6 - Abundance and Ensemble, Varietas and Bricolage

Summary

The importance of multiplication and abundance can be seen in several ways in these reliquary tabernacles. On the one hand there is the numerical abundance of the relics. On the other, abundance is seen in the multiplication of different kinds of materials and artistic media, including painting, gilding, jewels, cabochons, carved ivories and gilded glass, as well as visual or iconographical references to other media, such as the allusions to carved ivory statues of the Virgin Mary that could be discerned in the representation of the standing Virgin. That visual and material variety will be discussed more specifically later in this chapter, under the concept of varietas, a key medieval aesthetic term that relates not just to appearance and visual effect, but also to rhetoric, affect and persuasion. But let us begin this chapter with a consideration of multiplication and abundance in terms of ‘ensemble making’, and the relationship between abundance, variety and ensemble. Variety is related to the concept of ‘abundance’, which seems to characterise these reliquaries in which many relics are seen in ensemble, alongside images. Abundance of materials is only most fully ‘abundant’, in this context, when it is evident that there are lots of different materials. We see this from the types of biblical text that describe and enumerate materials such as the stones that adorn the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem. It is important in such a list that there is not just a great abundance of one type of precious material, but also a great variety of materials. A reliquary that uses gilding, coloured paint, embedded jewels (or glass that gives the impression of jewels), gilded glass or embedded ivories, and – crucially – relics behind crystal windows provides much more of an impression of abundance than one that simply uses a lot of gold, or a profusion of painted images. In this last chapter we will consider the concept of abundance by looking at the impulse to collect relics, and particularly to display them visibly, and together, in ensemble, alongside images.