  About the Artwork
  
  
  Images inspired by a popular medieval motif known as the “Siege of the Castle of Love” adorn this casket, or small box. They depict knightly figures using ladders to scale ramparts defended by maidens in a series of vignettes that echo poems and tales on the theme of courtly love.  
Despite its medieval appearance and iconography, this object is a revivalist metalwork made in the late 1800s. It copies a fourteenth-century wooden casket once owned by the well-known collector and antiquarian Jakob von Hefner-Alteneck that had been published in a lavishly illustrated catalog in 1882. It is one of many such copies of medieval artworks created by European firms in response to nineteenth-century demand for affordable goods that evoked the popular vision of medieval and Renaissance. The existence of several identical bronze copies of the Hefner-Alteneck casket, including this example, attests to the widespread interest in the Middle Ages that animated popular culture at the time.
  
  
  Title
  Casket
  
  
  Artwork Date
  late 19th century
  
  Artist
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  Life Dates
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  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  European
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Bronze
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 5 3/4 × 9 3/4 × 9 3/4 inches (14.6 × 24.8 × 24.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Furniture Accessories
  
  
  Department
  European Sculpture and Dec Arts
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Booth
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  F67.50
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
