Workshop Of Baldassare Degli Embriachi

Place: Florence

Biography:

The Embriachi workshop was an important producer of objects in carved ivory and carved bone, set in a framework of inlaid wood. They operated in north Italy from around 1375 to perhaps as late as 1433, apparently moving from Florence to Venice about 1395. The workshop takes its name from Baldassare Ubriachi or Baldassare Embriachi, variously described as a nobleman, merchant and diplomat, or an 'international man of business and politics'. He was presumably not a carver himself, but supplied the capital, and no doubt was involved with negotiating the larger sales to courts and nobles north of the Alps. The great majority of works are undocumented and unsigned, and there were almost certainly other workshops working in the style, so the modern tendency among museums and art historians is to attribute them using 'Embriachi workshop', 'Embriachi-type' or similar terms. They are also very hard to date with any precision on stylistic grounds. Generally, the quality of carving tends to decline in works dated after about 1410. One scholar, Michele Tomasi, argues that the style of painted, rather than carved, elements of altarpieces suggests that production ceased around 1416.