips of intarsia. Strips of white bone and black cow horn make up a molded base that rests on turned, red-stained bone spheres, one of which is missing. The central part of each of the box’s six sides is covered with a wide, slightly convex bone panel carved with figures. These are flanked by projecting, fluted columns, also of bone. A molding of green-stained bone surmounts the central scene to form the box’s lip. When closed, the lid rises from this lip in a molded pyramid composed of carved architectural moldings, strips of intarsia, vegetal friezes, a large bone sphere, and a giltwood finial. The top and bottom of the box are affixed with a pair of metal hinges, and the box can be locked by inserting a key into a hole into the central bone panel on the front. The interior of the box has been lined with purple velvet trimmed with gold ribbon. The bottom of the box is perforated with a hole and retains traces of exhibition or collections stickers and woodworkers’ measurements.

In the absence of texts, the iconography of the figural imagery on the side is difficult to decipher. The front panel has the box’s key hole and depicts a woman caressing an approaching man. Following this scene counterclockwise, the next side shows a woman in a medieval headdress, or wimple, bearing a plate into a building, and the one after that represents another woman entering a building without a plate. The back panel depicts two women holding hands and moving to the proper right, and on the following panel two women in profile approaching one another with hands clasped, as if greeting. The final panel, to the immediate left of the front, shows a woman approaching a building with a plate, so that the box appears bilaterally symmetrical when observed from the front.

The workmanship on this box is coarse in comparison to better known examples in this style. The floral frieze is roughly carved, and some of the carved bone elements of the base do not match, leading to breaks in its continuous molding. That said, elements of its general composition, especially the hexagonal shape and the columns that adorn the corners, resemble an example in the Art Institute of Chicago (inv.no. 1985.112). More closely related is a rectangular box sold at Sotheby’s (Master Sculpture and Works of Art Part II, January 30, 2021, lot 735). The Sotheby’s box replicates two of the side panels on the current box: the meeting of the male and female figures and the meeting of the two female figures. Both boxes are capped with friezes whose vegetation and heraldic shields are arranged along a bilateral symmetry. This shared feature forms a strong contrast to the friezes on most other boxes in the style of the Embriachi and, together with the shared iconography on the narrative side panels, suggests that they derive from the same workshop. The box is in relatively poor condition and preserves evidence of later restorations. Its wooden armature has warped, which together with the textile lining prevents the lid from lying flush on the base. The expansion and contraction of the wood has also damaged the overlay. The inlay on the lid has suffered areas of loss, especially on the corners, and several strips of bone and horn are missing from the lid and the base. There are also several areas of discoloration on the bone panels. The heavy gilding on the sides and the painted coat of arms, "or, cross gules," on the floral frieze on the lid are likely modern additions. Similarly, the bone balls forming the base of the box are unusual for early fifteenth-century boxes of this type, and may be the work of a later intervention.

Further Reading:

Richard H. Randall Jr., The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Carvings in North American Collections (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1993), p. 236.

Paul Williamson and Glyn Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings, 1200–1550, Part 2 (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2014), pp. 751-861.


Catalogue Entry by Scott Miller, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial and Research Collections Specialist, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2020–2022

[ Luigi Grassi, Florence (sold 1913)]