MARRIAGE CASKET WITH THE STORY OF PARIS

Baldassare Ubriachi was a Florentine merchant and diplomat who financed a bone-carving workshop that bears his name. The term 'Embriachi' has come to be used to describe a wide variety of bone carvings produced in Italy in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but modern scholarship has begun to separate objects that were made in Ubriachi's workshop from those made in other workshops that sprung up independently from Ubriachi's control. The scenes on the present casket match the style of works attributed to Ubriachi's workshop (P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550, Part II, London, 2014, nos. 265-272.), which in turn have been compared with the documented triptych altarpiece in the Certosa of Pavia. The casket depicts the story of Paris: the scenes show the infant Paris being saved from the attendants of Queen Hecuba by the hooded shepherd Agelaeus. Paris is then depicted as a shepherd crowning a bull, then with a winged Mercury who holds the apple. Finally, Paris acts as judge between the three goddesses in the judgement of Paris. The men on the corners brandish shields left blank so that a family stemma could be applied. The casket was likely intended as a coffer a prospective husband would send to his espoused wife containing small gifts such as jewellery prior to the exchange of vows and rings.