Object details
              Object number
        M27w42
            Creator(s)
              
                      French, Limoges
                    
        
                    Title
        Reliquary Casket
                    Date
        about 1200-1250
                    Medium
        Champlevé enamel on copper with semi-precious stones and glass
                                                  Dimensions
        16.5 x 13.5 x 8 cm (6 1/2 x 5 5/16 x 3 1/8 in.)
                                Provenance
        Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the antique dealer Theodor Einstein & Co., Munich on 16 August 1897 for 1230 marks through her husband, John L. Gardner, Jr. (1837–1898).
                    Commentary
        Created in the Middle Ages for important ecclesiastical and royal patrons, the colorful enamels of Limoges, France were renowned throughout Europe.  Four figures of saints decorate the front of this reliquary casket which would house the relics (fragments of bone, skin, or hair) of a holy person.  Isabella purchased it in 1897 when she and her husband Jack were visiting Munich, Germany.  She placed it with other liturgical items in the Ecclesiastical Case in the Long Gallery.
                    Bibliography
        Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 240.
“Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 8, no. 8 (25 Oct. 1964), p. 2.
Nathaniel Silver and Diana Seave Greenwald. Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life (Boston, 2022), pp. 99-101, fig. 51.
                    Gallery
        Long Gallery
                    Case
        Ecclesiastical Case
            
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