COFFER. — By this term and others expressing analogous concepts, such as small box, casket, or, in Latin, *cappella* (see CAPSA), are indicated boxes and chests of various forms but modest dimensions intended for the safekeeping of precious objects.
The ivory casket of the Christian Museum in Brescia (see IVORY), which, by the character of its reliefs, can be dated to the 4th century and is considered to have come from the territories of Hellenistic Orient, is in the Paleo-Christian age the most distinguished example of such works, while other gradations of taste and classical style are reflected in the silver *cappella* perhaps from the time of St. Ambrose, which is in Milan in the church of SS. Nazarius and Celsus, and the coffer of a Proiecta, wife of a Secundus, also of silver, equally to be assigned to the 4th century, found in Rome during excavations conducted on the Esquiline, but now in London in the British Museum, as well as in the Civic Museum of Pola with ivory reliefs depicting scenes of the Passion. Silver coffers found in the treasure of the "Sancta Sanctorum" at the Lateran and others at Brivio and Carthage, preserved respectively in Paris at the Louvre and in Rome in the Vatican Sacred Museum, must instead be assigned to the 6th century, likely works of Eastern goldsmiths. On the other hand, works by Western masters are a silver *cappella* and a reliquary from the cathedral of Grado. Extremely rare and fragmentary are the remains of coffers of classical style to be assigned to a period between the 7th and the end of the 8th century, when, however, goldsmithing of barbarian taste created a truly distinguished masterpiece in the reliquary of Monza Cathedral: a gold coffer worked with complex relief ornaments and entirely encrusted with gems and colored stones.
Of quite particular character, so much so as to constitute a chapter in itself within the evolution of Byzantine ivory carving, is a group of coffers made between the 9th and 12th centuries, covered with ivory reliefs and often referred to as "civil caskets." They are generally rectangular in shape, have flat lids, and their sides are covered with reliefs, almost always secular in subject, executed in a style directly linked to that of ancient Hellenistic art, often reviving its motifs. Some are preserved in the cathedral of Capodistria, in the treasury of the cathedral of Ivrea, in the National Museum of the Bargello in Florence, etc. In Rome, near the basilica of St. Paul, there is one of these caskets that, however, also shows evident Northern influences; it was certainly made in the second half of the 11th century. To Southern Italian artists are also to be attributed some ivory coffers that in varying degrees reflect the forms of the caskets mentioned above but interpreted with stylistic accents not very different from those of the authors of the frontal of the cathedral of Salerno, a masterpiece of Southern workshops of the 12th century. There are some in Palermo in the treasury of the Palatine Chapel, where there are also some coffers of the same period but which imitate Muslim style and technique with finely incised figures and arabesques touched up with brown color and gilding. There are also some in Florence in the Bargello Museum and in Italian and foreign collections. To the same group may be connected the coffer of the cathedral of Città di Bagnorea (Bagnoregio), whose carved friezes, however, may recall those of some Muslim woodworks, and the small casket covered with silver plaques in the museum of the cathedral of Anagni.
Coffers covered with enamels or adorned with medallions or small enamel plaques, works of French artists, especially from Limoges, and Rhenish, and Byzantine artists, spread in Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries. Churches’ treasuries, public and private collections are rich in them, contributing to the renewal and dissemination of that most ancient technique, which then found imitators even among us. During the flourishing of Gothic taste, coffers, like every other object of goldsmithing, reflected the slender and elegant forms of the new style. There were then wooden coffers carved and painted or covered with precious metals embossed or with small plaques of ivory or bone. And bone carvings were especially produced by the craftsmen of the Embriachi family (see EMBRIACHI), authors of an infinite number of coffers.
In the Renaissance, during the 15th and early 16th centuries, coffers, taking up the forms of cassoni, became precious more for the refinement of art than for the richness of materials. They were produced not only covered with ivory and metals, with paintings, carvings, and decorated with reliefs, executed in a paste based on rice flour, which stand out against the gilded backgrounds according to a subtle and delicate technique that enjoyed great success especially in the Veneto region. But it was in the mid-16th century that Italian goldsmithing created one of its greatest masterpieces in the admirable book-coffer known as the Farnese Cassetta, now in the National Museum of Naples. The structural elements of the coffer, inspired by Michelangelo, are worked in gilded silver and made light by the translucent opalescence of six rock crystals engraved. The work, commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese from the Florentine goldsmith Mano, was completed after various interruptions toward the end of 1561; the six rock crystals were engraved by Giovanni Bernardi of Castelbolognese.
During the Baroque age and the modern era, coffers of various sizes and uses reflected the taste of the times.