Cassone Lid


This panel is the lid of a cassone, a large wooden chest that women would store textiles in when they got married. This cassone was given to the daughter of Giovanni Borromei when she married into the Pazzi family. The Pazzis and Borromeis were both influential noble families in Renaissance Italy. The wedding between them was a political event as much as a personal one. As shown on the panel, the putti (child figures) riding on dolphins were symbols of the Pazzis, and the banners display the Pazzi and Borromei coats of arms.

(Detail of Pazzi banner shown on right)

A decorated lid from a large chest. Back to back, two heraldic babies ride on dolphins and play trumpets decorated with two different coats of arms. The dolphins resemble wolf-fish hybrids and the coats of arms are red and green, and blue respectively. Lid from a Cassone with the Pazzi and Borromei Coats of Arms  Apollonio di Giovanni  Italian  1463  Tempera on panel  21 1/8 x 72 in. (53.7 x 182.9 cm)  Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University 75.37  




Resources

Resource 1

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Medal of Cosimo de Medici

This medal is another artifact that has its own page on the Digital Toolbox.  It belonged to the Medici family, who was known as the most powerful family in Italy. The Medici family had a very long, negative history with the Pazzis. In fact, not long after the cassone was built, the Pazzi family assassinated a Medici duke. This incident caused a national scandal. After the Pazzis were caught, rival families destroyed most Pazzi coats of arms. Luckily, the cassone lid was spared, likely because the panel was on the inside of the chest. Historians now use the heraldry on the panel as a reference to identify other surviving Pazzi items, continuing the Medieval tradition of identifying blood lines by their family crests, and demonstrating the long-term effects of the conflict between the Pazzi and Medici families.  

Resource 2

Full Contact Jousting- YouTube (Competition starts at timestamp 2:16)

This video shows a modern-day tournament for jousting. Jousting began as a tournament sport during the Medieval period and remained popular until the 17th century. At its most basic, knights charge at each other with long lances and attempt to unseat each other from their horses. Jousting can be extremely dangerous, so competitors today still wear full suits of armor to protect themselves when they compete. They also compete with many more regulations than Medieval jousters had. In the video, you can see how the banner designs on the horses help tell the riders apart, even when their helmets are on.  

Resource 3

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Sample Design

Coat of Arms Heraldry Designer- Dominion of Thorne

Using this website, you can create your own coat of arms using colors and patterns from the Renaissance. It offers a large variety of historically accurate patterns and symbols. Some of the styles shown on the website had specific meaning, from the colors to the different stances an animal could be posed in. However, many of the options just reflect the population boom of the Renaissance. As more and more families needed their own coats of arms, they had to create more complicated patterns, along with their own meanings for them. 

Pro tip: This site has automatic background music that plays while you’re using it. The mute button for it is in the top right corner of the webpage.