THE STORY

The Cabinet can be defined as a preciously produced container with drawers and compartments, used to store equally rare and precious objects, important private papers and secret documents. It has always been present in the most sophisticated and opulent interiors and has played a part on special and solemn occasions, political and religious. Its origins go back to Ancient Egypt. In 1922 in Tutankhamun’s Tomb more than thirty richly decorated Cabinets and caskets containing his most precious possessions were discovered. The genesis of the Cabinet is inscribed in Western history from Classical times to Byzantium, and the Middle Ages. Its form evolved as did its use reflected in the various names it assumed through the passing of time. Thus Armarium, hence armoire in French, a wardrobe or cupboard with shelves and drawers, in Italian Cassone to keep the bride’s dowry and Stipo.

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When a writing flap was added to the table Cabinet it became a portable writing desk, Escritorio in Spanish, Scrittorio in Italian. Of larger dimensions and made to preserve documents and valuables, then displayed on a trestle stand, it was the Vargueño in Spain and Portugal, in Germany the Schreibtisch. In Italy from the Renaissance onwards the Cabinet or Stipo is intimately linked with the birth of the Studiolo, the Prince’s small private room within his palace. The first and perhaps the most famous Studiolo belonged to Federico da Montefeltro, the Italian condottiero, a mercenary captain, humanist and patron of the arts, who became the Duke of Urbino. At the height of his power, he created in the renovated Ducal Palace a court of artists on a par with Lorenzo de’ Medici’s court in Florence. Inside his palace he conceived a small intimate place at first totally private. There the humanist scholar could meditate, read, study and pray in his Studiolo. Its walls were covered with inlaid wood panels and decorated by the most famous artists of the time. Others followed his example: in Ferrara Lionello d’Este’s Studiolo di Belfiore and of Alfonso I d’Este’s Camerini d’Alabastro; in Mantua Isabella d’Este’s Camerino of Enea, and Vespasiano Gonzaga Colonna; in Florence Cosimo I, Francesco I and Cosimo II de’ Medici’s Studioli. These rooms dedicated to intellectual and spiritual pursuit very soon were filled with wondrous works of art and rare objects. They became in their own right a separate place, a microcosm reflecting and reproducing the complexity of the world around.
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In this special space the Cabinet had the most prominent role, in it were kept the most precious and rare objects. The Cabinet was at the very heart of the Studiolo, precious in its workmanship as for the objects it contained. The dialogue between the outside world and the Studiolo meant as a private space was reflected in the Cabinet as a piece of furniture: its very name refers to the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. It is a cabin, a room, a palace reduced in scale meant to contain a universe in miniature, the portrait of the greater theatre of the world. This relationship between what is big and what is small, what is elevated and what is low in nature, between reality and theatre, belongs to mankind’s ancestral instinct. In fact who has not as a child dreamt and invented his or hers own imaginary adventures in a small fort defended by tin soldiers, or in a doll’s house with each room fully furnished? The Studiolo soon became the Wunder-kammer of the collector of Naturalia, Artificialia, Exotica and Mirabilia: no longer a private place but a Cabinet de Curiosités to show to one’s friends, to natural philosophers and to the mighty. With this new public dimension, the Wunderkammer became after a while the Kunstkammer, anticipating the concept of the museum, an art collection conceived to be displayed and exhibited. It is thus that in Italy as in the whole of Western Europe, the Cabinet as a piece of furniture left the enclosed context of the Studiolo to become more and more a show piece, a meuble de parade et d’apparat used to express the political and dynastic interests of the European rulers, often used as prestigious gifts to the noble and powerful. The best artists of the time were meant to produce each time some exceptional and impressive creation. The outer structure of the piece of furniture often evoked the miniature architecture of a building, while inside were found compartments and drawers, some of them secrets.
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The Cabinets were the ultimate expression of the art of furniture making and of the high standard of the woodworkers’ craftsmanship. Very often as part of a constant search for a rich and sophisticated effect, various essences of wood and precious material were used in some unusual ways, for example in the shape of a small Greek temple. The materials used as veneers were of the most diverse and rich kind: ebony, pietre dure, ivory, refined lacquers in Chinoiserie style. The Cabinets were further embellished with small cherubs, carved or engraved corals, gilt bronze, brass or silver mounts, or glass panels with oil paintings as in the Neapolitan fashion. The decorative patterns and elements adorning the Cabinets were drawn from nature, birds and flowers, from classical mythological or allegorical themes, more rarely from the Bible. The seventeenth century’s love and quest for fine materials always rarer and more precious, encouraged the use of tortoiseshell, now available from the new American colonies of Habsburgs’ Spain. Backed with coloured pigments, it glowed with great splendour on the dark ground veneered in ebony. Under the influence of the Baroque taste for splendour and grandeur, the Cabinets assumed a monumental and impressive scale. They were built like small palaces with an increased number of compartments and porticos surrounded by small columns and concealing a series of secret drawers and compartments. Conversely Cabinets of various sizes were produced on a smaller scale for a more functional use to be placed on a desk or a table. In the eighteenth century Cabinets assumed more restrained proportions and were placed on slender stands. Cabinets were greatly valued by collectors, among them in France by Cardinal Mazarin and King Louis XIV who had in their possessions several Stipi all’italiana, Cabinets in the Italian style. In modern times the production of Cabinets has decreased although the connoisseurs’ passion for these exceptional pieces of furniture has never abated. In fact the most expensive piece of furniture in history is the Badminton Cabinet, produced for the Duke of Somerset between 1726 and 1732, and sold at auction in 2004 for more than 27 millions of euros to Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechteinstein for his Vienna Museum.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Riccardi Cubitt Monique, The Art of the Cabinet, Including a Chronological Guide to Styles, Thames and Hudson, London 1992 Honour Hugh, Cabinet makers and furniture designers, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1969 Liebenwein Wolfgang, Studiolo: die Entstehung eines Raumtyps und seine Entwicklung bis um 1600, Mann Berlin, 1977 Lugli Adalgisa, Naturalia et mirabilia il collezionismo enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammer d’Europa, Mazzotta Milano, 1983 I mpey Oliver and Macgregor Arthur, The Origins of Museums, The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Europe, Ashmolean Museum Publications, Oxford 1985 Rotondi Pasquale, Il Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, Istituto Statale d’Arte per il Libro, Urbino, 1950 Pampaloni Martelli Annapaula, Il Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze, Arnaud, Firenze 1975 Phillis Rogers and Hayward John, English Cabinets, revised edition, London: HMSO, 1972. Mundt Barbara, Schatzkiistchen and Kabinettschrank (exhib. cat.), Berlin: Staatliche Museen, I990 Pandolfini casa d’aste, Firenze, Catalogo novembre 2016