The Holy Thorn Reliquary was probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry, to house a relic of the Crown of Thorns. The reliquary was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1898 by Ferdinand de Rothschild as part of the Waddesdon Bequest."British Museum Collection Database" It is one of a small number of major goldsmiths' works or joyaux that survive from the extravagant world of the courts of the Valois royal family around 1400. It is made of gold, lavishly decorated with jewels and pearls, and uses the technique of enamelling en ronde bosse, or "in the round", which had been recently developed when the reliquary was made, to create a total of 28 three-dimensional figures, mostly in white enamel.
Except at its base the reliquary is slim, with two faces; the front view shows the end of the world and the Last Judgement, with the Trinity and saints above and the resurrection of the dead below, and the relic of a single long thorn believed to come from the crown of thorns worn by Jesus when he was crucified. The rear view has less extravagant decoration, mostly in plain gold in low relief, and has doors that opened to display a flat object, now missing, which was presumably another relic.
The reliquary was in the Habsburg collections from at least the 16th century until the 1860s, when it was replaced by a forgery during a restoration by an art dealer, Salomon Weininger. The fraud remained undetected until well after the original reliquary came to the British Museum. The reliquary was featured in the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects, in which Neil MacGregor described it as "without question one of the supreme achievements of medieval European metalwork",Transcript: Episode 66 – Holy Thorn Reliquary, BBC, accessed May 27, 2011 and was a highlight of the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe at the British Museum from June 23 to October 2011.Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, British Museum, accessed May 26, 2011
History King Louis IX of France bought what he believed to be the authentic Crown of Thorns in Constantinople in 1239, and individual thorns were distributed as gifts by subsequent French kings.Cherry, 19–23; Tait, 37–38 – at least six thorns were owned by Berry, at least two of which he gave to foreign royalty, one to the Duke of York John, Duke of Berry (1340–1416), brother of King Charles V of France, had this reliquary made to house a single thorn; it was probably made a few years before he commissioned his famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, and some years after he commissioned the Royal Gold Cup, also in the British Museum. Previously dated between 1401 and 1410, from evidence in John Cherry's book of 2010 the reliquary is now thought to have been made before 1397; based on the heraldic forms used, the museum now dates it to 1390–97.British Museum Collection Database. The case for the later date is set out at length by Tait (pp 36–41), but a note by "DFT" (Dr. Dora Thornton, the current curator) on the database (in the middle of the Tait extract) suggests Cherry's dating fits the style of the work better. The Holy Thorn Reliquary was later thought to have been in the possession of Louis I, Duke of Orléans,Evans, Joan. "The Duke of Orléans' Reliquary of the Holy Thorn", 1941, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol 78, issue 459, pp 196, 200–201 JSTOR but all recent writers prefer his uncle, the Duke of Berry.Tait, 36 discusses and rejects Evan's theory; Cherry and the British Museum sources do not mention it.
Its location is unknown until an inventory of 1544, when it belonged to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, perhaps as an inheritance from his ancestors the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. It presumably passed to the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs on Charles V's death, as it is listed in several inventories of the Imperial Schatzkammer ("treasure chamber") in Vienna from 1677 onwards. It remained in Vienna until after 1860, when it appeared in an exhibition. Some time after this it was sent to be restored by Salomon Weininger, an art dealer with access to skilled craftsmen, who secretly made a number of copies. He was later convicted of other forgeries, and died in prison in 1879, but it was still not realised that he had returned one of his copies of the reliquary to the Imperial collections instead of the original. The Viennese Rothschild family bought the original reliquary by 1872, in ignorance of its provenance; it was inherited by Ferdinand de Rothschild, who moved to England, and built Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire.Cherry, 50 One of the copies remained in the Ecclesiastical Treasury of the Imperial Habsburg Court in Vienna, where the deception remained undetected for several decades.Tait, 35–36; Ekserdjian, David, "The art of lying", The Independent, 16 September 1995, accessed 5 June 2010
The original reliquary reached the British Museum as part of the Waddesdon Bequest in 1899, by which time its origins had been "completely lost" and it was described as "Spanish, 16th Century". Thus its history had to be reconstructed through scholarship; the meaning of the heraldic plaques on the castle base had by now been lost in both London and Vienna. The first publication to assert that the London reliquary was the one recorded in earlier Viennese inventories was an article by Joseph Destrée in 1927; the matter was not finally settled until 1959 when the Viennese version was brought to London to enable close comparison. The assembled experts from the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna agreed that the London reliquary was the original.Tait, 34–36, though his date of 1944 for the comparison meeting is incorrect—see the "British Museum Highlights" and Collection database. Under the terms of the Waddesdon Bequest the reliquary cannot leave the museum; in 2011 it was omitted from the Cleveland and Baltimore legs of the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe.Exhibition website, with large zoomable image , accessed May 9, 2011 Normally it is on display in Room 45, the dedicated Waddesdon Bequest Room, as specified in the terms of the bequest.British Museum, Waddesdon Bequest, accessed May 26, 2011
Description
The Holy Thorn Reliquary is made of gold, enamel, rock crystal, pearls, rubies and sapphires. It is just over high and weighs . There are some areas of damage (including what appears to be deliberate removal of enamel in the 19th century), and small losses and repairs; but generally the reliquary is in good condition. The central front compartment holding the relic is protected by a thin pane of rock crystal, which has kept it in perfect condition. The enamel is mostly in ronde bosse technique, applied to three-dimensional figures, with white as the dominant colour. At the time, white enamel using lead had been only recently developed and was very fashionable, dominating many contemporary ronde bosse works.Cherry, 26–35 There is also red, green, blue, pink, and black enamel. Pure gold is used throughout, which is rare even in royal commissions of such pieces at this period; most use cheaper silver-gilt for the structural framework.Tait, 40
The jewels, which would have been keenly appreciated by contemporary viewers, include two large sapphires, one above God the Father at the very top of the reliquary, where it may have represented heaven,Cherry, 37, 42–43. Cherry refers to the Middleham Jewel and the other below Christ, on which the thorn is mounted. The gold elements framing God the Father and the central compartment with Christ and the thorn are decorated with alternating rubies and pearls, totalling fourteen of each.Whose number varies somewhat in the historical inventory records, see Tait, 35 and 38. Two of the pearls are possibly replacements, see Tait, 27 and 35. All the gemstones have the smooth and polished cabochon cut normal in medieval jewellery, and though they are set in the reliquary with gold "claws", all are drilled through as though for threading on a necklace, suggesting that they are re-used from another piece.Not necessarily a necklace at all, as drilled gems set on metal stalks are found in many pieces of medieval metalwork such as crowns and reliquaries. There may have been other jewels now lost, for example mounted in two holes on either side of the door of the castle-like base.Cherry, 7
Front face The design of the front face is based on the general resurrection of the dead following the Last Judgment. At the top sits God the Father, above two angels. A small hole at the level of their knees shows where a dove representing the Holy Spirit was originally attached; with Christ below, all three persons of the Trinity were therefore represented.Cherry, 11–12 A round-topped compartment protected by a rock-crystal "window" holds the relic itself and the group around Christ. Christ in Judgment is shown seated displaying the wounds of his crucifixion, with his feet resting on the globe of the world, and making a blessing gesture. As with all the enamelled figures that are still extant, the hair is in gold, the main robe is in white, and the flesh is in white with coloured eyes and lips, a touch of pink on the cheeks. Behind Christ the celestial spheres are represented like a rainbow, and above him fly two angels holding Instruments of the Passion, including the crown of thorns over his head; behind him a cross in shallow relief emerges from the curved gold background.Cherry, 7, with close-up illustration on p. 6 The thorn relic rises below and in front of him, mounted on a "monstrously large sapphire".Robinson (2008), 58
To the left and right of Christ are shown John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary in supplicant poses, a traditional grouping; John was also one of the Duke's patron saints. Around the central scene small figures of the twelve Apostles carrying their identifying attributes emerge from the foliage border of oak leaves and tendrils; the uppermost heads on each side are replacements, probably by Weininger in the 1860s.British Museum Collection Database; Tait, 27 covers various small damages and repairs to the "particularly vulnerable" apostles.
Below this upper section there is a gold scroll label with the Latin inscription ("This is a thorn from the crown / Of Our Lord Jesus Christ") in black enamel filling the engraved letters.British Museum Highlights Below the inscription is a scene showing the mass resurrection of naked people rising from their graves on the Day of Judgement. On a green enamel mound like a hillside are four naked figures, two men and two women, emerging from tiny gold coffins whose lids have been upturned on the ground; the women wear white caps. Four angels blowing horns sound the "Last Trump" of the Book of Revelation, standing on the turrets of a tiny castle which serves as the base of the reliquary.Cherry, 7–10
The Last Judgement was an especially appropriate subject for setting a relic from the Crown of Thorns. Some thought that the crown was held by the French kings on loan, and would be reclaimed by Christ on the Day of Judgement—a belief expressed in the antiphon sung at Sens Cathedral in 1239 to celebrate the arrival of the main relic.Robinson (2011), 61