CARVED LACQUER

This set of four nesting boxes, above, sits in the fascinating little Eastern Museum at Kedleston, Derbyshire set up by Lord Curzon on his return from India where he had been Britain’s most magnificent Viceroy. The boxes are Chinese, made of carved lacquer, as are all the pieces below, in a slightly bigger museum – New York’s Metropolitan. They bear witness to the sophistication and timelessness of Chinese culture. The tray, below left, depicting children at play in a  garden, is a nostalgic piece made in the 14th century, with old-fashioned costumes: the boy carried by two others at the bottom of the scene wears a hat made fashionable 300 years earlier by artist/scholar/statesman Su Shi. The depth of the carving – through up to 100 layers of lacquer dyed red with Cinnabar – is astonishing, as seen in the details of peony flowers and foliage.

Whether pictorial and narrative, like these idyllic scenes of an elegant life led in gardens and pavilions, the features carved in deep relief against a geometric ground, or simply decorative, like the all-over floral designs of the round cosmetic boxes below, these craftsmen conjured an entire world from this most refined medium. The black figures on a red ground, below, were carved through layers of black lacquer on red, like cameos carved through layers of natural stone. I love the detail, bottom, of children peering through holes in a big Taihu rock, its smoothly rounded surface set against minutely carved patterns of water.

GEOMETRIC CASTLES

Francesco di Giorgio Martini, painter, sculptor, architect and military engineer, built a series of extraordinary castles for Federico da Montefeltro and for his son-in-law, Giovanni della Rovere, Lord of Senigallia and of Mondavio, the latter seen above, rising up from its vine-planted valley, with Francesco’s Rocca Roveresca on the far right. The Rocca was one of his later works, built around 1490, unfinished at his and della Rovere’s deaths in 1501. As military architecture, it is fascinating, both for its advanced design and for being intact, but I love it for its muscular, angular forms and the sculptural presence of its sheer faces of brick.

In 1481 Francesco built a big fort on the hill above the town of Cagli, for Federico da Montefeltro, which was destroyed by his son Guidubaldo in 1502 during the war against Cesare Borgia, who had taken the town. The fort was connected by a long tunnel to the tower, above, which still stands today, another piece of pure geometry. Above it are some of Francesco’s drawings showing typically bold forms. Below, his castle at Sassocorvaro, this one built for Ottaviano Ubaldini, half-brother and closest friend and adviser of Federico, who gave him the town and territory in 1470, after the death of Malatesta, who had repeatedly fought him for it. The Rocca Ubaldinesca feels like a vast ship improbably moored in the little town, especially with its pointed prow at one end. Within are wonderful little courtyards and a charming, Victorian theatre.