11 - An Accessory of Intellect: A Renaissance Writing Casket From The Kerry Stokes Collection

Summary

Abstract

This essay discusses a Northern Italian bronze writing casket from c.1500, once owned by Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, later Pope Pius III (1439–1503). The casket emerged from a thriving industry of bronze manufacture around Padua and the Veneto specialising in sophisticated, small-scale objects typically destined for studioli and other private domestic spaces. Looking beyond the casket's site of production, the essay also discusses its social roles as a medium for posterity and family honour, as well as its ability to help constitute the studiolo as an environment for learned pursuits and the construction of a modern, Renaissance individuality.

Keywords: Bronze; Studiolo; Italy; Collecting; Humanism; Miniature

In her book, On Longing, Susan Stewart writes, ‘The collection's space must move between the public and the private, between display and hiding. Thus the miniature is suitable as an item of collection because it is sized for individual consumption at the same time that its surplus detail connotes infinity and distance’.1 A fifteenth-century bronze writing casket in the Kerry Stokes collection (Figure 11.1) is an object that encapsulates the dyadic qualities of individual fascination and infinite possibility that Stewart ascribes to the collectible object. The casket is rendered in the format of a miniature ancient sarcophagus, and is precisely the kind of object once found alongside other smallscale precious items in a private studiolo, or study. These rooms and the objects in them held a special place in Italian Renaissance society; they helped constitute individual and familial honour, both essential for self-fashioning and preserving memory. The Stokes casket was at once a deeply intimate possession and an important tool for defining the public face of its owner and his family.

Although attribution has been wide-ranging and contested, current scholarship coalesces around the idea that the Stokes casket and related variants emerged from the workshop of Paduan sculptor Severo da Ravenna (active c.1496–1543), who specialized in finely worked small-scale bronzes for elite collectors.

The casket is decorated with a diverse array of classical motifs. On the lid are two putti flanking a garland-encircled mask. The front panel features a family coat of arms in the centre surrounded by two cornucopias and centaurs bearing nymphs. The short sides of the rectangular casket bear winged Medusa masks nested in ribboned garlands.