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(käs-sô`nā), the Italian term for chest or coffer, usually a bridal or dower chest, highly ornate and given prominence in the home. Major artists such as Uccello and Botticelli painted cassone panels, and prominent sculptors were also employed to carve elaborate chests. The cassone was usually decorated with mythological or historical episodes. It became one of the first means of bold secular expression in Renaissance art.



a type of wooden chest popular in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Its front and side walls were decorated with gilded and red stucco, carvings, and paintings (usually of a secular character). Such eminent artists as Botticelli and Uccello worked on cassoni. In the late 15th century architectural influence in its trimming increased: the sides were often divided into panels with carving and intarsia.


Faenson, L. “Ital’ianskie svadebnye sunduki.”Dekorativnoe iskusstvo SSSR, 1967, no.l.
Schubring, P. Cassone. Leipzig, 1923.
References in periodicals archive ?
The bride's dowry (donora) and counter-dowry from the groom were also important, not just for the decorative and symbolic objects it comprised but also for the marriage chests (forzieri, generally referred to as cassoni today) in which the goods were contained.
Replicated in necessarily smaller and more intimate versions, ranging from paintings and statuettes to painted marriage chests and cutlery handles, they attained a more personalised civic message appropriate for the domestic setting.
Renaissance Cassoni, Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted Marriage Chests 1400-1550, London: Starcity & Art Books International).
Bull contends that mythological visual imagery appeared mostly in what he characterizes as secondary locations: domestic furnishings such as marriage chests, majolica, birth trays, and small boxes for jewelry and other precious objects, temporary decorations for festivals or triumphal entries, prints, and sculptures for fountains and gardens.
Renaissance Casssoni, Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted marriage Chests 1400-1550.
Jacqueline Musacchio examines the meaning of a common image on Tuscan marriage chests and wainscoting in the fifteenth century, the rape of the Sabine women.
Similarly, images adorning marriage chests are discussed as exempla virtutis as they relate to societal expectations for both husband and wife.