A BURGUNDIAN CHEST
This great chest, which was shown at Bruges in 1902, is a noble example of the Burgundian school of wood-carving, its ornament offering sharp contrast with the English manner. ¶ The four panels of the front and three of the uprights are filled with rich carving of traceries and arabesques, but the chisel has stayed at the framework, and the chest, for all the richness of its ornament, loses nothing of its massive and sturdy appearance. The end panels are plain, and the plain cover is slightly arched in remembrance of the waggon tops of the earlier coffers. The first panel has a little shield of St. Peter’s keys, with the pope’s triple crown very large above it. The second has the emperor’s shield of the eagle with two necks surmounted by an open crown. Another crowned shield bears the famous badge of Burgundy, the steel, or strike-a-light, with its flint and sparks. The fourth panel has neither crown nor shield, but the tracery shapes itself into three fleurs-de-lys, which, although they be not upon a shield, may stand for the king of France. Thus the four panels show pope, emperor, duke and king. On the broad upright in the middle is a crown above a tiny shield charged with a single fleur-de-lys. It will be seen that the armorial decoration is poorly-conceived stuff to be set upon these rich panels. Especially is this feebleness manifest in the starveling fowl of the emperor’s shield. ¶ The chest is of the latter half of the fifteenth century. It is the property of the ‘hospices civils’ of Aalst.
O. B.