The Farnese Casket

This casket was nearly 20 years in the making, long enough to outlive one of its makers. It was begun in Rome in the 1540s for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III, and his arms are on it in enamel, six blue lilies on gold under a red cardinal's hat. The six rock-crystal ovals were cut by the engraver Giovanni Bernardi, largely after drawings by the painter Perino del Vaga. Centaurs, Amazons, a boar hunt and a sea fight show up in the crystal as pale, matte drawings, and along the lower edge of one oval on the long side Bernardi cut his own name. He died in 1553. The Florentine silversmith Manno Sbarri finished the silver structure around his crystals in about 1561, and four years later the cardinal gave the casket as a wedding present to his nephew's bride, Maria of Portugal. What it was made to hold is still unknown. When restorers took it completely apart for the first time, in 2018, they found a lock opened through a tiny hole hidden in the ornament, and a folded paper dated 1564 pushed into a cavity in the base. It was first taken for a message. It turned out to be packing, stuffed in to fill a gap.