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Weddeghe Velstede (German, active 1432-73); container: Egyptian
Reliquary Monstrance with a Tooth of Saint John the Baptist, 1433; container: 900/1200
Silver gilt and rock crystal
45.1 cm (17 3/4 in.)
Gift of Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, 1962.91
This reliquary uses the form of a miniature Gothic tower. It makes an elaborate architectural frame for a transparent rock-crystal vessel holding a relic that is identified as a tooth of Saint John the Baptist by an inscription along the base of the reliquary. Rock crystal was highly prized in the medieval Islamic world. Considered a precious stone, it was used to create a number of luxurious secular objects, including this vessel, which was probably originally intended to be a container for fragrant oils.
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
The Guelph Treasure Exhibition took place in 1930-31 at the following venues: Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut; Berlin, Deutsche Gesellschaft; New York, Reinhardt and Goldschmidt Galleries; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art); the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; The Art Institute of Chicago (March 31st to April 20th, 1931); and San Francisco, The M. H. de Young Museum, cat. 60.
Art Institute of Chicago, Medieval Decorative Arts from Chicago Collections, October 2, 1985-January 5, 1986.
Leningrad, State Hermitage Museum, and Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Medieval Art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, May 10–July 10, 1990, August 14–October 14, 1990, cat. 34.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, September 25, 2004-January 3, 2005, cat. 31.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, 17 October 2010 - 17 January 2011, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 13 February 2011 - 15 May 2011, and London, British Museum, 23 June 2011 - 9 October 2011, no. 41.
Publication History
G. W. Molanus, Lipsanographia sive Thesaurus sanctarum Reliquiarum Electoralis Brunsvico-Luneburgicus (Hanover, 1697), pp. 30-31, no. 56.
W. A. Neumann, Der Reliquienschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Vienna, 1891), pp. 285-286, ill., no. 58.
Carl Johan Lamm, Mittelalterliche Gläser und Steinschnittarbeiten aus dem Nahen Osten, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1929/1930), vol.1, p. 202, no. 15, vol. 2, pl. 68, no. 15.
O. von Falke, R. Schmidt, and G. Swarzenski, The Guelph Treasure (Frankfurt am Main, 1930), p. 194, no. 60.
"Chicagoan Buys Objects from Guelph Treasure," The Art News, 29, 16 (January 17, 1931), p. 8.
"Chicago," The Art News 29, 29 (April 18, 1931), p. 24.
Bessie Bennett, "Some Ecclesiastical Objects," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 25, 6 (1931), pp. 78-79.
Joseph Braun, Die Reliquiare des christlichen Kultes und ihre Entwicklung (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1940), pp. 105, 342, fig. 390.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report (1961-1962), pp. 14-15.
Patrick M. De Winter, The Sacral Treasures of the Guelphs, Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, 1 (March 1985), p. 141, no. 59.
Patrick M. De Winter, Der Welfenschatz: Zeugnis sakraler Kunst des deutschen Mittelalters (Hanover, 1986), p. 173, no. 59.
Klaus Jaitner, "Der Reliquienschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Welfenschatz) vom 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert," Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz 23 (1986) [1987], fig. 102.
A. Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1996), pp. 183-184.
Andrea Boockman, Die verlorenen Teile des ‘Welfenschatzes’: Eine Übersicht anhand des Reliquienverzeichnisses von 1482 der Stiftskirche St. Blasius in Braunschweig (Göttingen, 1997), pp. 26, 33-34, 67, 143, 155, no. 78.
Michael Camille, “Before the Gaze. The Internal Senses and Late Medieval Practices of Seeing” in Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, ed. Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge, New York, Melbourne and Madrid, 2000), p. 204, fig. 41.
C[hristina] M. N[ielsen] in Devotion and Splendor. Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Studies 30, 2 (2004), pp. 53-54, 93, fig. 1, no. 31.
"The Silk Road and Beyond: A Conversation with James Cuno and Yo-Yo Ma" in The Silk Road and Beyond: Travel, Trade and Transformation, Museum Studies 33, 1 (2007), p. 29, fig. 9.
Christina Nielsen, "'To Step into Another World': Building a Medieval Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago" in To Inspire and Instruct: A History of Medieval Art in Midwestern Museums, ed. Christina Nielsen (Newcastle, 2008), pp. 34, 199 n. 35, fig. 2.6.
Christina Nielsen, "'The greatest group of medieval objects ever offered for sale': The Guelph Treasure and America, 1930-1931," Journal of the History of Collections 27, 3 (2015), pp. 447, 452 n. 58.
Deutsche Inschriften Online. Die Inschriften der Stadt Braunschweig bis 1528: www.inschriften.net, urn:nbn:de:0238-di035g005k0006807
Ownership History
The collegiate church of Saint Blaise, Braunschweig [no. 78 in the 1482 inventory of the relic treasure; see Boockmann 1997, pp. 33-34, 143 identifying it with the monstrance made for Saint Blasius by Wedegho Velstede in 1433], remaining there along with other treasure objects after the congregation abolished the Catholic service in 1540; Saint Blaise being under the direct patronage of the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, 1962.91 was given, together with the bulk of the church’s relic treasure to Duke Johann Friedrich (died 1679) in 1671 as part of a settlement among members of the ducal family [see Jaitner 1986 [1987], pp. 391-92]; by descent in the Hannover branch of the ducal family of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and preserved with the rest of the treasure in the court chapel of the Leineschloss, Hannover; temporarily removed for safe-keeping during the Seven Years War ( from 1757-64) and the Napoleonic Wars (removed 1803-1816) [Jaitner 1986 [1987], p. 393]; in 1862 installed in the Welfenmuseum in the Altenburg-Palais, Hannover, founded by King George V of Hannover (died 1878) [Hannover became a kingdom at the Congress of Vienna 1814/15; for the foundation of the museum, whose name evoked the medieval glory of the Welf or Guelph dynasty, see Jaitner 1986 [1987], pp. 393-98 and de Winter 1985, p. 13]; in 1867, following the annexation of the kingdom of Hannover by Prussia, moved with the bulk of the treasure to the exiled former king’s villa in Hietzing near Vienna; deposited at the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Vienna, 1869 to 1906 [Jaitner 1986 [1987], pp. 402, 420 n. 59–the former king was styled duke of Cumberland];1906 sent to the duke of Cumberland’s palace in Penzing on the outskirts of Vienna and in 1920 to Schloss Cumberland in Gmunden, Austria [Jaitner 1986 [1987], p. 404]; in November 1927, the treasure was deposited with a bank in Aarau, Switzerland; at the end of 1929 under Ernst August III as head of the house of Hannover, the treasure was sold to a consortium of Frankfurt dealers: Julius Falk Goldschmidt of the firm I. S. Goldscmidt, Zacharias Max Hackenbroch, and Isaak Rosenbaum and Saemy Rosenbaum of the firm J. Rosenbaum [see De Winter 1985, p. 133; Jaitner 1986 (1987), p. 415 gives January 6, 1930 as the conclusion of the transaction]; they sold 1962.91 to Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, née Marion Deering, in January, 1931; on loan to the museum from 1931 [receipt R. 4806 of April 24, 1931 in Registrar’s office]; given to the museum in 1962.
