Liberale da Verona

An exciting rediscovery, this panel is by the famous Veronese painter and miniaturist Liberale da Verona. The scene is based upon the Trionfo della morte ("Triumph of Death") by the great Italian poet Petrarch (1304–1374), itself a section of his long poem Trionfi ("Triumphs") dealing with Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity. It was originally the front panel of a cassone or wedding chest, the other side of which is Liberale's Triumph of Fame now in the Pinacoteca Edigio Martini at the Ca' Rezzonico in Venice.¹ The third side of the cassone has been identified by Mattia Vinco as the intact panel in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona which depicts, within an elaborately sculpted pastiglia surround, the Triumph of Chastity and Triumph of Love.²

These cassoni have been dated by Vinco to 1480-85. Interestingly, the scenes are composed not as progressions from left to right but from the outside in. The daring compositions reflect the artist's inventiveness despite the popular subject matter, which was often used for cassone, for Love and Chastity might thus be seen side by side as a moral example to the young bride receiving the wedding chest. 

We are grateful to Mattia Vinco and Professor Laurence Kanter for their assistance with the cataloguing of this lot. Both have independently endorsed the attribution to Liberale da Verona based on digital images. 

1. Inv. no. 4. Oil on panel, 40.5 by 53.5 cm. See M. Vinco, Cassoni. Pittura profana del Rinascimento a Verona, Milan 2018, cat. no. 12.2, reproduced p. 86. 

2. M. Vinco, op. cit., cat. no. 12.1, reproduced p. 85.

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