Reliquary of the True Cross (Louvre)
The Reliquary of the True Cross is a cross reliquary, a storage library , from the 11th and 12th centuries. The reliquary is located in the Musée du Louvre in Paris , where it came as a gift from Victor Martin Le Roy in 1914 and has the inventory number OA 8099. It is exhibited in the Charlemagne room on the ground floor of the museum.
It is a 30 × 10 cm reliquary in the form of a drawer with a sliding lid. The lid of this box, decorated with a double cross set with gems , can be pulled out. Below is a panel with a representation of Mary and John on the side of a Latin cross with openwork; the busts of two angels can be seen in the upper corners. This Latin cross was subsequently worked from a double cross. A piece of wood from the “ true cross of Christ ” was formerly kept in the reliquary.
The panel with Mary and John on the side of the cross is a Byzantine goldsmith's work from the 11th century, which came to the West, where it was modeled on Byzantine cross reliquaries such as the Limburg Staurothek around 1160/70 in the Maas area , was incorporated into a cross reliquary with a sliding lid.
literature
- Anatole Frolow: La relique de la vraie croix. Recherches sur le développement d'un culte (= Archives de l'Orient Chrétien 7). Institut Français d'Études Byzantines, Paris 1961, p. 305 no. 284; P. 463 No. 609.
- Anatole Frolow: Les reliquaires de la Vraie Croix (= Archives de l'Orient Chrétien 8). Institut Français d'Études Byzantines, Paris 1965, p. 97. 106. 108. 161 Fig. 54.
- Byzance. L'art byzantin dans les collections publiques françaises . Paris 1992, ISBN 2-7118-2606-6 , pp. 322-323 No. 237.