1390s in art

Transcription

(jazz music) Woman 1: We are at the British Museum, standing in front of the Holy Thorn Reliquary, which was commissioned by Jean Duc de Berry. It's from about the 1390s in Paris and this is quite a piece of work. Woman 2: It's exquisite. There's an awful lot of detail here. I suppose we should just start working from the bottom up. Woman 1: We've got the city in gold Woman 2: And it's the four-cornered city. It's like the four corners of the world. Woman 1: There's an angel at each corner blowing a trumpet and then around that we have this green hill. Woman 2: With four tombs? People are rising out of them, looking up. Woman 1: Above that we've a central panel, which is surrounded by rubies and pearls and lots of gold and there are 12 figures, who are the 12 apostles, picked out in enamel and gold, surrounding the central panel. Woman 2: Right in the center, we have Christ sitting in majesty with his feet on the globe. Woman 1: Above, at the very top, we've got God the father and then there are these two sapphires. They're the only two sapphires in the whole piece. One is at the very, very top, above God the father and the other one is in the middle of this window, where the Christ figure is sitting. Woman 2: There's this two-inch long piece of wood jutting up into Christ and Christ is sitting on a rainbow. Woman 1: Right above Christ, there are these two little angels holding a tiny, tiny crown of thorns above his head and that is connected to what this spike coming out of the sapphire is. It is supposedly one of the thorns that came from the crown of thorns. Woman 2: We're obviously looking at a reliquary here. Woman 1: The idea of reliquaries in the Middle Ages is really important, because it was these physical objects, which were sometimes body parts of saints, in this case it's a thorn from the crown of thorns. These objects were used as focusers of spiritual contemplation. Woman 2: We're really looking here at where relics began, because Christ died on the cross and then he rose into heaven, so he left nothing behind. Woman 1: All the relics that are connected to Christ are things like the crown of thorns or a piece of the true cross. Woman 2: Objects that are material memory. Woman 1: Of course, we have no way of proving whether this was, in fact, a thorn from the crown of thorns worn by Christ when he was crucified. Woman 2: No. Woman 1: But that wasn't the point. The idea was you believed in these objects. Woman 2: Science, as we know, didn't exist in those days. To pray or to be in the presence of this object is to give extra power and special access to heaven. Christ and the passion, all this happened within Roman empire. The crown of thorns was discovered by Constantine's mother, the empress Helena, who went on pilgrimage and she found the crown of thorns and the true cross, as well. These were taken back to Constantinople, so the Byzantine emperor had all of the power, which of course, this is what made the rest of Europe extremely jealous of the power that Constantinople had and that's why they came and sacked Constantinople and that's when these things got taken away. Woman 1: This reliquary, it starts with one of the French kings, Louis IX, who as he saw it, rescued this crown and brought it to Paris. Then, the greatest gift that he could give to anyone would be to take one of the thorns and make a gift of it and that's what he did here. Woman 2: It's spiritual, but it's also a place for control, because if someone gives you a gift of something so close to Christ, that's irreplaceable. Woman 1: Here we've Jean Duc de Berry, who is one of the French dukes and it's such an important gift for both religious and political reasons that he's made this incredible casing to house this one relic and you see the story of the last judgement, because that's what's going on here. These angels at the bottom are trumpeting to wake people up. You see the dead rising out of their coffins - Woman 2: From the four corners of the earth. Woman 1: Then in the center there's this scene of Christ enthroned. Woman 2: It's important with a reliquary, because without all of this gold and sapphires and pearls, without all this paraphernalia around it, if you just had that thorn, how would you know what it was? You know what it is by the casing that holds it. Woman 1: People at the time would have, as well, because this was not an audience who was literate. What you mostly get is the story being told by the object itself and people would have been to church and heard these stories, stories about the last judgement and Christ enthroned. It's like a picture book for an audience looking at this at the time, regardless of all of that gold work and any of those jewels, the most valuable object in this entire piece is that one bit of thorn. Woman 2: That's had the sweat and the blood of Christ upon it. Woman 1: There is so much tiny, tiny detail in the way that everything is made. The hair and the beards, the carving of the leaves. If you look at these two kneeling figures as Christ's feet, the way that their clothing has been picked out and the individual fingers that you can see in their praying hands. It's a really nice combination of both an object of faith and a beautiful object of craftsmanship. (jazz music)