Reliquary bust (St. Lambertus)
The reliquary bust in the Lambertus Church in Düsseldorf is a Romanesque head reliquary from the 2nd half of the 12th century.
description
It is a three-part bronze cast depicting the life-size head and neck of a bearded man. The neck ends with a broadly decorated base with a diameter of 15 cm. The whole structure is 27 cm high. The relics contained in it are either attributed to Saint Vitalis or Saint Candidus , Christian martyrs of the Thebaic Legion . Since there are no written testimonies inside or outside, an exact attribution is difficult. Inside there are parts of the skull in a bag made of red silk and a sack with soil from Golgotha .
The face is characterized by a sharp nose, large, almond-shaped and lidless eyes lined with enamel with arched, parallel brows and a mustache that begins in the modeled labial fold and is twisted upwards at the ends. The hair, the sideburns and the goatee are modeled from snail-shaped strands. The curls come from a point on the back of the head and cover the edge of the two parts, which, connected by a hinge, form the vessel that can be opened at the back of the head. Towards the neck, the skull is closed with an invisible plate. Inside it shows that the areas that were cast too thinly were reinforced with metal strips.
Art historical and local classification
While Paul Clemen writes in his collection of art monuments in Düsseldorf that the bust could be the head of the martyr Candidus mentioned in the church inventory of St. Lambert from 1393: “allegedly that of h. Vitalis (rather the head reliquary of St. Candidus mentioned in the inventory of 1393) ”, assumed the Swiss conservator Rudolf Schnyder, who was involved in the restoration of the reliquary of the skull of St. Candidus in St-Maurice , that it was originally from Switzerland Relic of Saint Vitalis could act:
“Furthermore, a Caput sci Candidi is mentioned in the treasury inventory of St. Lambert, Düsseldorf, in 1393. Here, too, it is not clear whether it is the Aegaunian martyr. Paul Clemen has this head with the head reliquary of St. Want to identify Vitalis. The Vitalishaupt was stolen in St-Maurice in 1069 and brought to Siegburg (...). "
The bust was restored between 1894 and 1935, the enamel on the eyes, which had almost been lost in 1894, was renewed, the head was newly gilded and a button on the skull that was used to open the container was removed. The eyes are enamelled discs that are attached to the recesses in the eye sockets with the help of screws in the pupil.
Various attempts to determine the time or the manufacturing workshop with the help of stylistic or production-related comparisons of the hairstyle, the shape of the skull or face or the leaf ornament ( acanthus ) on the base of the reliquary have so far not led to any clear results. Falk sees the period of origin in the period between 1150 and 1200, or the beginning of the 13th century, the area of origin cannot be narrowed down further than possibly: "the Aachen area, the Lower Rhine, the Maas region and Lorraine".
literature
- Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the city and the district of Düsseldorf. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1894, p. 45.
- Karl Bernd Heppe, Irene Makowitz: Religious wealth in Düsseldorf. Church treasures from the 10th century. September 16-22, 1978. City History Museum Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf 1978, No. 2.
- Birgitta Falk : Portrait reliquaries. On the origin and development of the metal head, bust and half-figure reliquaries in the Middle Ages. In: Aachener Kunstblätter 59, 1991–93, pp. 175–178.