Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi, called Lo Scheggia, The Adimari Cassone (detail), c. 1443–50, tempera on panel, with frame 34 7/8 in. x 9 ft. 11 1/4 in. Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

Selected Works

From Cassone to Poesia:
Paintings of Love and Marriage

The Adimari Cassone

This lively scene of an open-air dance with musicians, taking place in a Florentine setting, was painted about 1450 by Lo Scheggia, whose birth tray for Lorenzo de' Medici is exhibited in a previous room. Although it has been traditionally called the "Adimari Cassone," its large size indicates it was probably installed on the walls of a room rather than the front panel of a cassone chest. Whereas there is no evidence that it was painted for the Adimari family (as an eighteenth-century source had suggested), the coats of arms and inscriptions on the tapestries draped over the benches have not resolved the identity of the original owners of the panel. It contains a wealth of details pertaining to a celebration—possibly the wedding celebration of the dancing couple furthest to the left. Their slow steps may be those of a wedding dance known as the chiarenzana to music played by the pifferi, a Florentine civic ensemble.

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