Chiu, Jasmine M.. "The Iconography of Dancing on Renaissance Wedding Chests." In Music and Visual Culture in Renaissance Italy, edited by Chriscinda Henry and Tim Shephard, 173-199. New York: Routledge, 2023.


Abstract:
This chapter argues that the artistic representation of dance in late medieval and Renaissance societies both reflects a widespread social practice and is embedded with its own layers of visual expressiveness and symbolic meaning which inform, invigorate, bewilder, punctuate, and enhance painted and sculptural compositions. To further explore the layers of cultural meaning that dance iconography acquired and embodied in Renaissance Italy, this chapter will explore the representation of dancing figures on the painted panels of fifteenth-century Tuscan cassone wedding chests, the historical and visual ties between dance and marriage, and the performative role of the cassone chests themselves in contemporary marriage rituals. The depiction of dancing couples in the wedding scenes of cassone decoration served as an effective symbolic reminder of the marriage and acted as a powerful and lasting visual expression of this union on objects which were commissioned as an integral part of fifteenth-century Tuscan marriage rituals.