Reliquary Shrine of Saint Potentinus
Unknown · c. 1220-1230
Over a metre long and shaped like a small church with a pitched roof, the shrine was made to hold the relics of Saint Potentinus, an early Christian saint venerated at the abbey of Steinfeld in the Rhineland. Around the body, eighteen figures stand under round arches on slender columns: the apostles, worked in repoussé, with their names lettered above them in brown varnish. On each slope of the roof six raised circular medallions hold the busts of prophets and patriarchs, among them Hosea, Baruch, David, Jacob, Isaac, Jonah, Malachi, Ezekiel, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel, each inscribed with his name, and angels amid floral scrolls fill the spaces between. The roof edges keep their original enamel plaques of geometric patterns alternating with rosettes, and the ridge is an openwork crest of symmetrical scrolls set with balls of agate and rock crystal.
The shrine was made around twelve twenty to twelve thirty, probably in Trier, and belonged to the Premonstratensian abbey of Steinfeld in the Eifel hills. The Louvre bought it from a dealer in Paris on the fourth of November eighteen twenty eight for two thousand two hundred francs, an early purchase for what would become its medieval collection.
Did You Know? Twelve prophets look down from the roof, each one labelled with his name so that no visitor could mistake him.
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