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拍品專文
The panels on this chest were attributed by Schubring to a follower of Pollaiuolo and subsequently to the Cassone Master. The Triumph of David would, however, appear to be by Scheggia. The younger brother of Masaccio, he, during a long career, built up a successful workshop, a major speciality of which was the production of narrative panels for cassoni (marriage chests): for a characteristic example, see lot 39. This panel must date from rather late in Scheggia's career. The accompanying testate imply an awareness of artistic developments of the 1460s, and most obviously of the work of Antonio del Pollaiuolo: the Nessus and Deianeira implies a knowledge of the picture of the subject at New Haven -- Cook noted (1906) that it established a terminus ante quem for the dating of that work -- while the pendant follows the artist's treatment of that subject, generally dated to about 1460. Ellen Callmann, on iconographical grounds (see below) considered that the front and testate were originally associated. But this view is not accepted by Dr Alison Wright who considers that the testate are of the mid-1470s or later. The Triumph of David is of rather earlier date and thus may well be of 1467 as is implied by the arms, which as Herbert Horne recognised (according to the Abriged Catalogue, 1932) are of the Carnesecchi and Lanfredini families, and may thus commemorate the marriage of Giuliano Carnesecchi and Cassandra Lanfredini. Carnesecchi belonged to a family of pronounced Medicean allegiance, and it seems possible that the choice of subjects for this cassone reflects this.
Cassoni had an important place in Florentine domestic interiors in the quattrocento. A number of workshops specialised in their production, the most familiar being that of Apollonio di Giovanni and his associate Marco del Buono. The main panel of the Cook cassone is of the same subject as one of the finest extant examples, The Triumph of David, once in the Medici collection and more recently at Lockinge, now in the National Gallery, London, by Francesco Pesellino. That panel is the right hand element of a pair, answering one of the Slaying of Goliath. As a hero of the Old Testament, David was held in especial veneration in Renaissance Florence, as statues by every major sculptor from Donatello to Michelangelo so spectacularly attest. Five cassone fronts of the Triumph of David were known to the late Ellen Callmann. She suggested (p. 39, no. 4) that the Cook work was the pair to a panel of the Slaying of Goliath, formerly in the Spiridion Collection, Paris (P. Schubring, no. 115). Callmann further argued (pp. 44-5) that the testate were originally associated with the panel, and noted that the subjects of these offered classical parallels to the 'Old Testament example of Virtù' of the main panel.
Of Florentine cassone of after 1435, Ellen Callmann ('William Blundell Spence and the transformation of renaissance cassoni', The Burlington Magazine, CXLI, December 1999, p. 342) considered that 'fewer than six original examples' survive. Numerous panels were, however, set in new chests by Florentine craftsmen to satisfy a demand for the most part from English collectors, from whom Spence catered. In view of Sir Francis Cook's interest in sculpture and the applied arts, as well as pictures, it is not surprising that he obtained a number of cassone panels as well as this chest.
Like many of the most celebrated early Italian pictures in the Cook collection, this cassone was displayed in the Smoking Room. It was placed near the magnificent tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi (Washington, National Gallery of Art) and the two Ercole de Robertis (Washington and Toledo, Edward Drummond Libbey Museum of Art). Other works in the room included the Ceccarelli Madonna and Child (lot 19), a predella panel from Raphael's Gavari Crucifixion (Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art), and fragments of Turin's Roverella altarpiece (Washington) and of Signorelli's Sant'Agostino Siena polyptych (Toledo), as well as Antonello da Messina's Christ at the Column (Paris, Louvre).
Cassoni had an important place in Florentine domestic interiors in the quattrocento. A number of workshops specialised in their production, the most familiar being that of Apollonio di Giovanni and his associate Marco del Buono. The main panel of the Cook cassone is of the same subject as one of the finest extant examples, The Triumph of David, once in the Medici collection and more recently at Lockinge, now in the National Gallery, London, by Francesco Pesellino. That panel is the right hand element of a pair, answering one of the Slaying of Goliath. As a hero of the Old Testament, David was held in especial veneration in Renaissance Florence, as statues by every major sculptor from Donatello to Michelangelo so spectacularly attest. Five cassone fronts of the Triumph of David were known to the late Ellen Callmann. She suggested (p. 39, no. 4) that the Cook work was the pair to a panel of the Slaying of Goliath, formerly in the Spiridion Collection, Paris (P. Schubring, no. 115). Callmann further argued (pp. 44-5) that the testate were originally associated with the panel, and noted that the subjects of these offered classical parallels to the 'Old Testament example of Virtù' of the main panel.
Of Florentine cassone of after 1435, Ellen Callmann ('William Blundell Spence and the transformation of renaissance cassoni', The Burlington Magazine, CXLI, December 1999, p. 342) considered that 'fewer than six original examples' survive. Numerous panels were, however, set in new chests by Florentine craftsmen to satisfy a demand for the most part from English collectors, from whom Spence catered. In view of Sir Francis Cook's interest in sculpture and the applied arts, as well as pictures, it is not surprising that he obtained a number of cassone panels as well as this chest.
Like many of the most celebrated early Italian pictures in the Cook collection, this cassone was displayed in the Smoking Room. It was placed near the magnificent tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi (Washington, National Gallery of Art) and the two Ercole de Robertis (Washington and Toledo, Edward Drummond Libbey Museum of Art). Other works in the room included the Ceccarelli Madonna and Child (lot 19), a predella panel from Raphael's Gavari Crucifixion (Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art), and fragments of Turin's Roverella altarpiece (Washington) and of Signorelli's Sant'Agostino Siena polyptych (Toledo), as well as Antonello da Messina's Christ at the Column (Paris, Louvre).