Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
280 The Fenway
Boston, MA 02115
Information 617 566 1401
Box Office 617 278 5156
Program Notes:
In Renaissance Italy, cassoni – Italian for “large chests” – were an essential part of the rituals of elite marriages. Made in pairs and often painted with historical and allegorical scenes, these chests were paraded through the streets, like trophies, when the bride moved into the house of her new husband. The narrative paintings with which they were decorated linked marriage to history and the roles appropriate to husband and wife.
Cassoni offered artists an opportunity to develop new subjects in new formats, fusing space and time in consecutive scenes; dramatizing conflicts between love and duty; and almost always concluding with a vision of triumphant harmony.
The exhibition and its programs are supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The Triumph of Marriage will travel to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, where it will be on view beginning February 2009. Exhibition catalogue to publish October 2008 (Periscope Press)
Exhibition Programming:
Conversation Program: “Imagining Love in Dante's Divine Comedy” | Thursday, October 23, 6:30pm
Dante scholar Rachel Jacoff, Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature and Professor of Italian at Wellesley College, reveals the varieties of love in Dante – from lust to erotic love to divine love, all in contrast to marriage during the Renaissance which was generally a practical and political alliance.
Buy Tickets
Special Program: “Triumph of Marriage: A Closer Look” | Wednesday, October 29, 1:30-5:00pm
(repeat program on Saturday, December 6)
Tickets: $75 Non-members; $50 Members, Seniors, and Students Paintings for Renaissance cassoni (or wedding chests) offer a wonderful opportunity to examine the ideals and realities of Renaissance society. With their festive designs and allegorical subjects, cassoni fused high humanism with every-day realities. The afternoon will include focus talks on Renaissance art, society and culture along with active looking and small group discussions in the exhibition gallery and in the museum itself. Join the guest curator of Triumph of Marriage, Professor Cristelle Baskin, the curator of the collection, Alan Chong, and post-doctoral fellow Robert Colby, for an afternoon of learning and discovery. A reception in the café with museum staff will follow. Speakers include: Cristelle Baskins (Triumph of Marriage); Robert Colby (Marriage in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Reality); Alan Chong (Isabella Gardner and Collecting Renaissance Art in America); and Jenn DePrizio and Robert Colby (discussion of specific paintings in the exhibition)
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