Cassone
Italian style chest typically commissioned for a newly married couple
A cassone (plural cassoni) or marriage chest is a rich and showy Italian type of chest, which may be inlaid or carved, prepared with gesso ground then painted and gilded. Pastiglia was decoration in low relief carved or moulded in gesso, and was very widely used. The cassone ("large chest") was one of the trophy furnishings of rich merchants and aristocrats in Italian culture, from the Late Middle Ages onward. The cassone was the most important piece of furniture of that time. It was given to a bride and placed in the bridal suite. It would be given to the bride during the wedding, and it was the bride's parents' contribution to the wedding.
There are in fact a variety of different terms used in contemporary records for chests, and the attempts by modern scholars to distinguish between them remain speculative, and all decorated chests are today usually called cassoni, which was probably not the case at the time. For example, a forziere probably denoted a decorated chest with a lock.
Since a cassone contained the personal goods of the bride, it was a natural vehicle for painted decoration commemorating the marriage in heraldry and, when figural painted panels began to be included in the decor from the early quattrocento, flattering allegory. The side panels offered a flat surface for a suitable painting, with subjects drawn from courtly romance or, much less often, religious subjects.
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