Holy Thorn Reliquary
The Holy Thorn Reliquary | |
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Material | Gold, sapphire, ruby, rock crystal, pearl, enamel |
Created | Probably before 1397 |
Present location | Room 2A, British Museum, London |
Identification | WB.67 |
The Holy Thorn Reliquary was probably created in the 1390s in Paris for
Except at its base the reliquary is slim, with two faces; the front view shows the end of the world and the
The reliquary was in the
History
King Louis IX of France bought what he believed to be the authentic Crown of Thorns in Constantinople in 1239, and individual thorns were distributed as gifts by subsequent French kings.[4] John, Duke of Berry (1340–1416), brother of King Charles V of France, had this reliquary made to house a single thorn; it was probably made a few years before he commissioned his famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, and some years after he commissioned the Royal Gold Cup, also in the British Museum. Previously dated between 1401 and 1410, from evidence in John Cherry's book of 2010 the reliquary is now thought to have been made before 1397; based on the heraldic forms used, the museum now dates it to 1390–97.[5] The Holy Thorn Reliquary was later thought to have been in the possession of Louis I, Duke of Orléans,[6] but all recent writers prefer his uncle, the Duke of Berry.[7]
Its location is unknown until an inventory of 1544, when it belonged to
The original reliquary reached the British Museum as part of the Waddesdon Bequest in 1899, by which time its origins had been "completely lost" and it was described as "Spanish, 16th Century".[1] Thus its history had to be reconstructed through scholarship; the meaning of the heraldic plaques on the castle base had by now been lost in both London and Vienna. The first publication to assert that the London reliquary was the one recorded in earlier Viennese inventories was an article by Joseph Destrée in 1927; the matter was not finally settled until 1959 when the Viennese version was brought to London to enable close comparison. The assembled experts from the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna agreed that the London reliquary was the original.[10] Under the terms of the Waddesdon Bequest the reliquary cannot leave the museum; in 2011 it was omitted from the Cleveland and Baltimore legs of the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe.[11] Normally it is on display in Room 45, the dedicated Waddesdon Bequest Room, as specified in the terms of the bequest.[12]
Description
The Holy Thorn Reliquary is made of gold, enamel, rock crystal, pearls, rubies and sapphires. It is just over 30 centimetres (12 in) high and weighs 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb). There are some areas of damage (including what appears to be deliberate removal of enamel in the 19th century), and small losses and repairs; but generally the reliquary is in good condition. The central front compartment holding the relic is protected by a thin pane of rock crystal, which has kept it in perfect condition.[1] The enamel is mostly in ronde bosse technique, applied to three-dimensional figures, with white as the dominant colour. At the time, white enamel using lead had been only recently developed and was very fashionable, dominating many contemporary ronde bosse works.[13] There is also red, green, blue, pink, and black enamel. Pure gold is used throughout, which is rare even in royal commissions of such pieces at this period; most use cheaper silver-gilt for the structural framework.[14]
The jewels, which would have been keenly appreciated by contemporary viewers, include two large sapphires, one above God the Father at the very top of the reliquary, where it may have represented heaven,[15] and the other below Christ, on which the thorn is mounted. The gold elements framing God the Father and the central compartment with Christ and the thorn are decorated with alternating rubies and pearls, totalling fourteen of each.[16] All the gemstones have the smooth and polished cabochon cut normal in medieval jewellery, and though they are set in the reliquary with gold "claws", all are drilled through as though for threading on a necklace, suggesting that they are re-used from another piece.[17] There may have been other jewels now lost, for example mounted in two holes on either side of the door of the castle-like base.[18]
Front face
The design of the front face is based on the general
To the left and right of Christ are shown
Below this upper section there is a gold scroll label with the Latin inscription Ista est una spinea corone / Domini nostri ihesu xpisti ("This is a thorn from the crown / Of Our Lord Jesus Christ") in black enamel filling the engraved letters.
The Last Judgement was an especially appropriate subject for setting a relic from the Crown of Thorns. Some thought that the crown was held by the French kings on loan, and would be reclaimed by Christ on the Day of Judgement—a belief expressed in the antiphon sung at Sens Cathedral in 1239 to celebrate the arrival of the main relic.[25]
Two panels on the walls of the castle are patterned with the
Rear face
The rear face is plainer, with no jewels, but still highly decorated; Cherry speculates that it may originally have been much more simple and not designed for viewing, with most of the other elements added after it was originally made.
In the fake in Vienna, the figures of both saints are enamelled; flesh is white, Michael and the Christ child have red robes, and Christopher blue, and the saints stand on a brownish dragon and blue water respectively, with green grass below both of these. Some scholars have thought it unlikely that the forger invented this scheme, and therefore presumed that he copied enamel on the original that has been removed in the 19th century, probably because it was damaged—sections of enamel cannot be patched up, but must be removed completely and redone.[32] However John Cherry believes this and other changes in the enamel of the Vienna version are elaborations by Weininger and his craftsmen; for example in Vienna the wings of the trumpeting angels are coloured.[33] The two figures are in a sophisticated "soft and flowing" International Gothic style executed with great virtuosity; Michael's staff is detached from the background over most of its length and is one of a number of elements that extend outside the frame of the door.[34] If there was once enamel on the two figures it would have been at least mainly in more fragile translucent enamels, as the very fine working of many details of them was clearly intended to be seen. The rougher working of the surfaces at the bottom of the doors: the dragon below St Michael, the water below St Christopher, and the ground below both of these, suggests that the missing original enamels were opaque in these areas. But all the extra enamel in Vienna is opaque, including the saints' figures, and the effect of the more intense colours is "lurid" and "offends our eyes because of its crudity".[35]
When the pin is removed and the small doors opened, there is now nothing to see but "a flat layer of plaster, with a sheet of nineteenth-century paper or vellum in front of it".[36] Whatever was designed to be displayed has now gone; it must have been flat, and was perhaps another relic, probably a textile, or a picture on vellum. The Veil of Veronica, in either form, is a possibility; the face of Christ at the top in a circular setting often represents this. Outside the doors the foliate border of the front is continued, uninterrupted by figures. Below two of the angels with trumpets can be seen, with an unpopulated stretch of the green hillside, and below it the back of the castle base,[31] which has apparently had another arched "leg" in the centre crudely removed, leaving a jagged edge, and also making the reliquary rather less stable.[37]
Goldsmith
The maker of the work is unknown; it is not signed or marked, and goldsmiths of the period rarely did this. There are a number of goldsmiths' names known from accounts and other records, but none of the few surviving works can be attached to a particular maker.[38] Paris was the centre of production for the great numbers of joyaux, secular and religious, produced for the extended Valois royal family and other buyers. Berry and his brothers and nephews had goldsmiths on salaries or retainers for what must have been a continuous flow of commissions, whose results are tersely catalogued in various inventories of the period, but of which there are now only a handful of survivals. Only one item mentioned in the records of the Berry collection might match the reliquary, but this was made after 1401, which conflicts with the date suggested by the heraldry. Another possibility is that the reliquary was made and given as a gift, as many such pieces were, in between inventories.[39]
Techniques
The reliquary exuberantly exploits the
Other techniques are also used with a great degree of skill; the large figures on the rear are chased, with St Michael's wings being represented on the flat surface of the door in delicate stippled or pointillé work using punches, which is too detailed to see in most photographs, and indeed hard to see on the original. Michael's body is also feathered, stopping at the neck, ankles and wrists, a "most exceptional feature" often referred to as "feather tights", that perhaps borrows from the costumes of liturgical dramas.[43] Other elements were cast in small moulds, and most of the visible gold has been burnished to give a smooth and shining appearance.[44]
Patron
Soon after Berry's death in 1416, the bulk of his treasures were seized and melted down by the English, who were occupying much of northern France after their victory at the
One work that survived long enough to be recorded in an 18th-century painting had a very similar gold castle as its base, with a paradisal garden within the walls, in this case with trees bearing pearls and red gems. However the rest of the piece was very different in scale, with a single large white enamel figure of the Archangel Michael impaling Satan with a lance-like jewelled cross, completely out of scale with the garden in which he stands. This is the St Michael and the Devil Group, which can be reliably dated to before 1397, when it was given to King Charles VI of France, Berry's nephew, as a New Year's gift by another uncle, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. It later passed to a church at Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where it remained until it was destroyed in 1801.[50]
Berry was religious as well as worldly, and collected relics as keenly as other types of objects. By 1397 both of his sons had died, he was in his late fifties, and he had begun to think of his tomb, finally deciding to build a new "Sainte Chapelle" in his capital of
Berry may have kept the reliquary with him on his round of visits to his many castles and palaces, or it may have been kept in a chapel, perhaps the Bourges Sainte Chapelle, built in emulation of the king's Paris
Gallery
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Detail of Christ
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Side view of the reliquary
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Berry's arms as they appear on the reliquary: d'azur semé de fleurs de lys d'or, à la bordure engrelée de gueules
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A slightly later German Last Judgement by Stefan Lochner
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Burgundian brooch with figures in ronde bosse enamel, 1430–40, also inherited by the Habsburgs[56]
Notes
- ^ a b c d "British Museum Collection Database"
- ^ Transcript: Episode 66 – Holy Thorn Reliquary, BBC, accessed May 27, 2011
- ^ Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, British Museum, accessed May 26, 2011
- Duke of York
- ^ British Museum Collection Database. The case for the later date is set out at length by Tait (pp 36–41), but a note by "DFT" (Dr. Dora Thornton, the current curator) on the database (in the middle of the Tait extract) suggests Cherry's dating fits the style of the work better.
- The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol 78, issue 459, pp 196, 200–201 JSTOR
- ^ Tait, 36 discusses and rejects Evan's theory; Cherry and the British Museum sources do not mention it.
- ^ Cherry, 50
- ^ Tait, 35–36; Ekserdjian, David, "The art of lying", The Independent, 16 September 1995, accessed 5 June 2010
- ^ Tait, 34–36, though his date of 1944 for the comparison meeting is incorrect—see the "British Museum Highlights" and Collection database.
- ^ Exhibition website, with large zoomable image Archived 2018-01-21 at the Wayback Machine, accessed May 9, 2011
- ^ British Museum, Waddesdon Bequest, accessed May 26, 2011
- ^ Cherry, 26–35
- ^ a b Tait, 40
- ^ Cherry, 37, 42–43. Cherry refers to the Middleham Jewel
- ^ Whose number varies somewhat in the historical inventory records, see Tait, 35 and 38. Two of the pearls are possibly replacements, see Tait, 27 and 35.
- ^ Not necessarily a necklace at all, as drilled gems set on metal stalks are found in many pieces of medieval metalwork such as crowns and reliquaries.
- ^ a b Cherry, 7
- ^ Cherry, 11–12
- ^ Cherry, 7, with close-up illustration on p. 6
- ^ Robinson (2008), 58
- ^ British Museum Collection Database; Tait, 27 covers various small damages and repairs to the "particularly vulnerable" apostles.
- ^ British Museum Highlights
- ^ Cherry, 7–10
- ^ Robinson (2011), 61
- ^ British Museum Collection Database. It was Tait who first established this, in 1962, see Tait, 36
- ^ Cherry, 8, with close-up photo p.9
- ^ Cherry, 30; Tableau of the Trinity Archived 2011-06-15 at the Wayback Machine in the Louvre
- ^ Cherry, 12
- ^ Tait, 41
- ^ a b Cherry, 12–15
- ^ British Museum Collection Database; Tait 43; Robinson, 87
- ^ Cherry, 50–51, with photo of the Vienna copy
- ^ Tait, 42
- ^ Cherry, 50; Tait, 43
- ^ Cherry, 15, with photo showing the doors opened on p. 14; Tait, 26–27, who calls the sheet vellum.
- ^ British Museum Collection Database; Cherry, 34; Tait 26
- ^ Cherry, 25
- ^ Cherry, 44–47
- ^ Strictly email en ronde bosse; in French ronde bosse equates to "free-standing" in English, and may be used of any sculpture that is so.
- ^ Cherry, 26–37
- ^ Robinson (2008), 87
- ^ Tait, 43; Anderson, 167-168; for other examples in wood see this angel and his companion in Düsseldorf.
- ^ Tait 42–43 (quoted); Cherry, 34; British Museum Collection Database
- ^ Stein
- ^ Henderson, 134–139; Snyder, 16–17, and chapter 3 on the patronage of the brothers
- ^ Tait, 37
- ^ Cherry, 44, 47–48; Tait, 36–39
- ^ Henderson, 134–136, quotation p. 135
- ^ Tait, 39; Cherry, 27–28, with photograph. Online image here, from Richard II's Treasure; the Riches of a Medieval King, from The Institute of Historical Research and Royal Holloway, University of London.
- ^ Cherry, 43–44; Tait, 37
- )
- ^ Cherry, 19–21
- ^ Robinson (2008), 87; Reliquary pendant of the Holy Thorn Archived 2015-10-18 at the Wayback Machine , British Museum Highlights, accessed May 27, 2011
- ^ Wood and leather case British Museum Collection Database, accessed June 16, 2010. Registration number: 1892,0501.2
- ^ The Vienna "Lover's Brooch" discussed by Tait, 38 and 50
References
- Anderson, Mary Désirée. Drama and imagery in English medieval churches, Cambridge University Press, 1964
- "British Museum Collection Database", The Holy Thorn Reliquary. Retrieved 4 July 2010 (includes Tait, starting with his page 34 and ending with his bibliography on page 46. After a note, the Tait extract resumes with "Losses" and "Repairs" from his pages 26–28)
- "British Museum Highlights"; The Holy Thorn Reliquary. Retrieved 4 July 2010.
- Cherry, John. The Holy Thorn Reliquary, 2010, British Museum Press (British Museum objects in focus), ISBN 0-7141-2820-1
- Henderson, George. Gothic, 1967, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-020806-2
- Robinson, James (2008). Masterpieces of Medieval Art, 2008, British Museum Press, ISBN 978-0-7141-2815-3
- Robinson, James (2011). Finer than Gold: Saints and their Relics in the Middle Ages, British Museum Press, ISBN 978-0-7141-2822-1
- ISBN 0-13-623596-4
- Stein, Wendy A. "Patronage of Jean de Berry (1340–1416)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (accessed July 5, 2010)
- Tait, Hugh. Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, Volume 1, The Jewels, 1986, British Museum Press, ISBN 978-0-7141-0525-3(the entry also online in the BM collection database)
Further reading
Cherry and Tait have longer bibliographies.
- Bagnoli, Martina et al., Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, 2011, British Museum Press, ISBN 978-0-7141-2330-1
- Smith, Bennet (2006), The Holy Thorn Reliquary reconsidered (Thesis/dissertation), Courtauld Institute of Art, )
External links
- The reliquary features in a BBC4 documentary Treasures of Heaven, with Andrew Graham-Dixon
- Treasures of Heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe: Holy Thorn reliquary Video (3 minutes), The British Museum
- BBC website for A History Of The World in 100 Objects (includes good high-zoom image of front)
- Saint Catherine of Alexandria in ronde-bosse from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts