Medium: Spanish cedar and walnut, with hard- and softwood inlays, pigments, iron, and velvet
Geograhical Locations:
Dates:18th century
Dimensions: open: 22 3/4 x 37 1/8 x 31 7/8 in. (57.8 x 94.3 x 81 cm) closed: 20 3/4 x 37 1/8 x 15 in. (52.7 x 94.3 x 38.1 cm)
Collections:
Museum Location: Luce Visible Storage and Study Center, 5th Floor
Exhibitions:
Accession Number: 51.102a
Image: CUR.51.102b_side.jpg,overall
Catalogue Description: A portable fall-front writing cabinet (a) secured with iron fittings backed with crimson velvet. Its plain cedar exterior contrasts with the rich decoration inside, executed in both in marquetry and with incised lines. Depth of color produced by rubbing of zulaque into designs. The inlaid Dominican arms on the exterior, placed where drop handles might once have been, suggest a religious provenance, and this is borne out by the iconography inside. Images of apostles with the attributes of their martyrdom decorate its compartments. Saint Bartholomew with a knife and Saint Matthias with an ax stand on the center drawers in replicated landscapes of lush, New World vegetation. On the lower drawers evangelists Saint Luke and Saint Mark sit astride their symbolic animals and, on the fall-front, Saint Andrew with a diagonal cross and Saint James with his pilgrim staff are flanked by unidentified standing figures, one with a scroll and one with a book. Saint Peter with the keys to heaven and Saint James the Less with a fuller's club both with hawk-like tropical birds hovering over their heads, stand on the arched doors to a central arch. Deep inside its architectural compartment is the winged figure of the Archangel Gabriel. He holds a flowering branch, on which has alighted another bird with the host in its beak. Base (b). Condition: See reports (Brian Howard & Assoc.) 1991 & 6/16/95