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Lot Essay
This impressive coffer with its intricate carved decoration is probably the only existing fullscale replica of the celebrated Renaissance cassone from the Florentine Palazzo of the Strozzi family. Having stood in the Stadtschloss Berlin as one of the highlights of the collections of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the original was lost in the 2nd World War. The celebrated Strozzi cassone came to the Berlin museum in 1880. It had been purchased through Stefano Bardini, probably the most influential Italian art dealer at that time, and with the help of the Berlin banker Oskar Hainhauser. It cost the Museum the enormous sum of 3,811 Mark, easily ten times the sum Bardini charged for other cassone, and this sum represented about a fifth of the total annual budget available to the Musuem for purchases.
The cassone offered here was probably commissioned in the late 19th Century by an antiquarian connoisseur, and follows the original so closely, it must have been made by craftsmen and artists who had direct access to the Renaissance original. Unfortunately the museum archives were lost with the Berlin Stadtschloss during the war and so far no documentation about the manufacture of a copy could be found.
The cassone offered here was probably commissioned in the late 19th Century by an antiquarian connoisseur, and follows the original so closely, it must have been made by craftsmen and artists who had direct access to the Renaissance original. Unfortunately the museum archives were lost with the Berlin Stadtschloss during the war and so far no documentation about the manufacture of a copy could be found.