Reliquary Casket with the Murder and Burial of Saint Thomas Becket
Unknown · c. 1195-1200
Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was cut down by four knights of King Henry the Second in his own cathedral in December eleven seventy, and within three years he was a saint. Limoges enamellers responded with a series of caskets like this one, made to hold relics of the new martyr. On the front the murder unfolds before the altar; on the roof above, the archbishop's body is laid in the tomb. The two short sides show apostles, most likely Peter and Andrew, and the back is sprinkled with small crosses. Compare the deep, bold lines of the main figures with the fineness of the details, the embroidered orphreys and the patterned dalmatic; rows of dots pick out the cell edges and lift the reserved borders.
Made around eleven ninety five to twelve hundred, the casket was in the Doire collection at Evreux before eighteen eighty four, then belonged to Victor Martin le Roy, who lent it to the Universal Exhibition of nineteen hundred, and to his son-in-law Jean-Joseph Marquet de Vasselot, the great historian of Limoges enamel. His descendants transferred it to the Louvre in nineteen ninety one in lieu of inheritance tax.
Did You Know? Becket's murder was such a sensation that Limoges workshops were turning out enamelled caskets of the scene within a generation of his death.
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