Museum acquires stolen Limoges enamels for 13th c. casket

Thanks to a dedicated crowdfunding campaign and the generosity of 742 donors, Turin’s Civic Museum of Ancient Art has acquired five precious Limoges enamel brackets missing from a unique 13th century casket. The ornaments, believed to have been stolen in the late 18th century, were being sold by a Paris antiques gallery for 50,000 euros, a hefty price tag for a municipal museum to pay to reclaim stolen goods. The crowdfunding campaign launched on March 28, 2024, and when it closed on December 31, it had exceeded its goal, collecting 52,145 euros.

Made of varnished walnut by Limoges goldsmiths in 1220-25, the chest is decorated with medallions of champlevé enamel and embossed, chased, pierced gilded copper. The medallions features scenes of hunting, chivalric motifs, peasants at work and fantastic beasts. The brackets and corners feature vegetal decoration. It is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of 13th century goldsmithing, and it is one of a kind. There is only one other Limoges chest of this size with the medallions and brackets: the heraldic casket of Richard of Cornwall now in the cathedral of Aachen. It was made more than three decades later, however, and has been extensively reworked.

The five small brackets from the back of the chest are decorated with champlevé enamel in shades of blue, green and white. They decorated the back of the chest, placed between the large showpiece medallions. The back of the chest is devoid of all its original ornamentation today, and the acquisition of these five brackets gives the museum the opportunity to restore part of what was stolen from this exceptional piece.

The wooden chest belonged to Cardinal Guala Bicchieri (ca. 1160-1227), the powerful emissary of Pope Innocent III and then Honorius III to the courts of France, England and the Holy Roman Emperor. He was a canon lawyer, graduate of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the world, and Innocent deployed his considerable diplomatic skills to mediate thorny disputes and to persuade rulers to join in crusades to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control.

As papal legate to England in 1216, he crowned the child King Henry III, just nine years old when he ascended the throne, accomplishing an investiture sleight of hand when Henry paid homage to Pope Honorius III as his feudal lord and the pope in turn declared that King Henry was his vassal and the cardinal had complete authority to protect the boy king and his kingdom. He also arranged for Henry to declare himself a crusader, thus positioning the rebellious barons that had so bedeviled his father King John and that were still fighting against the crown as enemies of Christianity. Guala Bicchieri’s seal is on the reconfirmation of the Magna Carta that resolved the conflict between Henry and the barons.

Over a lifetime of travel at the courts of Europe, the cardinal collected 80 goldsmith works, 104 liturgical vestments, 70 rings, 130 illuminated manuscripts and legal documents which he carried in the chest, itself a masterpiece of Limoges goldsmithing. His collection of artifacts of Nordic design influenced the Gothic style that spread in northern Italy. Indeed, the church of Saint Andrew of Vercelli in Piedmont, a monastery and church founded by Guala Bicchieri in his hometown in 1219, was one of the first Gothic churches in Italy.

Guala Bicchieri bequeathed his collection, including his travel trunks, to Saint Andrew after his death in 1227. He was buried in Rome initially, but later his remains were transferred to Saint Andrew of Vercelli. The timeline is unclear, but it seems the brackets were removed from the back of the chest in the late 18th century during the Napoleonic wars. At some point, Guala Bicchieri’s bones were placed inside and the casket was removed from public view. Restoration work in the church in 1822 rediscovered it walled up in the presbytery. The city of Turin acquired the chest in 2004.

* This article was originally published here