Vol. I · The open image paperWinnipeg · Musée sans mursRecovered · Remembered · Returned
Cleveland Museum of Art130314portraitc. 1214CC0cma african-global-heritage symbols-patterns portraits design-assets african global heritage symbols patterns design assets medieval silver gilt illumination text latin circular geometric religious panel gold metalwork decoration pattern script art europe 14th century religious art manuscript illumination calligraphy ornament reliquary the true crossc. 1214 Cross: Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem Panel: Rhine-Meuse region, Gothic period, 13th century silver, gilded silver, niello, precious stones, walnut core Metalwork DecorativeAfrican & Global Heritage Symbols & Ornament Faces in Time The Maker’s Cabinet
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Reliquary of the True Cross (c. 1214). Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund Rights: CC0. https://clevelandart.org/art/1952.89
Vault de Lupin makes the source signal legible; it does not provide legal advice or replace the institution’s current rights statement.
From the museum record
A lengthy Latin inscription on the frame recounts the history of the central relic--a fragment of the True Cross--and provides an exact date for its container: "You who ask about the cross: read! The heir of Judas the priest/Stole it. But when, after boarding a ship,/He sought a mild breeze, a fierce storm opposed the sorry sailors./Out of his mind, he gnawed at his own hands./In the end the blessed Virgin spoke thus to him:/‘You shall soon be well, if you seek to return what was stolen.’/ He pays back this debt to the brothers of the Temple . . . When he died, they cast him overboard, and the storm subsided./Happy they arrive at Brindisi, quiet they have returned with the cross,/Which resides beautiful in this handsome panel. This tablet was created in the 1214th year from the Lord’s incarnation in the month of February."
Lupin’s visual index
This intricately decorated silver-gilt panel features dense Latin text and repeating circular motifs, characteristic of medieval illumination.
Machine-assisted description · useful for discovery, not scholarship.
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