Mamluk Egyptian or Nasrid Spanish craftsmen, 14th c.
Cylindrical box for perfumed essences
Carved and pierced ivory with traces of polychromy and inscription in naskhi characters (10×8,5 cm)
Palermo, Regional Art Gallery of Sicily Palazzo Abatellis, cat. 11437, from the Abbey of San Martino delle Scale

This refined ivory box is not among the works chronologically or historically linked to the sovereigns that are at the center of this exhibition. However, it is virtually displayed to recall the interest that the opening of the royal and imperial tombs in 1781 aroused (cat. 6, 21).
This object has recently been identified as the one that Abbot Giuseppe Vella, a well-known forger of from Malta, showed to French architect and traveler Leon Dufourny, who lived in Palermo between 1789 and 1793, claiming that it had been found in the sarcophagus of a Queen Constance. Considering the dating of the box, subsequent to the death of both Constance of Hauteville and Constance of Aragon, Vella’s claim was undoubtedly fraudulent. But such sensational findings were becoming more and more popular, and their fame was growing together with the rediscovery and rewriting of the history and the monuments of the Kingdom of Sicily in light of the rising medieval revival.