Many materials were employed by the renaissance artists. Wood first and principally in making furniture, but decorated with gilding and paintings; inlaid with agate, carnelian, lapis lazuli and marbles of various tints; with ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl; and with other woods. They also made many smaller objects, such as mirror cases in iron, damascened or inlaid with gold and silver. For many years, however, mirrors continued to be of polished metal, the enrichment being devoted to the outer case. Glass mirrors were not common till a somewhat later period.
As the general material of furniture in the sixteenth century continued to be wood, its chief decoration was sculpture. The number of remarkable pieces of carved wood furniture belonging to this period in the museum is considerable. The most striking are the chests, cassoni, large coffers for containing clothes or ornamental hangings and stuffs that were kept in them when not in use. Rooms, however large, of which the walls, floors, and ceilings are decorated, do not require many substantial objects in addition; and these chests, with a table and chairs placed against the wall, nearly complete the requirements of great Italian halls and corridors.
The general form of the carved chests is that of a sarcophagus. They are supported on claw feet, and have masks, brackets, or caryatid figures worked into the construction as in the accompanying woodcut, leaving panels, borders, or other spaces for historic sculpture. The subjects are sometimes from Scripture, often from the poems of Ovid. They are carved in walnut wood, which is free in grain and very tenacious: and the work, like most of the old furniture carving, is helped out with gilding. Sometimes the ground, at others the relieved carvings are touched or completely covered with gilding. Most of these fine chests are in pairs, and probably formed parts of still larger sets, fours or sixes, according as they were intended for the wall spaces of larger or smaller rooms or portions of wall between two doors.
Carved chests commonly in use, and given to brides as part of their dowry or as presents to married couples, or simply provided as the most convenient objects both for receptacles and occasionally for seats, were often made at less cost in cypress wood. They are generally decorated with surface designs etched with a pen on the absorbent grain of that wood, the ground being slightly cut out and worked over with punches shaped like nail heads, stars, &c. Cypress chests were especially used for keeping dresses or tapestries; the aromatic properties of that timber being considered as a specific against moth. This kind of chest, when intended to hold a bridal trousseau, was occasionally made with small drawers and receptacles inside for fans, lace, combs, or other feminine ornaments. Allusions to cypress chests in England are numerous in the wardrobe and privy purse accounts of Edward the fourth and his successors.
The tables of this period are sometimes solid (as no. 162, which is covered with spirited designs of mythological subjects). Dinner tables were "boards" fastened on trestles, according to the old usage already alluded to, and could be removed when the meal was over; or several could be laid together, as in our modern dining-room tables, to meet the demands of the noble hospitality exercised in those days.
The Italian chairs of the quattrocento period have been spoken of above. We have, however, another very rich and effective form of chairs usual in the sixteenth century, and which were in general use in Venice. In these the seat is fastened into two planks, one before and one behind, as in the woodcut. The planks are richly carved, and a third plank is let in to form a back. The several portions, particularly the back, were sometimes sufficiently thick to admit of carving in massive relief. The flanks of the back piece are usually grotesque monsters, and the arms of the owner carved on a scutcheon in the centre. They seem to have been generally richly gilt. They also formed the decoration of a great corridor or hall, and were used without cushions.
The frames of pictures were bold and rich. Those of the previous century had been mostly imitative of small Gothic shrines, being generally for religious subjects and for use in churches or oratories. In the cinquecento period they were square panels, carved and richly gilt. There are in the Kensington museum remarkable examples of frames made for mirrors, either for the sitting-rooms or saloons of the lady of the house, or for her bedroom. Three of these are type pieces of such productions. No. 7695 is a square frame carved in walnut, standing on a foot, and meant to be carried about. From the daisies in relief on the foot it may perhaps be ascribed to Marguerite of Valois, and have been used in the court of Provence. Nothing in the collection surpasses the elegance and perfection of the ornamental work on the mouldings. The mirror itself is of polished metal. Another is in a circular frame, no. 7694, shaped like a shield, and meant to be hung up. It was probably made for a duchess of Ferrara. There are classical details of architectonic kind on the edges of the carving, which is highly finished. The mirror itself is of metal, and the back has figures on it in relief and is solidly gilt. The third of these, no. 7226, is larger. In design it is like a monumental mural tablet, with a carved rich finish on the four sides, and the mirror furnished with a sliding cover in the form of a medallion, containing a female head of singular nobleness and beauty. In this case the material is walnut relieved by broad surfaces of inlaid wood. We may also mention the superb Soltykoff mirror, no. 7648. This is an example of metal work throughout, the case, stand, and sliding cover being of iron damascened with gold and silver in every variety of that costly process.
