Dated Web objects 1920-1959

Charles Prendergast

Date: 1920

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.59

Text Entries: This type of monumental carved, gessoed, and painted wooden chest (one of three made by Charles Prendergast) has its origins in Renaissance Italy, where an elaborately carved and decorated chest, or cassone, was often given to a woman upon marriage as a container for the bride's dowry. Beyond their utilitarian uses as household furniture, cassone chests often were intended to suggest the wealth and social status of the owner. Elaborately decorated and guilded surfaces and intricate carvings impressed upon the viewer the grandeur of all that the chest might contain. Charles Prendergast's twentieth-century version of the cassone-style chest was commissioned in 1920 by collector and founder of New York's Museum of Modern Art, Lillie P. Bliss who had already acquired several frames and a panel painting by Charles. The chest's design combines gracefully fanciful imagery derived from the disparate influences of classical mythology, Christian symbolism, medieval Italian painting, and near eastern art. Static poses and frieze-like compositions recall ancient Egyptian imagery, while haloed figures suggest Christian iconology (the fourth panel on the front side is identified as the Annunciation by an inscription beneath). The four niches of stylized profiles of male and female figures on the chest's backside allude to the tradition of medieval and Renaissance court portraiture. Yet this chest, like many of Charles Prendergast's creations, integrates the modern into the traditional to create a unified, aesthetic design.