2 - The Earliest Examples

Summary

It is important to look in some detail at the earliest examples of the reliquary tabernacle type. This is because to examine its emergence and early development allows us to enquire into a number of fundamental issues relevant to the whole group, such as the reasons for their development, what functions they might have fulfilled, and what the processes might have been by which these objects came to take their particular visual and material forms. The only member of the group that carries a date is the reliquary frame now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (plates III, IV and V)

THE CLEVELAND TABERNACLE

This object sets up some of the key issues that are relevant to a consideration of the whole category of reliquary tabernacles. These include some of the crucial questions relating to the complex and fluid approach to materials and materiality that is characteristic of this group of tabernacles. It consists of a single gabled frame, with pinnacles to either side, resting on a rectangular base, and with relic chambers embedded around the frame. The frame once housed a central image of gilded glass, which will be discussed below. The base and frame are gilded and decorated with punchwork, gilded plaster-work (pastiglia) designs and glass cabochons (pieces of glass in imitation of precious gems that have been shaped and polished as opposed to faceted). The base bears four gilded glass panels with heraldic designs, one on each side: two gold and red diagonally quartered and indented coats of arms (on the reverse, and the right-hand short end: Fig. 8), and two coats of arms with golden ladders on black backgrounds, surmounted by golden crosses (on the obverse, and the lefthand short end: Fig. 9). These golden ladders belong to the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena’s most important hospital and charitable institution. The other coats of arms indicate that the patron came from the Cinughi family of Siena.

There is a horizontal band running right around the bottom of the frame, immediately beneath the lowest relic apertures. It is made up of two long fields, beneath the reliquary frame itself, on both sides, and four short fields, two each running around the pinnacles on each side, making a hexagonal band of six separate fields.