Large reliquary with a wooden core covered with cut, stamped, chiselled, silvered and gilded copper of architectural form. Facade with four rows of windows, two rows with quatrefoil outlines, two ogival windows flanked by twisted columns; pinnacles on either side with niches housing statuettes of Saint Peter and Saint Paul; triangular tympanum with foliated ramparts flanked by pinnacles, lunula flanked by cabochons; sliding back, uncovering cubicles, decorated with fleurons in pointed squares and quatrefoils, courses of flowered scrolls on the uprights; stepped base.
Tuscany, Siena, second half of the 14th century
Height: 50 cm - Width: 26.5 cm - Thickness: 14 cm
Plexiglas base (some accidents and missing parts, small restorations)
Works consulted: M-M. Gauthier, Highways of the Faith - Relics ans Reliquaries from Jerusalem to Compostela, London, 1987, pp. 173-175; Exhibition
Cleveland - Baltimore - London 2011, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, Museum of Arts - Walters Art Museum - British
Museum, cat. 117 to 121.
The architectural form of this reliquary, with its pediment, hook crevices, pinnacles and quatrefoil openings, is the same as that adopted by the reliquaries, triptychs and tabernacles of the Sienese school in the third quarter of the Trecento. Usually in gilded wood or pastiglia, this rare example presented here is a version in gilded copper, and silvered for the reverse, decorated with coloured glass cabochons, some silver rosettes and two chased bronze statuettes. With its geminated windows, twisted columns and pinnacles, it evokes the facade of duomi like those of
Siena, Florence or Monza.
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