SCHIAVO, Paolo
(b. 1397, Firenze, d. 1478, Pisa)

An Allegory of Love

c. 1440
Tempera on panel, 39 x 146 cm
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

Long, horizontal panels such as this were painted to decorate the fronts of furniture chests, called cassoni. In early fifteenth-century Florence, cassoni were commonly commissioned in pairs on the occasion of patrician marriages as part of the bride's trousseau. Their painted subjects were often drawn from classical mythology or history, usually allegories of love or chastity.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.