Altar Cross with Stand (1140–1150): Art, History and Details

Altar Cross with Stand (1140–1150) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

From the 11th century onward, altar crosses like this one often featured elaborate bases. The most impressive decoration of this cross is its stand: a lavish array of intertwining scrolls emerges from three pawlike legs, while birds perch amid the scrolls and dragon heads sprout from others.

Object facts

• Title: Altar Cross with Stand
• Date: 1140–1150
• Culture: Germany, Lower Saxony, Hildesheim?, Romanesque period, 12th century
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze: cast, gilded, engraved, and chased
• Dimensions: Overall: 43.4 x 22.5 x 8 cm (17 1/16 x 8 7/8 x 3 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1944.320

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Winter, Patrick M. de. “The Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 1 (March 1985): 2–160.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.
• Sanjosé i Llongueras, Lourdes de. Obras emblemáticas del taller de orfebrería medieval de Silos: "el Maestro de las Aves" y su círculo. Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos): Abadía de Silos, 2016.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.