The Duality of Glass: Revealing and Concealing Holy Relics in Early Modern Italy

• In Event: The Interaction of Art and Relics in Early Modernity I

Abstract

This paper explores an understudied aspect of Trecento Italy: the relationship between relics and the medium of transparent glass. Although traditionally categorized as a mundane or utilitarian material, glass was widely used to enshrine relics, as seen in the late 14th century Reliquary Diptych and Naddo Ceccarelli’s Reliquary Tabernacle of mid-14th century Sienna. To understand this phenomenon, this paper examines issues such as the growing desire for visual access to relics, the symbolism of glass, and the relationship between glass and rock crystal. By contextualizing these objects within the larger scientific, religious, and artistic milieu of fourteenth-century Italy, an informative relationship between glass and relics is revealed and, in turn, greater light is shed on the development of Renaissance art.

Author

• Sarah Dillon, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY