The Reliquary Shrine is an especially complex 14th century container for relics, now in

The Cloisters The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. The museum, situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializes in European medieval art and architecture, with a fo ...

, New York. It is made from translucent enamel, gilt-silver and paint, and dated to c 1325–50. Although first mentioned in a convent in Budapest, its style and influences betrays French craftsmanship. It has been proposed to be attributed by the Met to Jean de Toul written Jehan de Touyl in one French source from 1328, a French goldsmith about whom little is known, but who is associated with a small number of works with similar stylistic characteristics.Parker, 350 The centerpiece shows the

enthroned Enthroned is a Belgian black metal band formed in Charleroi. It is one of the premier acts of the Belgian black metal scene. History The band was founded in 1993 by drummer Cernunnos. He soon recruited guitarist Tsebaoth and a vocalist from g ...

Virgin Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. The term ''virgin'' originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern ...

and the infant

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...

, the hinged wings are painted on both sides with scenes from the Annunciation to the childhood of Jesus.Husband, 116 In medieval Christianity, the holiest of relics were those associated with the Virgin and Child.Drake Boehm, Barbara.
Relics and Reliquaries in Medieval Christianity
. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 8 April, 2017

Description

The shrine is one of four extant silver-gilt and enamel examples from the early 14th century.Wixom, 62 The central panel shows the Virgin and Child surrounded by angels, placed in an elaborate Gothic architectural shrine. The Virgin is

and suckles the child Jesus at her breast. It is made from gilt-silver, translucent enamel, with painted surfaces. The work seems to imitate the space of a church. The arches and vaults are described in gilded silver, the wing panels are in enamel and in their colourisation, figuration and perspective, seem intended to evoke stained-glass windows. Created in the

International Gothic International Gothic is a period of Gothic art which began in Burgundy, France, and northern Italy in the late 14th and early 15th century. It then spread very widely across Western Europe, hence the name for the period, which was introduced by th ...

style. The Virgin and Christ child are situated in an arched canopy, flanked by two angels. The complex and minutely described architectural space seems to emulate an early 14th-century church. The edges of the central panel are lined with a series of statuesque saints in

niche Niche may refer to: Science *Developmental niche, a concept for understanding the cultural context of child development *Ecological niche, a term describing the relational position of an organism's species *Niche differentiation, in ecology, the ...

s. Each of the two outer wings contains three foldable panels, showing scenes from the

Life of the Virgin The Life of the Virgin, showing narrative scenes from the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a common subject for pictorial cycles in Christian art, often complementing, or forming part of, a cycle on the Life of Christ. In both cases the ...

and Christ Child. Each of the six wing panels is crowned by a triangular panel containing a musical angel.Reliquary Shrine
.

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. Retrieved 11 March 2017 The setting contains a number of elements reflective of contemporary Gothic architectural design, including ribbed vaults,

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral ( ...

with figures of saints, and

trefoil arch A trefoil arch, or three-foiled cusped arch, is an arch incorporating the shape or outline of a trefoil – three overlapping circles. It has been widely used for its symbolic significance in Christian architecture. Trefoil arches are common in ...

es. Given its small scale, it was probably intended as a household object, for private prayer.

Provenance

Its elaborate structure and supreme craftsmanship indicates that it was commissioned by members of the upper echelon of contemporary society. The shrine is first recorded in 17th- and 18th-century inventories of the convent of the

Poor Clares The Poor Clares, officially the Order of Saint Clare ( la, Ordo sanctae Clarae) – originally referred to as the Order of Poor Ladies, and later the Clarisses, the Minoresses, the Franciscan Clarist Order, and the Second Order of Saint Francis ...

nunnery at Buda, in today's

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

. Queen Clementia of Hungary gifted the reliquary in the 14th century to her sister,

Elizabeth of Poland, Queen of Hungary Elizabeth of Poland ( hu, Erzsébet, pl, Elżbieta; 1305 – 29 December 1380) was Queen of Hungary by marriage to Charles I of Hungary, and regent of Poland from 1370 to 1376 during the reign of her son Louis I. Life Early life She was a memb ...

, who founded the convent. It was in the collection of the baroness Clarice de Rothschild, before it was acquired by the

in 1962.

Gallery

File:Reliquary Shrine Jean de Touyl Left Wing.jpg, Detail, left wing File:Reliquary Shrine MET DT201067.jpg, Verso, with enfolded wings File:Reliquary Shrine Jean de Touyl right Wing.jpg, Detail, right wing

Notes

Sources

* Barnet, Peter. ''The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. * Freeman, Margaret Beam. "A Shrine for a Queen." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Volume 21, no. 10, 1963 * Shepard, Mary in Charles Little and Timothy Husband. "Europe in the Middle Ages". New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. * Parker, Elizabeth. ''The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992. * Primisser, Alois. ''Der silberne Hausaltar der ungarischen Königstochter Margarethe''. Taschenbuch für die Vaterländische Geschichte 5, 1824 * Wixom, William. "Medieval Sculpture at The Cloisters". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Volume 46, no. 3, Winter, 1988–1989 {{refend

External links

At the Cloisters
Sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art