Duarte de Menezes writing chest

A rare anjili wood (Artocarpus sp.)[1] writing chest characterised by its Southeast Asian black lacquer (thitsi) and gold leaf outer surfaces and inner lid coating, and black lacquered interior. The chest has lost its original fall front and original fittings, the current ones being more recent replacements. The lower long drawer, set with central ring pull, is fitted with three partitions forming four nooks. Each outer surface, excepting the box underside, features low-relief decoration highlighted in gold, and foliage inspired scroll patterns and flat borders of gold leaf decoration on black lacquered ground, a technique characteristic of Burmese lacquerware (shweizawa). While the outer lid depicts a floral composition difficult to interpret, the inner decoration of foliage scrolls is based, like the other surfaces, on European engravings or visual models, and includes what appears to be part of a double-headed eagle, a protective symbol in the context of Indian export furniture. This motif was probably misunderstood by the Burmese carvers, who incorporated it among the scrolls.

            Alongside better-known Japanese lacquerware made for export and known as Namban, a Japanese word of Chinese origin used to define the first Europeans to reach Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, other contemporary lacquered furniture productions were also exporting to the Portuguese market. These so-called Luso-Asian lacquers, which have challenged the consensual identification of its geographic origins, are somewhat heterogeneous in character and may be divided into two groups.[2] Bernardo Ferrão was one of the first scholars to take an interest in this type of production and identified several extant examples in public and private collections which are almost exclusively Portuguese. As characteristics of this production, which he wrongly identified as Indo-Portuguese, the author mentions: ‘the style and decoration, the lacquer coating and in some examples, the presence of coats of arms, Portuguese inscriptions, figures and mythological scenes from classical and Christian European culture, carved or painted, all following canons of Renaissance art’.[3] The first group, to which this rare and important writing chest belongs, has been recently identified as Burmese and thus made in the Kingdom of Pegu, to the south of present-day Myanmar, given strong archival and material evidence (Burmese lacquer or thitsi, from the sap of the Gluta usitata used in Southeast Asia) as well as the lacquer techniques used in its  production (the Burmese shwei-zawa), as evidenced from recent scientific analyses and art-history research.[4]

            The added historical importance of this writing chest lies in a handwritten inscription present on the unlacquered drawer underside. Written in opaque yellow ink, a palaeographic analysis suggests that the inscription dates from the last decades of the sixteenth century, or possibly from the early seventeenth century. From the longer text, divided into three lines, we can read: ‘O Jlustre senhor Don D[u]arte de Me- / nezes vizo Rey da India / A c[omprou?]’ (‘The illustrious Duarte de Meneses viceroy of India bought (?) it’). A note on the left, written above a schematic drawing of a carrack in black ink, perhaps indicating the writing chest position as it was stowed aboard a ship returning to Lisbon, along with the longer text, allows us to infer that the piece belonged to Duarte de Meneses (1537-1588), the 14th Viceroy of the Portuguese State of India (r.1584-1588). This is undoubtedly a mark of ownership, though not in his own handwriting, as confirmed by comparison with contemporary documents confidently attributed to the viceroy. One of these, bearing his signature, is of great significance to the history of Asia and the political, cultural, and religious relations with Japan. It is a rare, illuminated manuscript from the viceregal chancery, dated from the year of the viceroy’s death and addressed to Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), concerning the suppression of Christianity in Japan.

Born in Tangier, Duarte de Meneses (†1539) grandfather, had also been Governor of the Portuguese State of India (r.1522-1524). Meneses was captain of that Moroccan city under Portuguese rule (r.1574-1577), a position almost hereditary in his family, and later of Asilah (r.1577-1578). Imprisoned at the Battle of al-Qasr al-Kabir on August 4th, 1578, he was one of the Portuguese noblemen who identified young King Sebastião I (r. 1557-1578) body. Ransomed and returned to the kingdom, he was made Captain-General of the Algarve in 1580. Appointed Viceroy of Portuguese India in 1584, he arrived in Kochi on October 25th.

Little is known about the custodial history of this chest, though it more recently belonged to the important Francisco Hipólito Raposo (1933-2000) collection. Given its importance as a documented example of late sixteenth-century consumption of this type of Burmese lacquerware by the Portuguese elites, it has been published by several authors and featured in exhibitions such as Os Construtores do Oriente Português, held in 1998 at the Alfândega Building, in Oporto.[5]