Luxury in the Middle Ages: gilded plaster wedding chests are on display in Perugia

From Sept. 21, 2019 to Jan. 6, 2020, the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia is hosting the exhibition The Autumn of the Middle Ages in Umbria. Gilded plaster wedding chests and a forgotten Perugian workshop, curated by Andrea De Marchi and Matteo Mazzalupi. The exhibition focuses on a series of 15th-century wedding chests: these were furnishings in use in Italian Renaissance residences, of which few examples are preserved, some attributable to Giovanni di Tommasino Crivelli and his Perugian workshop. They are valuable works that tell the private lives of the noble families who commissioned them, documenting a cross-section of Perugian (and other) figurative culture in the 15th century.

Bridal chests were the ancestors of the modern chest; they were always made in pairs and were used to hold the trousseau of brides from noble and middle-class families. When the woman settled in her husband’s house(domumductio), the chests were transported to the bridal chamber and remained there. The lid, sides and back were very rarely decorated, while the painted parts much more frequently concerned the front face. However, decorations could also be unpainted: they could be carved, or made of gilded plaster (sometimes called “pastille”) or using several techniques together. In addition, coffers were composed according to modules that tended to differ from region to region and often revealed their origin from a specific geographical area. The themes depicted also varied: they ranged from simple animal or plant motifs, sometimes repeated serially, to actual narratives (such as processions and wedding feasts, but also episodes from Greek and Roman mythology and history, the Bible, and medieval novels, mostly chosen from those that best recalled the typical virtues of married life and condemned its vices). The decoration often included the coats of arms of the families of the bride and groom, generally according to the rules of heraldry that placed the man’s weapon on the observer’s left, the woman’s on the right: it is precisely the study of these details that makes it possible today to trace erratic works back to their original context of origin, in the luckiest cases even to a precise marriage and thus to a secure chronology.

The Perugian elite was reflected in these artifacts, in which the festive dimension of musician processions and wedding chariots exploded, or memorable episodes of female virtue, such as the truceful, later avenged story of Lucretia (a work preserved at the National Gallery of Umbria), or maternal virtue, such as the Judgment of Solomon episode, were staged.

In Perugia, the public will find on display, in addition to specimens of complete wedding chests and fronts decorated in gilded plaster, from major Italian and European art collections such as the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, the Stäof the Museum in Frankfurt, the Muzeum Narodowe in Warsaw and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, there will also be a nucleus of paintings attributable to the same workshop, the person responsible for which can perhaps be identified with the personality, little known to date, of Giovanni di Tommasino Crivelli. The latter is documented, in 1442, alongside the Perugian Benedetto Bonfigli, one of the major Umbrian painters of the Renaissance: With the latter’s youthful works, Giovanni di Tommasino Crivelli shared the warm chromaticism, the filamentous and vibrant way of painting, but unlike his master he never opened up to a Renaissance dimension, always remaining nostalgic for the intimately Gothic values of an’ analytical and precious art, congenial after all to the special workmanship of the historiated hoods, modeled by brush with the tenuous relief of plaster, sparkling with the minute play of engravings on the extensive gilded foil, interrupted by flashes of color.

Crivelli made himself an interpreter of Perugia’s own city identity, setting in the Sala delle Udienze of the Collegio della Mercanzia, inside the Palazzo dei Priori, two scenes of theAnnunciation, in the tablet from the Musée Jacquemart André in Paris (probably dated 1440), which featured portraits of the ten Priors and the notary ser Cipriano di Gualtiero kneeling in prayer at the foot of it, and in the later one in the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon, at the center of a triptych in whose wings, recently identified and acquired by the French museum, depict St. Francis at the foot of the Cross and St. John the Baptist. In the description of the floral carvings of the capitals and arches, the lacunar wooden covering, the damask fabrics and other scattered objects, and in the grains of the fleshy leafy ramages of the background, the last glow of international Gothic and of a polymathic taste, consistent with the versatility of this singular and forgotten artist, is kindled.

In order to better contextualize the multifaceted figure of this artist, a number of works will also be exhibited that well testify to the late Gothic culture that was still alive in Perugia in the first decades of the 15th century, starting with Gentile da Fabriano’s Madonna with Child and Angels, and the works of painters of his contemporaries such as Bonfigli. The exhibition thus aims to offer a cross-section of Perugian figurative culture at a delicate moment of transition, where artisans tenaciously nostalgic for the late Gothic gold civilization coexisted with others differently open to the new language of Angelico and Filippo Lippi, such as the aforementioned Benedetto Bonfigli and another important Umbrian painter of the period, Bartolomeo Caporali.

The exhibition opens daily: Mondays (but only until Nov. 3) from noon to 7:30 p.m., other days (for the duration of the exhibition) from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Last admission at 6:30 pm. During the period November 4-January 6, 2020, the National Gallery of Umbria closes on Mondays. Tickets: full 8 euros, reduced 4 euros, special reduced for 18-25 year olds 2 euros. First Sunday of the month free admission. The catalog, Silvana Editoriale, is edited by Andrea De Marchi and Matteo Mazzalupi and will feature, in addition to the curators’ essays, texts by Chiara Guerzi, Veruska Picchiarelli, Alessandra Tiroli, Gaia Ravalli and Emanuele Zappasodi. To bring the younger audience closer to this fascinating topic, the National Gallery of Umbria will publish a children’s story, written by Cristiana Minelli and illustrated by Bimba Landmann, for Aguaplano types. For all info you can visit the National Gallery of Umbria website.

Pictured: Mariano d’Antonio, Andata al Calvario, detail (Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria)

Luxury in the Middle Ages: gilded plaster wedding chests are on display in Perugia

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