Cabinet (room)

A cabinet (also known by other terms) was a private room in the houses and palaces of early modern Europe, a room serving as a study 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 the Italian Renaissance studiolo. In the Late Medieval period, such newly perceived requirements for privacy had been served by the solar of the English gentry house, and a similar, less secular purpose had been served by a private oratory.

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 Italian studiolo), office, and a range of more specifically female equivalents, such as a boudoir.

With its origins in requirements for increased privacy for reading and meditation engendered by the humanist avocation of many of the Italian noble and mercantile elite in the Quattrocento, the studiolo provided a retreat often reachable only through the, comparatively public, bedroom. This was true for the elaborate Studiolo of Francesco I de' Medici located in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

The standard fittings of the late medieval and early modern study can be inventoried among the conventional trappings in portrayals of Saint Jerome in illuminated manuscripts, in paintings, or in engravings like those of Albrecht 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). In Domenico Ghirlandaio's Saint Jerome in his Study, shelving runs around the room at the level of the frieze, on it are curious objects, containers of various types, and large volumes lying on their sides.

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