London West, UK - A reliquary houses body parts of a Saint and is normally shrine shaped, unless it is a 'speaking reliquary' which is the shape of a body part but not necessarily that part of the body which the shape represents. Relics were important in the medieval Catholic church, and still are even now, which can be witnessed by the 100,000 devotees who prayed to the travelling relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux whose thigh bone and foot in a jacaranda casket toured twenty-two churches in England in 2009. Pilgrims would visit holy sites, such as the trip Chaucer made to the relics of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, because prayers to the saintly relics would ensure that the supplicant would go to heaven in the next life or be healed in this one. Relics would also encourage armies to fight, since the possession of relics would put God on the side of the army which possessed them, as happened when the Earl of Surrey collected Cuthbert's remains on his was to the Battle of Flodden.
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe offers a glimpse of the Middle Ages, a time when art mediated between heaven and earth and wondrous objects filled churches and monastic treasuries. Relics- -the physical remains of holy men and women, and things associated with them- -were especially important to the development of Christianity, which emerged as a powerful new religion in the Late Roman world.
Artists sought to bridge the gap between heaven and earth by fashioning special containers for holy matter. Nested within these special vessels, relics connected Christian faithful with sacred places and people who died as the martyrs of faith. Often covered in precious metals and encrusted with gems, these containers commanded attention.
The exhibition Treasures of Heaven explores how medieval artists expressed the sacred power of fragmented remains and considers the role that relics played in the development of the visual arts. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Walters Art Museum, and the British Museum, London co-organized this exhibition of 135 extraordinary works of late antique, Byzantine, and Western medieval art, including precious metalwork objects, paintings, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts, drawn from public and private collections as well as church treasuries across the United States and Europe. Several of these spectacular works have never been seen outside their home countries.
Until 9 October 2011 at the British Museum.
On the religious theme, but less plastic, is the new exhibition at London's National Gallery, Devotion by Design, Italian Altarpieces Before 1500, which is on until 2 October.
British Museum
Treasures of Heaven at Columbia University, USA
National Gallery: Devotion by Design
Story Type: Exhibition Review
ID: 60666
