Reliquary Châsse

French 12th Century

National Gallery of Art

A free-standing, gold, enameled, rectangular box has a triangular top like the roof of a house, and the box rests on a short, square foot in each corner. In this photograph, we look onto one long side and the short side to our right is angled toward us, so we see the panel there, too. Along the long side, five people are shown from the waist up in the upper, roof-like panel and six more line up on the panel below. The skin of every person is gold, and all wear robes and garments in lapis or sky blue, spring green, yellow, and white. The area around the people is also gold, and each panel is encased by a royal-blue band dotted with stylized stars at regular intervals. Each panel is then lined with small, button-like rounded bosses around its edges. In the upper panel, all of the men except the second from the right have beards, and all have halos with wavy bands of blue, green, yellow, and white. The man to our left holds a book and his neighbor a skeleton key the length of his arm. The man at the center holds up a book with his left hand, on our right, and raises the index and middle fingers of his other hand, held up at shoulder height. The two men to our right also hold books. In the panel below, three horses’ heads peek in from the left edge, creating a vertical band, and three crowned men line up, holding gold vessels and looking toward a woman seated in a throne with a child on her lap. The woman has a halo made with a wavy pattern of blue, yellow, green, black, and white. Her throne is flanked by columns, and the area around it is edged with bands of white, light, and dark blue. The baby wears gold, has a halo, holds a book in his lap with his left hand, and raises the first two fingers of his other hand toward the three men. The final person in this panel wears a hat, holds a scepter topped with a fleur-de-lis, and gestures at the woman and baby. The head and shoulders of a haloed person is visible along the short side of the box, which is angled sharply away from us. The gold between all the people and bordering each panel is intricately carved with tiny flowing organic lines and swirls.