We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
A Framework for Devotion in Trecento Siena: a Reliquary Frame in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
- Authors
Brilliant, Virginia
- Abstract
During the trecento in Italy, new reliquary types emerged as the result of the development of gold ground panel painting. A group of seven surviving tre- and quattrocento Sienese gilded, gabled wooden tabernacles whose frames were inset with glass windows through which relics were visible, constituted one new reliquary genre. One such work made for the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena's foremost hospital and charitable institution, is now divided between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. So painstakingly embellished that it rivals counterparts fashioned by goldsmiths from precious stones and metals, the reliquary is, however, made from comparatively humble materials using techniques associated with painting on panel. This study will consider the implications of this unusual material structure, both for the reliquary ensemble's attribution and for its status and visual appeal. As highly customized as it is luxurious, the object rewards close consideration with a great deal of information about its purposes, functions, and meanings. The study will consequently present new hypotheses regarding the work's ritual uses, arguing that it served both as a processional device and as an adornment for an altar in the Ospedale church. Iconographic and compositional analysis elucidates a pronounced relationship between the reliquary's imagery and decorative elements and several major visual focal points of civic devotion in Siena; the study suggests that this reliquary sought to propose itself as one as well. Identifying the relics for the first time, the study addresses the roles these sacred remains played in the devotional practices of the Ospedale's various constituencies.
- Subjects
15TH century Italian history; PANEL painting; TABERNACLE; RELICS; INSTITUTIONAL care of deaf people; DEVOTION
- Publication
Peregrinations, 2014, Vol 4, Issue 3, p66
- ISSN
1554-8678
- Publication type
Article