An ornate cut-parchment and textile devotional image and reliquary. [Italy (Pavia or Rome?), 18th century].
A rectangular panel (317 x 265 mm.) in two layers, the upper layer of decoratively cut-out, gilt and painted parchment forming a screen through which one sees the bottom layer, of pasteboard covered with variously colored textiles including a red silk and silvery-green faille silk on which are or were mounted 17 bone relics and other small objects: pearl-like beads, sequins, and short segments of purl resembling nails, with at center a small painted parchment image of Saint Cecilia, dressed in textiles with gilt paper or parchment highlights and halo. The image is backed in pasteboard whose layers are now separating at the edges; the defective paper backing reveals stitches, the blue textile patch behind the Saint and other elements of construction. Condition: Overall well preserved, with loss of a few bone relics, some curling of the parchment, a couple of small tears to the outer border, worming to the outer frame and dark spots (of mold?) around the edges and more heavily on the back of the object, the latter with tears and a gouge to the paper backing. ***
An unusually large and complex devotional image: a dazzling painted parchment cut covering a portable reliquary, central dressed painting of Saint Cecilia, and colored textiles with symbolic appliqués. Made of easily available materials, it was clearly the work of one or more expert artisans, possibly artist-nuns from a convent workshop. While complex collage-like devotional images, often called Spickelbilder, were a specialty of the German-speaking Catholic areas of Europe, the decorative style of this image-reliquary and the saints honored within it point to Italy.
The construction of this unusual object is intricate. The upper layer of cut-out parchment is elaborately shaped and painted in green, pink and yellow, with lavish gold highlighting, in a Renaissance style with arabesques, volutes, vases, roses and other flowers. It provides glimpses of the lower layer, on which pearls, tiny “nails” (of the Crucifixion) and small bone relics, the latter placed within interstices of the parchment strapwork, are mounted on carefully assembled patches of green, red and light brown textiles. These multiple dimensions may have reminded the viewer of rood screens or other half-hidden symbolic visual elements of church worship.
Details:
The outer frame of the parchment is painted with large volutes, flowers, and interlacing tendrils; within it is a parchment-cut panel enclosing a second narrow border (housing “secondary” relics) which frames the large central panel containing a relic of Saint Aurelian and an image of Saint Cecilia. At the foot of this central panel is a stylized vase from which emerge dozens of tendrils, of which six terminate in large flowers on either side of the panel, with two smaller flowers at the bottom. Within the base of the vase is a heart-shaped recess containing a relic; around it, lettered in small capitals in brown ink, are the words Sancti Aureliani Martiri. (This wording is often used for the saint whose relics are preserved in Pavia, to distinguish him from St. Aurelian of Limoges.) Immediately above the vase and flanked by the flowers is an ornamental oval cartouche containing the mounted image of St. Cecilia. Her head, hands, and her organ are of painted parchment; she is dressed in a patchwork of gold and light brown pieces of cloth, highlighted with tiny strips of gilt paper or parchment, also used for her halo. The two flowers immediately flanking her are stylized roses (among her attributes).
The border around the central panel contains 16 ornamentally shaped openings for bone relics, each ascribed to a different saint, most still preserved. Identifying names of the saints (in the Latin genitive, i.e., “of St. Crescentius,” etc.), all apparently described (in Italian) as “martiri,” are inscribed around the irregular edges of each lozenge. The lettering is quite faded; I have made out the names S. Hippomenis (the Eastern Orthodox saint Hypomone?), Saint Crescenti[us], Saint Emerent[ia] (both of Rome), Saint Placidi (Placidus), and possibly Saint Ioannis.
There are two further faded inscriptions at top and bottom of the outer frame of the parchment, written on either side of ornaments; the upper inscription reads S Hon / rati [?], and that at bottom S Ro / onta [?].
Localization:
The creation of collaged images from prints or painted images decorated with fabric, colored or patterned papers, foil etc., either as overlays or applied to the reverse of the sheet under cut-out areas, and often including other popular artistic techniques, such as papercuts or embroidery, was often used for devotional imagery, from the 15th to 19th centuries. While associated mainly with the German-speaking lands, and known in German as Spickelbilder (embroidered pictures) or Stoffklebebilder (pasted textile pictures), such variegated images were also produced in other parts of Europe. Italian examples are rare, though, or are seldom found on the market. This splendid, fragile reliquary (in which the only printed element is the central image of Saint Cecilia) may have been produced in Pavia or Rome: the remains of Saint Aurelian are preserved in Pavia, while his fellow third-century martyr St. Cecilia, widely venerated as the patron saint of music, is most closely associated with Rome. Two of the other saints whose relic labels can be deciphered also have a Roman association.
I locate no comparable objects in the cited literature.
General references, on devotional images and papercuts and cut parchment:
Adolf Spamer, Das kleine Andachtsbild vom XIV. bis zum XX. Jahrhundert (1930, reprint 1980); Horst Heres, Das Private Andachtsbild: Devotionale - Andenken - Amulett (2007); Sigrid Metken, Geschnittenes Papier: eine Geschichte des Ausschneidens in Europa von 1500 bis heute (1978). See also entry “Canivets” in Berthod & Hardouin-Fugier, Dictionnaire des objets de dévotion dans l’Europe catholique (2006), pp. 59-61. Item #4489
Price: $6,500.00