Art Museum Journal

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe
By STAN PARCHIN
April 19, 2010

The role of relics and reliquaries in the history of Christianity and the visual arts is examined in Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe. This groundbreaking international loan exhibition features more than 150 religious objects from Late Antique, medieval and early modern Europe, many never before seen outside of their home countries. Debuting at the Cleveland Museum of Art (October 17, 2010-January 17, 2011), it then travels to the Walters Art Museum and the British Museum. American and European public and private collections are joined by important church treasuries in contributing to this landmark presentation. They include the three organizing institutions, the Vatican, the Musée du Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art.

Relics and Reliquaries
Central to Christianity's development in the Middle Ages were relics, the physical remains of holy men and women. Their ashes, bones and bodily parts were stored in reliquaries, containers whose designs became increasingly elaborate and highly imaginative over time. Intended for churches, shrines and personal use, many were covered in gold and silver. Others were encrusted with precious and semiprecious stones. The vessels' decoration signified outwardly the sanctity and power of their extraordinary contents to the faithful. Treasures of Heaven... describes the transformation of reliquaries from their simple origins to lavishly embellished objects of personal and communal religious devotion. The exhibition's narrative that explains their evolution is enhanced by the presence of related paintings, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts and metalwork produced during the medieval millennium.

Religious Objects on View

• A Box with Stones from the Holy Land (6th-7th Century A.D.) is an Early Byzantine tempera and gold leaf on wood container from the Vatican's Museo Sacro. Its contents from Palestine demonstrate the importance medieval man placed on objects from pilgrimages to loca sancta or sacred sites associated with Jesus Christ's life in the Holy Land.

• The Portable Altar of Countess Gertrude (ca. 1045) is an Ottonian ecclesiastical masterpiece from medieval Germany's famous Guelph Treasure.

• The Bust Reliquary of St. Baudime (ca. 1180-1200) from the Parish Church of Saint-Nectaire, Puy-le-Dôme is a French Romanesque effigy made of gilded bronze, gems and enamel with a wood core. Its almost human presence is conveyed by the realism of the beard's stippling, the hair's rhythmic curls and the vestments' elegant patterning.

• The elegant Arm Reliquary of the Apostles (ca. 1190) contains the bone fragment of an unidentified saint.

• The Head Reliquary of St. Eustace (ca. 1200), a Swiss Romanesque work, contains the Roman military leader's venerated skull fragments and other relics.

• The Reliquary Shrine of St. Amandus (1250-75) is a portable Flemish Gothic shrine. Church-shaped and made of gilded copper, silver, champlevé enamel and semiprecious stones, the large container is said to have held the remains of a seventh-century missionary and bishop from present-day western Belgium.

Holger Klein, the Cleveland Museum of Art's former Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art partly responsible for the show, aptly stated, "By the first centuries of Christianity, the ashes, bones and body parts of saints and martyrs were considered ‘more valuable than precious stones and finer than fine gold,’ and were therefore treated with utmost reverence. As substances believed to be endowed with the power and living presence of the saint or martyr, they were frequently enshrined in containers that matched their spiritual importance. Their precious materials facilitated their use in both liturgical and secular contexts.”
 
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe describes an era of remarkable piety in Christianity's history. Many of the exhibition's works traveled across vast distances, bearing witness to intense religious fervor in the Mediterranean world. They helped give rise to new forms of monumental architecture, supported pilgrimage routes and inspired artistic expression from the Middle Ages through the early years of the Protestant Reformation. The museums' use of painting, photography, audio and video introduces contemporary visitors to the importance of relics and reliquaries to medieval and Renaissance audiences.
 
Sources
Bartlett, Robert (ed.). et al. Medieval Panorama. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001, 68-73.
 
Giorgi, Rosa. Saints in Art. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003.
 
Husband, Timothy and Julien Chapuis. The Treasury of Basel Cathedral (exh. cat.). New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001, 10-34, 47-49, 54-56, 88-93, 97-99, 106-119, 138-141, 156-157, 162-165, 171.
 
Klein, Holder A. (ed.), et al. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art (exh. cat.). Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 116-118, 122-123.
 
Morello, Giovanni and Laurence B. Kanter (eds.), et al. The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi (exh. cat.). Milan: Electa, 159-179.