Object details
Accession number
M18e45
Primary Creator
American
Full title
Reliquary Pendant with Relics
Creation Date
early 20th century
Provenance
Gift from the actress, singer and poet Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood, 1871-1961) to Isabella Stewart Gardner, 25 December 1923.
Marks
Inscribed in ink on slip of paper (inside): ger... (illegible)
Printed in ink on slip of paper: de Perboyp (?)
Molded (on back): heart in crown of thorns with cross
Dimensions
2.7 cm (1 1/16 in.)
Display Media
Silver and glass with fabric fragments and paper notes
Web Commentary
Given to Isabella Stewart Gardner by her good friend and accomplished poet Gretchen Osgood Warren for Christmas in 1923, this silver pendant holds two tiny, yet to be identified relics perhaps mementos of their friendship. Twenty years earlier John Singer Sargent painted Gretchen and her daughter Rachel in the Gothic Room of the Museum. The portrait, a reminder of Isabella’s patronage of contemporary artists, is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Permanent Gallery Location
Little Salon
Bibliography
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 145.
Christina Nielsen (ed.). Sargent on Location: Gardner's First Artist-in-Residence. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2018), pp. 33, 61 no. 19.
Rights and reproductions
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