Acabinet (also known by other terms) was a privateroom in thehouses andpalaces ofearly modern Europe serving as astudy or retreat, usually for a man. The cabinet would be furnished with books and works of art, and sited adjacent to his bedchamber, the equivalent of theItalian Renaissancestudiolo. In theLate Medieval period, such newly perceived requirements for privacy had been served by thesolar of the English gentry house, and a similar, less secular purpose had been served by a privateoratory.
Such a room might be used as a study or office, or just a sitting room. Heating the main rooms in large palaces or mansions in the winter was difficult, and small rooms were more comfortable. They also offered more privacy from servants, other household members, and visitors. Typically such a room would be for the use of a single individual, so that a house might have at least two (his and hers) and often more. Names varied: cabinet, closet, study (from the Italianstudiolo), office, and a range of more specifically female equivalents, such as aboudoir.
With its origins in requirements for increased privacy for reading and meditation engendered by thehumanist avocation of many of the Italian noble and mercantile elite in theQuattrocento, the studiolo provided a retreat often reachable only through the, comparatively public, bedroom. This was true for the elaborateStudiolo of Francesco I de' Medici located inPalazzo Vecchio, Florence.
The standard fittings of the late medieval and early modern study can be inventoried among the conventional trappings in portrayals ofSaint Jerome inilluminated manuscripts, in paintings, or in engravings like those ofAlbrecht Dürer (illustration): a chair; perhaps a footstool to lift the feet from the draughty floor; a portable desk with a slanted surface for writing; and a table, bearing a book-rest, perhaps with a weighted ribbon to hold a book open at a place, and a candlestick (to supplement the light from the window, which is often shuttered but also which often has a window seat in the depth of the wall). InDomenico Ghirlandaio'sSaint Jerome in his Study, shelving runs around the room at the level of thefrieze, on it are curious objects, containers of various types, and large volumes lying on their sides.
Studioli entirely inlaid inintarsia for the ducal palaces ofUrbino (in situ) andGubbio (remounted at theMetropolitan Museum of Art[1]) with simulated shelves and built-in cabinets filled with books, scientific instruments and examples of geometric solids, all rendered in strikingtrompe-l'œil evoke the character of the pursuits of the cabinet. ForFerdinando Gonzaga'sstudiolo atMantua, in about 1619,Domenico Fetti painted a series of New Testamentparables, suitable for private contemplation; they proved very popular, and Fetti and his studio, and Fetti's imitators, repeated them for other similar retreats.Isabella d'Este called her room with paintings commissioned fromAndrea Mantegna,Perugino and others astudiolo.
Astudiolo would often have aLatin motto painted or inlaid roundthe frieze.Heraldry and personal devices andemblems would remind the occupant of his station in life. Series of portraits of exemplary figures were popular, whether theNine Worthies or the classical philosophers, in imaginary ideal portrait heads.
Perhaps the grandest studiolo was theCamerino ("little room") ofAlfonso d'Este inFerrara, for which the greatest painters of the day were commissioned from about 1512-1525 to paint mythological canvases, very large by the standards of the time.Fra Bartolommeo died before starting work, andRaphael got no further than a drawing, butGiovanni Bellini completedThe Feast of the Gods (NGA, Washington) in 1514.Titian was then brought in and added three of his finest works:Bacchus and Ariadne (National Gallery, London),The Andrians andTheWorship of Venus (bothPrado,Madrid), as well as repainting the background of the Bellini to match his own works better.Dosso Dossi, Alphonso's court painter, completed the room with a large painting (now lost) and ten small oblong subjects to go as a frieze above the others.[2]
InElizabethan England, such a private retreat would most likely be termed acloset, the most recent in a series of developments in which people of means found ways to withdraw by degrees from the public life of thehousehold as it was lived in the late medievalgreat hall. This sense of "closet" has continued use in the term "closet drama", which is a literary work in the form of theatre, intended not to be mounted nor publicly presented, but to be read and visualised in privacy. Two people in intimate private conversation are sometimes said to be "closetted together". In his closet at Christ Church, Oxford,Robert Burton wroteThe Anatomie of Melancholy (1621).
Cabinet in English was often used for strongrooms, or treasure-stores - the tiny but exquisite Elizabethan tower strongroom atLacock Abbey might have been so called - but also in the wider sense.David Rizzio was murdered when dining with his putative loverMary, Queen of Scots in "a cabinet abowte xii footes square, in the same a little low reposinge bedde, and a table".[3]
A rare surviving cabinet, or closet, with its contents probably little changed since the early 18th century, is atHam House in Richmond, London, England. It is less than 10 feet (3 m) square, and leads off from theLong Gallery, which is well over 100 feet (30 m) long by 20 feet (6 m) wide, giving a rather startling change in scale and atmosphere. As is often the case (atChatsworth House, for example), it has an excellent view of the front entrance to the house, so that comings and goings can be discreetly observed. Most surviving large houses or palaces, especially from before 1700, have such rooms, but (again as at Chatsworth) they are very often not displayed to visitors.[citation needed]
Since the reign ofKing George I, theCabinet – derived from the room – has been the principal executive group of British government, and the term has been adopted in most English-speaking countries. Phrases such as "cabinet counsel", meaning advice given in private to the monarch, occur from the late 16th century, and, given the non-standardized spelling of the day, it is often hard to distinguish whether "council" or "counsel" is meant.[4] TheOED creditsFrancis Bacon in hisEssays (1605) with the first use of "Cabinet council", where it is described as a foreign habit, of which he disapproves: "For which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings’ times, hath introduced cabinet counsels; a remedy worse than the disease."[5]
Charles I began a formal "Cabinet Council" from his accession in 1625, as hisPrivy Council, or "private council", was evidently not private enough, and the first recorded use of "cabinet" by itself for such a body comes from 1644, and is again hostile and associates the term with dubious foreign practices.[6] The process has repeated itself in recent times, as leaders have felt the need to have aKitchen Cabinet. Figurative uses ofcloset have developed in adifferent direction.[citation needed]
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In the cabinet as it evolved inFrench Baroque architecture, the last in the standardised series of rooms that constituted a Baroque apartment, the walls would be hung with rich textiles as a background forcabinet pictures, those small works, often on copper or wood panel, that required intimate study for appreciation, among which would also be devotional pictures. Especially wealthy or aristocratic people may have had a series of cabinets in a suite.[7]
AtVaux-le-Vicomte, the architectLe Vau contrived a jewel-like privatecabinet for the king's minister of financeNicolas Fouquet that was entirely hung with panels of Venetian looking-glass; later,Louis XIV'sGrand Cabinet atVersailles (swept away in 18th-century revisions in the name of even more private royal spaces) was similarly mirror-lined: "the king's self-directed gaze was at once religious and narcissistic" as Orest Ranum has observed.[8]
Versailles has a large assortment of cabinetsen filade for the king located behind and adjacent to his formal bedchamber, thePetit appartement du roi. The cabinet is the male equivalent of a boudoir, and at Versailles and the baroque palaces and greatcountry houses that echoed it, a parallel apartment would be provided for the royal or noble consort; at Versailles thePetit appartement de la reine. Even in the cramped confines of a London house,Samuel Pepys and his wife each had a bedchamber and a "closet"; with a common sitting room, or "drawing room", these were the minimum that genteel baroque arrangements required.
The meaning of "cabinet" began to be extended to thecontents of the cabinet;[9] thus we see the 16th-centurycabinet of curiosities, often combined with alibrary. The sense ofcabinet as a piece of furniture is actually older in English than the meaning as a room, but originally meant more a strong-box or jewel-chest than a display-case.[10]
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