Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 23, 2011

The Holy Thorn Reliquary was probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry for a relic of the Crown of Thorns, and entered the British Museum in 1898. It is one of a small number of major goldsmiths' works from the extravagant world of the courts of the Valois royal family around 1400. It is in solid gold, lavishly decorated with jewels and pearls, and contains a total of 28 enamel figures. The front shows the end of the world and Last Judgement, with the Trinity and saints above and the resurrection of the dead below, and the relic of a single long thorn believed to come from the Crown of Thorns; the rear is mostly decorated in plain gold relief. It was in the Habsburg collections until the 1860s, when it was replaced by a forgery during a restoration by an art dealer, which was not discovered until the 1920s. The reliquary has been described as "one of the supreme achievements of medieval European metalwork", and is currently part of a special exhibition of medieval religious treasures at the British Museum, which opens today. (more...)

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