THE CASSONE FROM NATIONAL MUSEUM IN WARSAW

Within the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw we find a painted front part of a cassone (a decorative chest) from Florence, which has been a part of the collection since 1952. That work of art presents two mythological scenes, namely, the 'Hunt of the Calydonian Boar' and the history of Actaeon. It originally comes from a private collection of a Polish duke, Seweryn Czetwertynski (Duke Seweryn Czetwertynski 1873 - 1945; a Polish patriotic activist and politician, gathered a large library of Polish and French literary works, a collection of prints, ceramics, national tokens and works of bronze, assembled a wide array of European painting works). The creation of the painting is dated at about 1400 A.D2, but in its present form it has existed since the XIX century, when it was transferred from wood to canvas by Andrzej Sidorow in St. Petersburg'.

The front part of the Florentine cassone is 34 centimeters high and 128 centimeters wide. The image is divided into three major scenes, presenting in the sequence: the 'Hunt of the Calydonian Boar', the 'Bath of Diana and her Nymphs Surprised by Actaeon' and the 'Death of Actaeon'. All the events take place in` an open space, in a rocky landscape overgrown with scarce clumps of fruit trees. The images are similar to the decorations at the two deschi da parto (trays that were used to present food to a woman after delivery) from the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art3. In 1968 Miklos Boskovits rated the Warsaw painting among the works of a Florentine painter, active at the turn of XIV and XV centuries, called Maestro di Cracovia (two of his other cassone paintings are found in the Czartoryski Museurn in Cracow) or Maestro di Carlo Durazzo.

The 'Hunt...' is a free interpretation of a myth about a boar that used to ravage the Calydonian kingdom and was killed during a great hunt with the participation of ancient heroes, under the leadership of Meleagros and Atalanta The boar in the centre of the scene is surrounded by three dogs and five human figures; two men and three women armed with spears and dressed in contemporary -Renaissance - clothes. Only one of the hunters, possibly Meleagros, wears antique attire. On the left side, in a black garment and with a crown, there stands the goddess of hunt, Diana, holding a hawk. Above, we find a fisherman and four hunters armed with bows.

The only preserved early - Renaissance painting depicting the same myth is a small fragment of a cassone (30 ~2 cm.) that comes from Vienna, from Albert Figdor's collection, and is probably a work of the same artist4. The scene could have been modeled on a variety of illustrative presentations of that theme, an example of which are the drawings kept in Pierpont Morgan Library in New York dated at the 70's of the XIV century. A figure of-a fisherman is a popular motif, borrowed from Giotto's 'Navicella'.

The compositional centre of the cassone's painting is the scene presenting Diana with her Nymphs and Actaeon approaching them from the right. The bathing women are standing in a pond of a nearly circular shape. Their facial expressions show fear and embarrassment at the sight of the youth clad in a red vest. On the pond's left side two other figures are standing. One of them is Meleagros (as in the hunting scene), the second, however, is difficult to identify. Above the principal scene there are: a meditating monk on the right and an unidentified woman (Adanta?) 50n the left, touching a circle, with a leopard sitting in it, with her palm The above mentioned predator was used in Italy for hunting; it is often shown together with the hanters or during attacking other animals. Here, leopard becomes a symbol of the hunt itself- vita activa, and the monk is its opposite - a symbol of vita contemplativa (an interesting fact is that towards the end of the XIV century, during the war with Milan, a leopard symbolised Florence) 6. In the clump of trees beneath the pond there is a rabbit with three dogs on its right side, and a small deer on the slope of a rock, on the foreground.

One of the literary sources for that scene could have been a poem by Boccaccio, entitled 'Caccia di Diana', in which Venus turns the animals hunted by Diana's retinue into youths who, then, many the Nymphs. Such story is presented on a cassone housed in Florentine Museo Stibbert, also an early work of Maestro di Carlo Durazzo. The painting is composed of three scenes, the third of which depicts a boar hunt, very similar, with its rocky landscape, women with spears and a figure with a hawk to the image on the work from Warsaw.

An illustration of the same text (Boccaccio) is found at desca da parta, a painting from the late XIV century included into the San Francisco's Fine Arts Museums collection. The painting was created by Maestro della Madonna Lazaroii, a Florentine artist active in the late 30's. The lower part shows a hunting scene, where two women with spears are arranged in a circle and surrounded by other hunters. There is also Diana with her hawk. Above, there is a scene of Diana's bath with her Nymphs, analogous to the image on the Warsaw cassone. The number of figures involved in the situation is the same as well as a circular shape of the pond. Actaeon makes the same gesture; even a rabbit and a deer are present. The whole work, exactly as the one from Warsaw, is divided into three major scenes and almost identical in its dimensions. The landscape, tree clumps and female garments are similar. The painting was probably made by the same artist and could constitute the counterpart or the supplement to the one from Warsaw museum.

The last scene illustrates a myth about Actaeon's death. Actaeon, turned by resentful Diana into a deer, is torn into pieces by his own hounds. In the painting from Warsaw Actoeon undergoes only a partial metamorphosis. The artist portrayed him lying on the ground with deer's head and human body. He is being attacked by three dogs and four men, his former companions, armed with clubs. Three hunters approaching the place of tragedy become witnesses of this event.

Decorative chests (cassone) constituted a common wedding gilt in Renaissance Italy. The scenes of hunt, often presented on the chests, were to be seen as an allegory of love, and the figures of Meleagros and Atalanta are equivalent to the young couple - the bride and the bridegroom (In the texts by Plato and Ovid widespread at that time, love and courtship were often compared to the hunt.

Diana was revered as a goddess taking care of marriages. Also Amour - the god of love - is shown with a bow.). The paintings on cassone have also their moralistic significance. According to Ovid, Diana sent a boar down on Calydon as a punishment for a widely spread debauchery and lawlessness. In the medieval tradition a boar was a symbol of Satan. An act of killing the 'wild beast' may, thus, be equivalent to eliminating a great evil Actaeon's death may also have its moralistic meaning. One of the versions of this myth tells about Actaeon’s sacrifice aimed at satisfying the hunger of his own dogs. Berchorius, the author of 'Ovidus Moralizatus ', a popular in the XV century version of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', compares Actaeon to Christ, who 'had lived on the Earth and was killed by his own people'.