LOT 0349

Medieval Reliquary Bust of Saint John the Baptist

15TH CENTURY A.D.

13 in. (2.8 kg total, 33 cm including stand).

Reliquary bust of Saint John the Baptist carved in walnut wood with applied pigments and gilding; inset glass panels to brow and chest with ink on vellum; the inscriptions (i) in the chest; ‘En cette teste a des cheveux nostre du [anet?] [chef?] lame Jehan baptiste …Et ces reliques… [dente?] saincte [agnes? agneau?]’ (in this head are some hairs from [...] John the Baptist ... and these holy relics'; (ii) In the head; ‘ap…e sancti joha(n)nis bap… (...of Saint John the Baptist)’; separate shoulders partly detached; mounted on a custom-made stand. [No Reserve]

Private collection, France, 2013.

Accompanied by a previous cataloguing document.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate number no.12991-246401.

According to the Gospels of Matthew (14:6–12) and Mark (6:21–29), Saint John was arrested for criticising the incestuous marriage of King Herod and Herodias, the wife of his slain half-brother Philip. Herodias’s daughter, Salome, danced for Herod during his birthday banquet, and as a reward, she was offered whatever she wished. In an act of revenge against John, Herodias had her daughter ask for his head on a platter. Though reluctant, Herod was bound by his promise, and he ordered the saint’s execution by beheading.
Early accounts suggest that the saint’s remains were being venerated as early as the fourth century, having been purportedly rediscovered in a grave located some thirty miles north of Jerusalem. They remained in the Holy Land until 1206, when Saint John’s skull was stolen by crusaders returning to France after the Sack of Constantinople. It was taken by one of the crusaders, Walo of Sarton, to Amiens, where it remains to this day in the cathedral built to house it. The saint came to be invoked by sufferers of headaches and was thought to guard against insanity. The latter belief may even have informed the prominent inclusion of the saint as a young boy on the Goldenes Rössl, which was given to the continually insane King Charles VI by his wife in 1405 as a reminder of his royal duties. By the end of the Middle Ages, the saint’s relics had such famous, reputed healing powers that it led to his widespread devotion, and images of the saint (and especially those focusing on his head and the associated significance of his surviving skull) were produced in large numbers right across Europe. Few, however, contain actual relics, and fewer still have intact and undisturbed compartments incorporating original inscribed parchment labels. This marvellous bust is an anomaly and almost unique in having its relics well preserved. The stylistic treatment of our figure is extremely close to that of a bearded head on a capital with two figures formerly in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh (inv. G.57.14.16, now deaccessioned). Dated to the late fourteenth century, it was clearly carved in the same artistic orbit as our bust.