A spalliera (Plural: spalliere) is a decorated backboard mounted on a wall, often behind a

cassone A cassone (plural ''cassoni'') or marriage chest is a rich and showy Italian type of chest, which may be inlaid or carved, prepared with gesso ground then painted and gilded. ''Pastiglia'' was decoration in low relief carved or moulded in ...

(a wooden chest used for storage), or as a headboard to a bed. It is usually made out of wood and embellished with decorative aspects such as intricate

carving Carving is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed from it, and y ...

or painting, and is

gilded Gilding is a decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold over solid surfaces such as metal (most common), wood, porcelain, or stone. A gilded object is also described as "gilt". Where metal is gilded, the metal below was tradi ...

as well. They were common in Renaissance

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of 3,660,834 inhabitants as of 2025. The capital city is Florence. Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, artistic legacy, and its in ...

. No examples of Florentine sets of ''spalliere'' with inset paintings have survived intact. At the most expensive level, all four walls of a room seem to have had panels fitted, which were richly decorated with carved wood,

marquetry Marquetry (also spelled as marqueterie; from the French ''marqueter'', to variegate) is the art and craft of applying pieces of wood veneer, veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns or designs. The technique may be applied to case furn ...

, and sometimes paintings inset into the wood. These paintings were usually much wider than tall, like the painted panels on ''

cassoni A cassone (plural ''cassoni'') or marriage chest is a rich and showy Italian type of chest, which may be inlaid or carved, prepared with gesso ground then painted and gilded. ''Pastiglia'' was decoration in low relief carved or moulded in g ...

''. They seem often to have been made to celebrate a wedding, and fitted to the marital bedroom, though other important rooms also had them.Lightbown, Ronald, ''Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work'', p. 114, 1989, Thames and Hudson

Sandro Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), better known as Sandro Botticelli ( ; ) or simply known as Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 1 ...

and

Piero di Cosimo Piero di Cosimo (2 January 1462 – 12 April 1522), also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, who continued to use an essentially Early Renaissance style into the 16th century. He is most famous for the mythologica ...

are two of the better known painters who produced many paintings whose wide format suggests that this was their original function; they have now been given conventional picture frames.

References

{{Reflist
The National Gallery - SpallieraItalian Renaissance Resources
Furniture Renaissance paintings