Умберто Эко. В поисках сокровищ.

[ Label. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ] Accession Number: 62.96

On view in Gallery 014. This sumptuous reliquary sets the Virgin and Child, accompanied by angels, within an elaborate architectural shrine. The arches, vaults, and sculptural decorations are of gilded silver; translucent enamel panels on the wings depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin and the Infancy of Christ evoke stained-glass windows. This example, one of only four such shrines to have survived, is recorded in the eighteenth-century inventories of the convent of the Poor Clares of the Order of Saint Francis at Buda (part of the modern city of Budapest), founded by Queen Elizabeth of Hungary in 1334.



[ Label. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ] Accession Number: 47.101.65. Not on view.

Scenes of the life of Saint Margaret decorate this case, probably intended to hold a reliquary of precious material created for precious remains of the saint. Saint Margaret was particularly invoked for protection by women in childbirth, and it has been suggested that the loop at the back would have allowed the reliquary to be suspended over an expectant woman’s bed.

[ Label. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ] Accession Number: 1999.519.9. On view in Gallery 303. This cross and similar examples are made of two crosses hinged at the bottom, which allowed access to a hollow space meant to hold a relic. The large numbers of surviving copper-alloy reliquary crosses suggest that they were not used solely for relics of the True Cross or other primary relics, such as the bone of a saint; instead they likely contained secondary relics, for instance, a piece of earth from a holy site or a piece of fabric made holy through contact with the body of a saint.