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Leather Art Museum

Escritoire

An escritoire of “Jerusalem Delivered”, c. 1600-1610, wood, leather, gilded hardware and paint, 48 × 80 × 33 cm, Italy-France. Leather Art Museum. Vic.

 

An escritoire of “Jerusalem Delivered”, c. 1600-1610, wood, leather, gilded hardware and paint, 48 × 80 × 33 cm, Italy-France. Leather Art Museum. Vic.

 

Escritoires are used to keep valuable objects such as documents and coins. They were probably the result of the merger between a trunk and an Aran arc.

In the main scene on the outside, we see a young king receiving advice from an elder; both are surrounded by soldiers and face a large city. This scene has been interpreted in two ways: it might refer to Alexander the Great when he received his master Aristotle during the destruction of the city of Thebes, or it might refer to the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (1575) by Torquato Tasso, which became very famous in Baroque times.

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