This is the fourth post in our series of Nicola’s photographs of an exhibition recently held at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, titled “The Middle Ages of the 19th Century - Creations and Fakes in the Fine Arts”. In this post we focus on liturgical objects of various kinds, both original medievals works and modern ones inspired by them.
This object made of gilded silver, decorated with pearls and enamels, which depicts St George killing a dragon, was left to the Louvre by the previous owner in 1901 and catalogued as a kind of pax brede, attributed to a German artist named Hans Fuog, and dated to the year 1453, according to an inscription on the back. In reality, it is composite, partly made in the 15th century, partly from various piece (the base, the feet and the upper section) created in the 19th.
A portable altar, also a composite work, with several ivory plaques depicting the Twelve Apostles, and dated to the 10th to 12th centuries, mounted in a 19th century frame made of oak, gilded copper, ivory, enamel and porphyry.
Two French pax bredes made from the same model in the 15th or 16th century.
An incense boat made in the first half of the 19th century in Paris (below), and the model which inspired it, made in Siena ca. 1350-75.
A pair of liturgical gloves made in France in the 19th century, inspired by various kinds of medieval models.
An abbatial crook made in Italy towards the end of the 18th century or beginning of the 19th, with a lion made of boxwood on top, and a scene depicting an ordination on the ivory piece below it.
A silk miter decorated with gold thread, pearls and precious stones, made in the later decades of the 19th century, or beginning of the 20th, decorated with portraits of the four evangelists.
A candlestick made in France in the 19th century, in imitation of the style of champlevé enamels made especially in the city of Limoges in the Middle Ages.
A hand-washing vessel made in France in the 19th century, also in imitation of the style of Limoges.
A crook which once belong to the Bl. Columba Marmion, abbot of Maredsous, produced in imitation of the style of Limoges by one of the monks who worked in the abbey’s liturgical arts workshop, Dom Célestin Golenvaux, in 1902.
This crook is another composite piece: the upper part, which depicts St Michael slaying the dragon, was made at Limoges ca. 1220-40; the base to which it is attached is from the 19th century. Above it are plaques depicting the four evangelists, works of the 19th century.
A chalice and paten made in Spain of partly gilded silver ca. 1135-40...
and a modern chalice inspired by the former, made in France in 1935.
An incense boat made in Tuscany with a scene of the Annunciation, from the end of the 14th century, but possibly a 19th century forgery.
A verified French forgery of the 19th century, modelled on another piece of the same type now in a museum in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia, a piece which itself may also be a forgery.
A missal stand made in France some time after 1893. The artist mistakenly inverts the symbols of St Mark and Luke by writing the wrong name on the plaques with the lion and the bull.
A portable altar made in France in the 19th century...
inspired by this example from the abbey of Fulda in Germany, made ca. 1000-35.
A crook made in the 19th century, imitating various styles and techniques that were used in Limoges, but in different periods.
A modern (1880) plaster copy of a medieval ivory head of an abbatial crook.
An ivory head of a crook, made in Venice ca. 1370, and a rough plaster copy made in 1880.
