In 2015, visitors to the exhibition An Illumination: the Rothschild Prayer Book & other works from the Kerry Stokes Collection c.1280–1685 encountered, among the paintings and sculptures, a sarcophagus-form Italian cassone (Figure 12.1), richly carved, painted and gilded. Raised on a plinth directly beneath a seventeenth- century painting, this chest was the only object of furniture in the room, with a context long forgotten as twenty-first-century viewers examined its carved relief panels. Seen and collected primarily as objets d’art today, the rich history and changing functions of cassoni allow us to examine them from various angles. Here, we will look at the Stokes cassone within these different contexts (ceremonial, utilitarian, decorative) and more broadly discuss its position within the history of taste. This chapter will also bring the chest together with its counterpart, currently in Kiev, while identifying the family who ordered their construction.

The cassone, also referred to as forziere or cassa, had existed for some time in several forms, but came into greatest prominence from the fourteenth century. In very basic terms it is a marriage chest, tied into the wedding celebrations of important Italian families.

Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cassoni were of relatively standardised dimensions, as they would often serve the same task. The majority of known sixteenth-century examples are, like that from the Illumination exhibition, around 180cm in length and 60cm to 70cm high and deep. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but generally cassoni would be quite similar in shape and size, dictated in part by their function as wedding chests, usually filled with the bride's trousseau, the portion of the dowry customarily consisting of clothes and linens.