Conference: ‘Reliquary busts between Italy and Europe (XII-XVIth centuries’, 22-24 Sep 2023

‘Reliquiari a busto tra Italia ed Europa (secoli XII-XVI)’/Reliquary busts between Italy and Europe (XII-XVIth centuries)

Organised by Palazzo Madama-Museo Civico d’Arte antica di Torino, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza per i beni e le attività culturali della Valle d’Aosta
Turin, Palazzo Madama, September 22nd-23rd 2023
Aosta, Biblioteca Regionale, September 24th 2023

This conference follows the exhibition Ritratti d’oro e d’argento. Reliquiari medievali in Piemonte, Valle d’Aosta, Svizzera e Savoia (Gold and Silver Portraits exhibition. Medieval reliquaries in Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Switzerland and Savoy), held in 2021 in two italian museums: Palazzo Madama in Turin and the Museo del Tesoro della Cattedrale in Aosta.

Both exhibitions focused on reliquary busts, in precious metals and in wood, produced in this area – the ancient duchy of Savoy – in the Middle Ages; or imported from abroad, mainly northern Europe, in the medieval period, sometimes brought by merchants, or offered as gifts by the dukes of Savoy to important ecclesiastical institutions.

The high number of reliquaries of this type still preserved in this region (almost 30, from the survey carried out for the exhibitions), together with the great many no longer extant but described in local church and abbey inventories, makes it possible to consider this territory as a kind of case study. The catalogue, edited by Simonetta Castronovo and Viviana Vallet – now engaged in the organization of the conference – advances two hypotheses in relation to these surviving reliquaries: the presence in the area, ab antiquo, of an illustrious model, the reliquary bust of Saint Maurice in the Vienne Cathedral (Isère), dating back to the IXth century; and a certain immobility in taste which often characterizes the mountain valleys, and which saved these medieval works from fusion and replacement with more modern objects.

The conference aims now to establish a comparison with other contemporaneous contexts: first of all by examining the heritage of other Italian regions – where the success of the Renaissance and then Baroque art has in many cases caused the disappearance of medieval liturgical artefacts; then by widening the scope to include other European countries, such as France, Spain and Belgium. This is a work in progress, of course: where we want to consider not only the iconographic, historical and stylistic aspects of these works of art, but also the techniques of manufacture and the social role played by these reliquaries – especially those of local and popular saints – in the communities where they come from (in processions and special festivities), where the devotion to some of them is still alive today.

Find out more here.