Casket (1100–1150?): Art, History and Details

Casket (1100–1150?) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This champlevé enamel casket belongs to a distinct group of nine closely related objects characterized by the vivid colors of their enamel decoration and rows of spherical pins placed along the edges of each enamel plaque. Recent X-ray analysis suggests that the casket originally functioned as a stand for an altar cross. Such a function is attested to in at least three related caskets (in Copenhagen, Hildesheim, and Berlin). The casket’s iconographic program features the 12 apostles, placed under arcades (on the long sides), the Crucifixion and Christ in Majesty (on the short sides), and the Lamb of God surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists (on the lid).

Object facts

• Title: Casket
• Date: 1100–1150?
• Culture: Northern Germany?, Romanesque period, 12th century
• Type: Enamel
• Technique: gilded copper, champlevé enamel, wood core (modern)
• Dimensions: Overall: 9.3 x 23.4 x 13.5 cm (3 11/16 x 9 3/16 x 5 5/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1949.16

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• DEBRUGE DUMÉNIL., and Jules LABARTE. Description Des Objets D'art Qui Composent La Collection Debruge-Dumenil, Précédée D'une Introduction Historique Par Jules Labarte. 1847.
• South Kensington Museum. Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval ... Periods on Loan at the South Kensington Museum, June 1862. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1863.
• Halm, Philipp Maria, and Rudolph Berliner. Das Hallesche Heiltum: Man. Aschaffenb. 14. Berlin: Deutschen Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1931.

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.