A bone-inlaid wooden 'alla certosina' chest with games board, Northern Italy, Venice, circa 1460-80

Ex-private collection, Italy.

The technique of 'certosina' (also known as lavoro di intarsio or intarsia alla certosina) is a type of fifteenth century inlaid work made with polygonal tesserae of various woods, bone, and metal arranged in geometric patterns. The origins of this technique have been attributed by scholars to the Near East and compared to Iznik models (González-Palacios 1986, vol.I, p.309) but more recently re-ascribed to Catalonia (Rosser-Owen 2010, p.90) and the simpler taracea technique employed there. It was especially popular in Lombardy and Venice and reached its apogée from around the third quarter of the fifteenth century to around the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Certainly in Central Italy the marqueteers created works to rival that of the painters in Northern Italy, producing coffers and other pieces of furniture in a uniquely geometric and floral design utilising a technique of cutting out little pieces of wood and tinted bone and ivory.

The current chest includes a kind of games table on its lid, with a central section taking the form of a tric-trac (checkers) or chessboard. There are three known chests of almost identical decoration, probably originating from the same workshops, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no.128-1892), the Schlossmuseum, Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no.07.97). Further comparables are in the Musée national du Moyen Age Thermes de Cluny, Paris, and the Rijskmuseum, Amsterdam. Furthermore, a similar cassone with a chequerboard inlaid in the top is illustrated in Arte and News Antiquaria, 1 November 2004, p.6, `La Magia dell'intarsio alla certosina', p.12.