CASSAPANCA. - It originated in the Middle Ages from the combination, perhaps intended to save space, of the bench (v.), which was the most common type of seat, and the chest intended to hold items of clothing, books and other household furnishings. It adorned castles and taverns, private houses and churches and convents indifferently, and was always decorated with carvings, relief sculptures, inlays, according to the taste of the various centuries. In the Renaissance great use was made of the cassapanca in sacristies, chapter halls, the apses themselves or the presbyteries: arranged along the walls with high backrests and with lecterns and footstools in front, they took on a special configuration that endured for a very long time in ecclesiastical custom, which made use of them for the functions of the choir.
More widespread in the fifteenth century is the term cassone, with a meaning nearly analogous to that of the cassapanca (the cassone lacks armrests and sometimes the backrests) and in certain regions replaced by other more particular terms with a slightly dialectal flavor such as arca, cofano, forziere, scrigno, cofforo.
Cassapanche and cassoni were artistic as well as functional objects. Cennini gives explicit mention of the ways of decorating them. In Florence in the 14th-15th centuries the craft was regulated by specific provisions contained in the statutes of the Guild of Joiners, still today in that State Archive.
(photo Alinari)
Cassoni were built in the form of low, elongated parallelepipeds, with the front wall curved, and also with the lid shaped like a trunk; the base was at first simple and straight, then it was enriched with ornamental elements and took on a greater architectural solidity, and with the corresponding development of the upper part it made the cassone a large piece of furniture. There were chests for domestic use covered with cloth or leather and internally with parchment, or carved with reliefs, painted with raised and gilded stuccoes (among the rare examples is a chest with stags and falcons in the hospital of S. Gimignano), adorned with studs and metal friezes and inlaid with polychrome woods and mother-of-pearl (in the certosina manner).
Already in the fourteenth century there was the practice of decorating cassapanche with paintings in flat colors or with monochrome friezes. In Florence there is remembered from that age a workshop of a pictor cofanorum on the ground floor of the bishop's palace, and furniture thus painted can be seen in many fourteenth-century paintings. The practice of decorating them with paintings of histories, allegories or other figured scenes dates back to the Renaissance instead: Vasari gives clear mention of it, and many examples still preserved today bear witness to it, among which it is worth recalling some by Paolo Uccello in Vienna, in the Lanckoronsky collection, and in Paris in the Jacquemart-André museum; by Pesellino, who exercised the greatest influence on the furniture painters of the 15th century; by Pollaiolo (a cassone with the scene of Hercules, Deianira and Nessus was in the Cook collection, in Richmond); by Mantegna, and later, in the sixteenth century, by Bachiacca, Franciabigio, Andrea del Sarto, until, well into the century, decoration with relief sculpture prevailed, with which the history of this piece of furniture came to a close.
Bibliography8 works
Giovanni Carandente