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.

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