Europe: moresca

Europe: decorative arts

moresca themed artefacts and decoration

gallery contents

Ivory and bone artefacts, drawings and carvings depict the moresca dance.In the 15th and 16th centuries it was performed both in court and in town celebrations. The moresca is characterised by having a 'lady', a jester and prancing dancers accompanied by a pipe and tabor player. The people are dressed in up-to-date fashion.

chess board
Bargello chess board 1460-1470	taborer on chess board rim
'The Bargello gamesboard: a north-south hybrid' by Paula Nuttall 2010

rim: moresca dancers

Chess was played from medieval
times onwards. It was a mark of respectability for the nobility.
Women were expected to be
as adept as men.

1305-1340 playing chess, Germany

medieval chess problem
late 14th century France


*bone and ivory caskets*
Boxes were made for the luxury and the urban trade in many workshops in Europe for many centuries. Some were made of wood and covered with bone or ivory plaques; others are of carved wood. Many designs were copied from one workshop to another and so were similar in style. Musicians were a common decorative theme.
11th century gable lid box	11th century drummer on lid
15th century wood casket, inside, Germany,	15th century drummer carved on back
1430-60 bone box, Flanders, Belgium	Games box lids or sides depict moresca dancers with their musician, usually a pipe asnd tabor player On the lids the taborer is usually in the centre of the lower register.	1440-70 box lid, France or Germany,

The base takes the form of a games board.

15th century games board base, Bourges, France

1486/1500 ivory games box:

'On the bottom of the box is a chess board, with animal
and other depictions on the side. Above, ivory fields, four
of them each with a dancing man, one with a dancing woman
and one with a woman who is blowing a one-handed flute
and beating a small drum.'

Flanders ? / Northern Italy ? | Netherlands ? / Italy ?

games box lids

1425 Italy

14th or 15th century France

15th century Italy

1430-1460

mid 15th century Flanders

c. 1440-70 South Netherlandish

1440-1470 French or German

1440-1470 Germany

Cluny Museum

15th century

15th century Bourges France

1440-1470

For more information on these games boxes see:
'Dancing, love and the 'beautiful game': a new interpretation of a group of fifteenth-century 'gaming' boxes', Renaissance Studies 24.1, 2010, pp.119-141
by Paula Nuttall

Sometimes the moresca are on the side of the boxes:

1470 Netherlands

side of the box with dancers and fool

player on side of box
French or German

side of the box with dancers and fool

1440-70 Netherlands, box side

These carvings do not show a tabor but the left hand
is in the correct position for playing a three-holed pipe.

15th century Flanders

15th century Bourges, France

15th century Netherlands

personal items

combs:

end 15th century; carvings on both sides include a pipe and tabor player; south Germany

player side 1 with moresca design

comb side 1

player side 2

comb side 2

second half 15th century, ivory, N Italy late 15th century player

15th century comb fragment; moresque design 15th century fragment

player


*mirror case:*
15th century ivory, Flemish or Francejester player	mirror case back	1320 lady combing hair [standard symbols of human vanity]


drawings, *paintings, sculpture*
1336-1361 manuscript, Majorca
1438 edition of a 13th century encyclopedic introduction to astrology, [source not yet found]
1440-1450 manuscript Book of Hours, Provence, France		taborer - marginal drawings seem to illustrate moresca figures
1440 manuscript marginal images, France
		taborer sitting on a swag (top, centre of image)
1460-1470 ivory carving "Round Dance in the Antique Manner", Constantinople

date unknown - possible moresca	1500 Innsbruck, Austria, (copies of originals)
late 15th century Germany	16th century stone carvings, Salamanca, Spain copyright: Javier San José Lera.

1460-70 with dancers 1460-70 Lille, France

close-up of player

1480 statuette, modern copy
Munich, Germany

player

1475 - 1485 Germany

15th century France

1520 misericord, Beverely Minster, England

	1508 moresque, Germany
	1515 playing for dancing	pipe and tabor with viol
		1520 taborer
	1520 and here Altbayern, Bavaria, Germany
1542 print, Nuremberg, Germany
Victorian copy;		close-up of taborer

1621 Betley Hall window: more uses of this image here
1621 Betley Hall window Staffordshire, England © Stuart Cox / Victoria and Albert Museum London	1844 book frontispiece,	1911 [?] Kingston copy, Betley Hall window	1981 stamp [detail] England


'Wilsons Almanac, Book of Days': also Chambers Book of Days, Victorian


literature
1490 Wedding Festivities for Isabella (Mantua, Italy) During a performance of a play by the ancient Roman playwright, Plautus, there were three intermezzi. ... The third, a moresca in mime and dance, featured a group of “rustics” who, with hoes, spades, rakes, and winnowing fans, alternately “worked the land” and “fought with swords,” always keeping in time to the pipe and tabor music and cuffing each other for fun at their exit.
1502 an entertainment for Lucrezia Borgia “…In the evening they all again went to hear the comedy which was the Asinaria of Plautus, and which occupied five hours….After the first act was represented a moresca commenced, in which fourteen men were dressed as satyrs — one performer having on his shoulder an ass’s head covered with plates of silver, playing a pipe and tabor. The moresca began by the player of the pipe and tabor first appearing on the stage….” ‘Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara, a biography’ by William Gilbert, 1869

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the Pipe and Tabor compendium

the Pipe and Tabor compendium

essays on the three-hole pipe

Europe: decorative arts

moresca themed artefacts and decoration