Embriachi workshop as a historical construct

Abstract

For many decades, the majority of Italian ivory production from the 14th and 15th centuries was attributed to the Embriachi workshop. The inextricable link between the object and the name effectively became a convenient and familiar rubber stamp for museum catalogues and auction sales. However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the “Embriachi workshop” is a historiographical phantom with no solid foundation. The name “Embriachi” should actually be deciphered as Ubriachi or Obriachi; it stands not for an artisan of ivory caskets and triptychs, but for Baldassare Ubriachi — an Italian merchant and banker, patron of the church of Santa Maria Novella, confidant of Charles IV, Richard II of Bordeaux, Martin I of Aragon, and Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and owner of an extensive network of artisan workshops operating in Florence, Venice, and Paris. Information about the owner is insufficient to determine the organisation of the bottega, the style of its production, or even the precise years of its operation. The identity of the Embriachi’s head craftsman, Giovanni di Jacopo, provides even less information. Therefore, the most productive way to study carved bone objects and demolish the myth of the ubiquitous and “all-encompassing” Embriachi seems to be to divide the corpus of pieces according to various parameters: subject matter, quality of execution, style, additional architectural and ornamental elements, and the combination of bone plaques with inlay. This approach, developed by Elena Merlini, who proposed four additional groups of craftsmen, can be expanded to include pastiches, some of which are in Russian museum collections, and individual fragments that have lost their mounts. A detailed examination of all aspects of the existence and study of the “Embriachi workshop” suggests that this term is, if not outdated and completely irrelevant, then at least one that requires great caution from researchers and a clear distinction between the luxury products produced by the artisans who served Baldassare Ubriachi from approximately the 1370s to the 1410s and Italian bone carving in general from the 14th and 15th centuries. The latter, like any major phenomenon, was extremely diverse, and in the absence of more specific sources on the creators and patrons, it is the bone works of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance that may become the primary sources of information on a distinct artistic movement.