The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 19, 2024

Incense Burner and Stand for an Altar Cross

Incense Burner and Stand for an Altar Cross

1150–75
bronze: cast, gilded, engraved, and chased
Overall: 18.1 x 12.7 cm (7 1/8 x 5 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1926.555
Location: 106C Medieval Treasury

Did You Know?

This object may been have created for a traveling court with its entourage to use for Catholic Mass, where incense could be used in an easily transportable vessel.

Description

Supported by dragon-shaped feet on its corners, this unusual object is fashioned like a small, centralized church with gabled roofs, a lantern crowned by a turret, and four semi-circular apses. Traces of soot on the interior walls of a nearly identical object in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin indicate that these objects once served as incense burners. The objects’ design with an open turret in the center of the roof further suggests that they may have doubled as stands for altar crosses. The fact that both objects formerly belonged to the Bouvier Collection in Amiens may be taken as an indication that they were made as a pair in the same 12th-century workshop.
  • Bouvier, Amiens; Spitzer Paris; (Arnold Seligmann Rey & Co., Paris).
  • Wilhelmy, Winfried, and Marcel Schawe. Meisterwerke des Bischöflichen Dom- und Diözesanmuseums Mainz. Regensburg : Schnell + Steiner, 2020. Mentioned: p. 165, reproduced: p. 168, abb. 128
    Lutkenhaus, Hildegard, and Winifried Wilhelmy, Meisterwerke des Bischoflichen Domi Und Diozesanmuseums Mainz 3, Der Mainzer Domschatz, Regensburg: Verlag Schnell & Steiner GmbH, 2022. p. 168, Abb. 128
  • Ornamenta Ecclesiae: Romanesque Art and Artists in Cologne. Museum Schnütgen, Cologne, Germany (organizer) (March 7-June 9, 1985).
    Cologne, Germany, 1985: Ornamenta Ecclesiae, no. B112, p. 336, repr. p. 337, Schnutgen-Museum, March 7-June 9, 1985.
    Juxtapositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 11-October 10, 1965).
  • {{cite web|title=Incense Burner and Stand for an Altar Cross|url=false|author=|year=1150–75|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1926.555