Frame for a Portable Reliquary Icon (1347): Art, History and Details

Frame for a Portable Reliquary Icon (1347) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

With intricate carvings and lavish gilding, this frame holds 17 labeled relics, mostly bodily remains or belongings of saints, worshiped for their spiritual significance. The frame once contained a gilded glass image of the Virgin Mary and Christ child. A Latin inscription around the base likely refers to Mino Cinughi, rector (administrator) of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena during 1340–51, which cared for pilgrims on the way to Rome. Believers sought healing in medieval hospitals through the veneration of relics hoping to elicit miracles from the saints. While this object probably resided on an altar, the ornamentation on both sides suggests it was also carried in processions.

Object facts

• Title: Frame for a Portable Reliquary Icon
• Date: 1347
• Culture: Italy, Siena
• Type: Glass
• Technique: gilded wood, modeled gesso, verre églomisé, glass cabochons, and relics
• Dimensions: Overall: 66.7 x 51.3 x 25.3 cm (26 1/4 x 20 3/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Gothic
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1978.26

Collection credit

Gift of Ruth Blumka in memory of Leopold Blumka

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1978.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 1 (January 1979): 3–48.
• Wixom, William D. “Eleven Additions to the Medieval Collection.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 3 (Mar/Apr 1979): 87–151.
• 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.

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.