A box wood carved decoration en bas-relief “plant motifs”, black lacquer coating with gilt decoration, interior with gilt decoration “Triumph of Love”, red lacquered interior, iron mounts, scalloped lock escucheon “Heraldic shield” Southeast Asia 16th C. (2nd half) small restoration, wear to the gilt Dimensões (altura x comprimento x largura) - 12 x 26,5 x 21 cm Notes: Private collection, Lisbon. Pedro Moura Carvalho states that it was “[…] inspired by the «Triumph of Love» by Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) [clarifying that] in addition to having been published numerous times, the «Triumphs» of this Italian poet were also frequently illustrated during the 15th and 16th centuries. Their notoriety was so high that a considerable number of majolica tiles, tapestries, or pieces of furniture were decorated with these themes. In this case, the theme relating to love was chosen, that of a 15th-century engraving close to an original published (1488) in Venice by Bernardino da Novara” – cf. The World of Lacquer – 2000 Years of History, p. 143. The auction catalogue where it was later included states that “there is, however, a relevant aspect that should be drawn to attention: the similarity of the characters and their respective costumes, present in the box, with the usual representations, even at that time, of so many other figures from the History of Portugal – King D. João III, Vasco da Gama, Damião de Góis and Pedro Álvares Cabral – the crown used by the royal figure is the crown used, at the time, by the kings of Portugal, one of the figures has clear similarities with the medallion representing Pedro Álvares Cabral existing in the Jerónimos Monastery. Cabral Moncada Auctions, auction cataloguje no. 95, lot no. 94, pp. 100-101


This rare, small writing box, probably made from anjili wood (Artocarpus spp.), is coated in Southeast Asian black lacquer, or thitsi, and gilded with gold leaf on the exterior surfaces and the inner face of the lid, while the interior sides are coated with cinnabar-red lacquer.  Featuring a hinged top, the box has a larger square compartment on the right and smaller, oblong compartment on the left, likely originally fitted with a tilting cover, now missing. The wrought iron fittings include an escutcheon-shaped lock plate with its latch on the front, a swing top handle for ease of transport, and loop-in-loop hinges. All exterior surfaces, except the underside, bear low-relief decoration highlighted in gold (now largely lost), featuring Mannerist-derived ferronneries and floral scrolls, including large peonies, with birds set against flat borders of foliate ornament in gold leaf over a black lacquer ground. This technique, known as tiejinqi or jinqi in Chinese, and haku-e in Japanese, is characteristic of Burmese and Thai lacquerware, referred to as shwei-zawa and lai rod nam, respectively.
When opened, the box reveals a striking scene on the inner face of the lid. Rendered in gold leaf over the black lacquer ground and highlighted in sgraffito, to emulate the strokes of the engraving that served as its visual source, the scene depicts Petrarch’s Triumph of Love. A chariot, from left to right by two horses, carries, on a tiered pedestal, a naked, winged, blindfolded Cupid (Love) aiming his bow; it is closely followed by a dense procession of figures, including a crowned king. From a mound at the right rises, in spatially incongruous fashion, a Chinese-inspired peony tree in full bloom—with gigantic and out of scale flowers—flanked by long-tailed birds in flight; it dominates the centre of the composition. A couple (now partially effaced) appears on the upper right, as if observing Love’s procession. Although the peonies and the diminutive couple in the background are local addition—the couple likely intended to represent the original owners of the box—, the scene is modelled after a celebrated engraving attributed to Francesco Rosselli and printed in Florence in the 1480s, over fifty years before the box was made in Pegu.  In the engraving, Cupid’s chariot advances from left to right through a hilly landscape, drawn four white horses and steered by a driver; the blindfolded Cupid stands above a burning vase (candelabrum), balancing on one foot and poised to release an arrow; the chariot is surrounded by lovers (the ‘victims’ or ‘captives’ of Love), variously attired, including two kings, with Petrarch depicted in dialogue with a pair of lovers to the far left.
Petrarch’s Triumph of Love (Triumphus Cupidinis) is the opening movement of his vernacular Italian allegorical poem-cycle I Trionfi, written in terza rima and composed (and repeatedly revised) between 1351 and 1374.  It consists of a dream-vision in which Cupid, in a Roman-style triumphal procession (a chariot and white horses), parades a catalogue of illustrious captives from myth, scripture, and history—an emblematic spectacle of love’s universal dominion. Historically and culturally, it helped to consolidate Renaissance allegory by translating the classical triumph into a durable moral-allegorical iconography that circulated widely in illuminated manuscripts, cassoni imagery, prints, and tapestries. In adapting the engraving to the space available on the inner face of the lid—compressing a more vertical composition into the lid’s horizontal format—the artist altered the costumes of the figures (the lovers in Cupid’s procession) to accord with dress worn by the Portuguese settled in Asia in the second half of the sixteenth century. This is particularly evident in the courtly attire of the male figures in the foreground, wearing tight-fitting doublets, with skirted jerkins on top, and voluminous trousers; supplemented by crowns, morions (a soldier’s helmet), and bonnets.
Beyond the well-known Japanese export lacquerware known as Namban, other types of lacquered furniture made for the Portuguese market can be identified. These so-called ‘Luso-Asian’ lacquers remain the subject of debate as to their origins. Nonetheless, precisely because of their heterogeneity, these lacquerwares may be divided into two groups.  The first group, which includes the present writing box, has been attributed as Burmese, specifically to the Kingdom of Pegu in present-day Myanmar. This attribution rests on archival and material evidence, including Burmese thitsi lacquer from the Gluta usitata species of true lacquer tree, and techniques such as shwei-zawa, as confirmed by recent scientific and art-historical studies.  In light of the iconography, the marital character of the box is strongly suggested, likely ordered—as with many luxury furnishings produced in Asia for export to the Portuguese market in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—as part of a marriage trousseau.

6) Published in Manuel Castilho (ed.), The Eastern Route. Objects for the study of Portuguese-Oriental art (cat.), Lisbon, Manuel Castilho Antiguidades, 1999, p. 59, cat. 28; and Pedro Moura Carvalho (ed.), O Mundo da Laca. 2000 anos de História (cat.), Lisbon, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001, p. 143, cat. 67.
7)  British Museum, London (inv. 1883,0310.7). See Patricia Lee Rubin, Alison Wright, Nicholas Penny, Renaissance Florence. The Art of the 1470s (cat.), London, National Gallery Publications Limited, 1999, pp. 144-145, cat. 94 (catalogue entry by Alison Wright).
82) See Lucia Battaglia Ricci, “Immaginario trionfale: Petrarca e la tradizione figurativa”, in Claudia Berra (ed.), I «Triumphi» di Francesco Petrarca, Milan, Cisalpino, 1999, pp. 255-298; J.B. Trapp, “Illustrations of Petrarch’s Trionfi from Manuscript to Print and from Print to Manuscript”, in Martin Davies (ed.), Incunabula. Studies in Fifteenth-Century Printed Books presented to Lotte Hellinga, London, British Library, 1999, pp. 507-548; and Idem, Studies of Petrarch and his Influence, London, Pindar, 2003.
9) Hugo Miguel Crespo, Choices, Lisbon, AR-PAB, 2016, pp. 238-261, cat. 22 (with previous bibliography).
10)  Idem, ibidem