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Holy Thorn Reliquary

The Holy Thorn Reliquary was probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry, to house a relic of the Crown of Thorns. The reliquary was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1898 by Ferdinand de Rothschild as part of the Waddesdon Bequest.[1] It is one of a small number of major goldsmiths' works or joyaux that survive from the extravagant world of the courts of the Valois royal family around 1400. It is made of gold, lavishly decorated with jewels and pearls, and uses the technique of enamelling en ronde bosse, or "in the round", which had been recently developed when the reliquary was made, to create a total of 28 three-dimensional figures, mostly in white enamel.

The Holy Thorn Reliquary

Gold, sapphire, ruby, rock crystal, pearl, enamel

Probably before 1397

Room 2A, British Museum, London

WB.67

Except at its base the reliquary is slim, with two faces; the front view shows the end of the world and the Last Judgement, with the Trinity and saints above and the resurrection of the dead below, and the relic of a single long thorn believed to come from the crown of thorns worn by Jesus when he was crucified. The rear view has less extravagant decoration, mostly in plain gold in low relief, and has doors that opened to display a flat object, now missing, which was presumably another relic.


The reliquary was in the Habsburg collections from at least the 16th century until the 1860s, when it was replaced by a forgery during a restoration by an art dealer, Salomon Weininger. The fraud remained undetected until well after the original reliquary came to the British Museum. The reliquary was featured in the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects, in which Neil MacGregor described it as "without question one of the supreme achievements of medieval European metalwork",[2] and was a highlight of the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe at the British Museum from June 23 to October 2011.[3]

Detail of Christ

Detail of Christ

Side view of the reliquary

Side view of the reliquary

Berry's arms as they appear on the reliquary: d'azur semé de fleurs de lys d'or, à la bordure engrelée de gueules

Berry's arms as they appear on the reliquary: d'azur semé de fleurs de lys d'or, à la bordure engrelée de gueules

A slightly later German Last Judgement by Stefan Lochner

A slightly later German Last Judgement by Stefan Lochner

Burgundian brooch with figures in ronde bosse enamel, 1430–40, also inherited by the Habsburgs[56]

Burgundian brooch with figures in ronde bosse enamel, 1430–40, also inherited by the Habsburgs[56]

Anderson, Mary Désirée. Drama and imagery in English medieval churches, Cambridge University Press, 1964

"British Museum Collection Database", . 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)

The Holy Thorn Reliquary

"British Museum Highlights"; . Retrieved 4 July 2010.

The Holy Thorn Reliquary

Cherry, John. The Holy Thorn Reliquary, 2010, British Museum Press (British Museum objects in focus),  0-7141-2820-1

ISBN

Henderson, George. Gothic, 1967, Penguin,  0-14-020806-2

ISBN

Robinson, James (2008). Masterpieces of Medieval Art, 2008, British Museum Press,  978-0-7141-2815-3

ISBN

Robinson, James (2011). Finer than Gold: Saints and their Relics in the Middle Ages, British Museum Press,  978-0-7141-2822-1

ISBN

. Northern Renaissance Art, 1985, Harry N. Abrams, ISBN 0-13-623596-4

Snyder, James

Stein, Wendy A. . In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (accessed July 5, 2010)

"Patronage of Jean de Berry (1340–1416)"

Tait, Hugh. Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, Volume 1, The Jewels, 1986, British Museum Press,  978-0-7141-0525-3 (the entry also online in the BM collection database)

ISBN

Bagnoli, Martina et al., Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, 2011, British Museum Press,  978-0-7141-2330-1

ISBN

Smith, Bennet (2006), The Holy Thorn Reliquary reconsidered (Thesis/dissertation), Courtauld Institute of Art,  272621406{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

OCLC

Cherry and Tait have longer bibliographies.

The reliquary features in a BBC4 documentary , with Andrew Graham-Dixon

Treasures of Heaven

Video (3 minutes), The British Museum

Treasures of Heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe: Holy Thorn reliquary

for A History Of The World in 100 Objects (includes good high-zoom image of front)

BBC website

in ronde-bosse from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts

Saint Catherine of Alexandria