IVORY CARVINGS 59 



cism has dispelled this belief, and it seems that we must 

 regard this signature as that of the owner rather than that 

 of the carver of the pax. 



There is record of an important school of ivory carvers 

 established in Venice in the early part of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, its founder being a certain Baldassare degli Embriachi, 

 a Florentine by birth, who had resided for some time in 

 Genoa before finally settling in Venice; and who thus en- 

 joyed the educational influences of the art circles of the three 

 cities — ^Florence, Genoa, and Venice. He was not only an 

 artist, but must have been endowed with considerable 

 practical ability, for he was a banker, and also for a time, 

 from 1389 to 1409, a political agent of Duke Giangaleazzo 

 of Milan. Two other younger members of the family, Ser 

 Giovanni (died before 1433) and Ser Antonio (died before 

 1431) belonged to this school, which was more especially 

 renowned for the production of a great number of beautiful 

 nuptial caskets. These eminently artistic objects were the 

 more appreciated that French ivory carving, which reached 

 its highest development in the fourteenth century, was 

 already declining in excellence. Baldassare's practical abili- 

 ties are believed to have been of even more value in the de- 

 velopment of the school he founded than his purely artistic 

 gifts, enabling him to systematize and order the Venetian 

 workshop like a well-organized industrial factory. As many 

 as 124 of these caskets have been traced in the various public 

 and private collections of Europe, one of the finest speci- 

 mens having been brought to the Ambroser Collection in 

 Vienna, by the marriage of Claudia dei Medici to Archduke 

 Leopold V, in 1627.* 



The rather excessive naturalness of much Flemish art, 

 even that of its great masters, appears unmistakably in 



*Julius von Schlosser, "Die Werkstatte der Embriachi in Venedig"; Jahrbiicher der 

 kunsthist. Samml., Vol. XX. pp. 220-282; Vienna, 1899. 



