ABSTRACT
For over two hundred years the so-called “Adimari Wedding Cassone” ( fig. 1 ) has been cited as important pictorial evidence in several scholarly fields. 1 For music history it provides a good view of one of the most typical instrumental music groups of the fifteenth century, including what has been considered to be the earliest depiction of a trombone ( fig. 2 ). For dance history it records a group dance that is to have taken place in the early fifteenth-century, the time of the earliest surviving dance instruction manuals. And for social history the painting is thought to have graced a wedding chest, recording a moment at the wedding celebration of an aristocratic Florentine family; it is the only scene of its type in which the event and the participants have been identified. A recent close inspection of the painting and facts surrounding its identification, however, reveal that it is not what it is purported to be. The event that is recorded, the date of the painting, certain of the details within the painting, and the purpose of the panel have been incorrectly identified. Many of the errors are the result of misunderstandings that have been passed on since the eighteenth century, while others are quite likely the product of uninformed “restorations” over the centuries. 2
