Object details
Accession number
F30e3
Primary Creator
French, Northern France
Full title
Tambour
Creation Date
late 15th century - early 16th century
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.
Dimensions
328 cm (129 1/8 in.) high
Display Media
Carved wood
Web 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.
Permanent Gallery Location
Gothic Room
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.
Rights and reproductions
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