Embriachi Adam And Eve Plaque - Venice, Circa 1410

As much prized by princes and elites throughout Europe around 1400 as by amateurs and collectors of our time, the creations of the Embriachi workshop are among the most fascinating and emblematic productions of the end of the Middle Ages. Easily recognizable, they consist of rectangular and convex bone plates set side by side in a frame of alla Certosina marquetry. This Italian process consists of hollowing out a solid wood panel in order to insert multiple miniature elements added in bone and wood of different species, sometimes painted. These elements are assembled and then glued on the wooden panel in skilful geometric ornamental compositions, consecrated in Italy by the Bottega de Baldassare Umbriachi. In order to supply a very large market, the botegga chooses materials that are inexpensive and available locally (poplar, bone), taking the opposite view from the famous Parisian ivory workshops from which period of works of the same typologies (altarpieces, caskets, mirrors). In order to produce these objects in large quantities and quickly, the Embriachi workshop prefabricates and standardizes the parts according to a serial process. Some very popular scenes were thus repeated and reused, assembled at the request of the sponsor in their wooden frame. Our fragmentary bone plaque features two naked figures, one of whom seems to hide his nudity shamefully. It could be Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, a scene very little represented in the Embriachi production but which could have found its place perfectly in important sets such as the famous Old Testament Altarpiece Embriachi of the Museum of Arts Decorative from Paris.