Reliquary Casket with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Presentation in the Temple
Unknown · c. 1190-1210
Barely twenty two centimetres long, the little house-shaped casket is a typical product of Limoges, whose workshops flooded Europe with champlevé enamels around twelve hundred. The front shows the Massacre of the Innocents, soldiers with drawn swords seizing infants from their mothers on the order of King Herod, and the roof above it the Presentation of the Child in the Temple. All the figures stand in gilded reserve against a deep blue enamel ground scattered with rosettes in yellow, green, blue, white and red. On the back two rows of circular medallions hold half-length winged angels on blue, and each gable end carries a similar medallion topped by a fleuron. The roof opens on two hinges and a lock; inside, a later hand painted pink flowers and green leaves on a white ground.
The casket probably came from a church at Monflanquin in the Lot-et-Garonne. It passed through the Lagravère collection in Montauban and that of Julien Chappée in Le Mans, who lent it to exhibitions in Nantes in nineteen thirty three and Paris in nineteen thirty seven, and finally belonged to Claude Vaudecrane, from whom the Louvre bought it in nineteen seventy one.
Did You Know? Whoever repainted the inside chose cheerful pink flowers for a box whose front shows the slaughter of children.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.