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Details
LOT 1449
Byzantine Style Bronze Reliquary Cross Pendant
20TH CENTURY A.D.
4 1/8 in. (126 grams, 10.5 cm).
Hinged suspension loop, two recessed halves hollow to the reverse, low-relief figure in orans pose to the obverse, geometric ornament to the reverse. [No Reserve]
Provenance
Acquired 1980-1990s.
From the private collection of H.N., Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire, UK.
Literature
See Pitarakis, B., Les Croix-Reliquaires Pectorales Byzantines en Bronze, Paris, 2006, for original examples from the Eastern empire.
Footnotes
Usually the reliquary crosses or enkolpia, were composed of two separate halves, inside of which a relic of a saint was contained; this could have been a piece of cloth or a bone. The practice, in the Orthodox Church, is still in place today, sometimes by using reproductions of ancient styles, like our specimen, probably realised at the beginning of the last century.
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