Object details
Object number
F30e3
Creator(s)
French, Northern France
Title
Tambour
Date
late 15th century - early 16th century
Medium
Carved wood
Dimensions
328 cm (129 1/8 in.) high
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the collector Émile Peyre (1828-1904), Paris for 16,825 francs in 1897, through Fernand Robert, her regular agent in Paris.
Commentary
This tambour (French for “drum”), or vestibule, may have enclosed a stairway. Woodland scenes on the panels include strange, hairy-legged wild men, which were thought to ward off evil and intruders.
Bibliography
Catalogue. Fenway Court. (Boston, 1925), p. 32. (as French, dated 15th century)
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 261.
Betty Chamberlain. “Gothic Room” in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed.). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), p. 7.
“Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 6, no. 44 (30 June 1963), p. 2.
Stephen Z. Nonack. "Some Observations on a Fourteenth-Century 'Battente di Ferro.'" Fenway Court (1983), p. 39.
Gallery
Gothic Room
Rights and reproductions
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