{"data":{"id":88422,"api_model":"artworks","api_link":"https:\/\/api.artic.edu\/api\/v1\/artworks\/88422","is_boosted":false,"title":"Reliquary Cross with the Arms of the Veltheim Family","alt_titles":null,"thumbnail":{"lqip":"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhBAAFAPQAAAEBAQICAgUFBRIRChQTCxcVDBsYDw4OEA4PESonGS0pGjc5O0c9IUo\/JkpCJlVNMz0+QFVRQlxXRgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACH5BAAAAAAALAAAAAAEAAUAAAURIFAYQOA8wsA0xJEoyBJJUAgAOw==","width":1705,"height":2250,"alt_text":"A work made of silver gilt, enamel, and gemstones."},"main_reference_number":"1962.92","has_not_been_viewed_much":false,"boost_rank":null,"date_start":1295,"date_end":1305,"date_display":"c. 1300","date_qualifier_title":"","date_qualifier_id":null,"artist_display":"German; Brunswick (Braunschweig)","place_of_origin":"Brunswick","description":"<p>This altar cross, richly ornamented with colorful precious and semi-precious stones of amethyst, carnelian, chalcedony, labradorite, blue sapphire, and topaz, was part of the Guelph treasure maintained in the collegiate church of Saint Blaise, Braunschweig, under the patronage of the dukes of Braunschweig-L\u00fcneberg.  It was made, not for the ducal family, but for another noble family of Lower Saxony, the Veltheims, whose coat of arms executed in enamel decorates the base of the cross.  The cross also served as a reliquary, since it contains the relics of several saints.  It may have commissioned to celebrate the founding of the Convent of Saint Anna in Braunschweig by the Veltheim family in 1326; how it entered the group of treasury objects kept together in the church of Saint Blaise is unclear.<\/p>\n","short_description":null,"dimensions":"20.5 \u00d7 12.8 cm (8 1\/16 \u00d7 5 1\/16 in.)","dimensions_detail":[{"depth":null,"width":12,"height":20,"diameter":null,"clarification":null}],"medium_display":"Silver gilt, enamel, and gemstones","inscriptions":null,"credit_line":"Gift of Mrs. Chauncey McCormick","catalogue_display":null,"publication_history":"G. W. Molanus, Lipsanographia sive Thesaurus sanctarum Reliquiarum Electoralis Brunsvico-Luneburgicus (Hanover, 1697), pp. 31-33, no. 57.\n\nW. A. Neumann, Der Reliquienschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-L\u00fcneburg (Vienna, 1891), pp. 107-109, ill., no. 5.\n\nO. von Falke, R. Schmidt, and G. Swarzenski, The Guelph Treasure.  The Sacred Relics of Brunswick Cathedral fromerly in the Possession of the Ducal House of Bruswick-L\u00fcneburg (Frankfurt am Main, 1930), p.p. 17-18, 87-88, 181, no. 48, pl. 88.\n\nAlfred M. Frankfurter, \"The Guelph Treasure: Its Importance to America,\" The Antiquarian 15, 6 (1930), p. 67, ill.\n\n\"Chicagoan Buys Objects from the Guelph Treasure,\" The Art News,\" 29, 16 (1931), p. 8.\n\n\"Chicago,\" The Art News 29, 29 (1931), p. 24.\n\nBessie Bennett, \"Some Ecclesiastical Objects,\" Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 25, 6 (1931), p. 79.\n\nThe Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report (1961-1962), p. 14.\n\n[Rita E. McCarthy], Medieval Decorative Arts from Chicago Collections (exhibition guide, Art Institute of Chicago, 1985), n. p., fig. 5.\n\nPatrick M. de Winter, \"The Sacral Treasures of the Guelphs,\" Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, 1 (1985), pp. 127, 154 n. 88, 141, no. 41.\n\nPatrick M. De Winter, Der Welfenschatz: Zeugnis sakraler Kunst des Deutschen Mittelalters (Hanover, 1986), pp. 136. 173, no. 41, fig. 151.\n\nKlaus Jaitner, \"Der Reliquienschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-L\u00fcneburg (Welfenschatz) vom 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert,\" Jahrbuch Preu\u00dfischer Kulturbesitz 23 (1986) [1987], fig. 101.\n\nIan Wardropper and Lynn Springer Roberts, European Decorative Arts in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1991), pp. 14, 16 (ill.).\n\nAndrea Boockman, Die verlorenen Teile des \u2018Welfenschatzes\u2019: Eine \u00dcbersicht anhand des Reliquienverzeichnisses von 1482 der Stiftskirche St. Blasius in Braunschweig (G\u00f6ttingen, 1997), pp. 80, 150, 153, no. 121.\n\nC[hristina] M. N[ielsen] in \"Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,\" Museum Studies 30, 2 (2004), pp. 52, 93, no. 30, ill. \n\nChristina M. Nielsen, \"'To Step into Another World': Building a Medieval Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago\" in To Inspire and Instruct:  A History of Medieval Art in Midwestern Museums, ed. Christina M. Nielsen (Newcastle, 2008), pp. 34, 199 n. 35.\n\nLothar Lambacher, \"Reliquien im Welfenschatz als Zeugnisse von Pilgerschaft und Politik\" in Heiliges Grab - heilige Gr\u00e4ber: Aktualit\u00e4t und Nachleben von Pilgerorten, ed. Ursula R\u00f6per and Martin Tremi (Berlin, 2014), pp. 65, 73-74 n 75, fig. 1b.\n\nChristina Nielsen, \"'The greatest group of medieval objects ever offered for sale': The Guelph Treasure and America, 1930-1931,\" Journal of the History of Collections 27, 3 (2015), pp. 447, 452 n. 58.","exhibition_history":"The Guelph Treasure Exhibition took place in 1930-31 at the following venues: Frankfurt, St\u00e4delsches Kunstinstitut; Berlin, Deutsche Gesellschaft; New York, Reinhardt and Goldschmidt Galleries; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art); the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; The Art Institute of Chicago  (March 31st to April 20th, 1931); and San Francisco, The M. H. de Young Museum,  cat. 48.\n\nArt Institute of Chicago, Medieval Decorative Arts from Chicago Collections, October 2, 1985-January 5, 1986.\n\nLeningrad, State Hermitage Museum, and Moscow, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Medieval Art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, May 10\u2013July 10, 1990, August 14\u2013October 14, 1990, cat. 34.\n\nThe Art Institute of Chicago, Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, September 25, 2004-January 3, 2005, no cat.","provenance_text":"The collegiate church of Saint Blaise, Braunschweig [no. 121 in the 1482 inventory of the relic treasure; see Boockmann 1997, pp. 80, 150, giving the 1482 inventory citation that it came from the Veltheim family by exchange (via permutationis)], remaining there along with other treasure objects after the congregation abolished the Catholic service in 1540; Saint Blaise being under the direct patronage of the dukes of Braunschweig-L\u00fcneburg, 1962.92 was given, together with the bulk of the church\u2019s relic treasure to Duke Johann Friedrich (died 1679) in 1671 as part of a settlement among members of the ducal family [see Jaitner 1986 [1987], pp. 391-92]; by descent in the Hannover branch of the ducal family of Braunschweig-L\u00fcneburg and preserved with the rest of the treasure in the court chapel of the Leineschloss, Hannover; temporarily removed for safe-keeping during the Seven Years War ( from 1757-64) and the Napoleonic Wars (removed 1803-1816) [Jaitner 1986 [1987], p. 393]; in 1862 installed in the Welfenmuseum in the Altenburg-Palais, Hannover, founded by King George V of Hannover (died 1878) [Hannover became a kingdom at the Congress of Vienna 1814\/15; for the foundation of the museum, whose name evoked the medieval glory of the Welf or Guelph dynasty, see Jaitner 1986 [1987], pp. 393-98 and de Winter 1985, p. 13]; in 1867, following the annexation of the kingdom of Hannover by Prussia, moved with the bulk of the treasure to the exiled former king\u2019s villa in Hietzing near Vienna; deposited at the \u00d6sterreichisches Museum f\u00fcr Kunst und Industrie, Vienna, 1869 to 1906 [Jaitner 1986 [1987], pp. 402, 420 n. 59\u2013the former king was styled duke of Cumberland];1906 sent to the duke of Cumberland\u2019s palace in Penzing on the outskirts of Vienna and in 1920 to Schloss Cumberland in Gmunden, Austria [Jaitner 1986 [1987], p. 404]; in November 1927, the treasure was deposited with a bank in Aarau, Switzerland; at the end of 1929 under Ernst August III as head of the house of Hannover, the treasure was sold to a consortium of Frankfurt dealers: Julius Falk Goldschmidt of the firm I. S. Goldscmidt, Zacharias Max Hackenbroch, and Isaak Rosenbaum and Saemy Rosenbaum of the firm J. Rosenbaum [see De Winter 1985, p. 133; Jaitner 1986 (1987), p. 415 gives January 6, 1930 as the conclusion of the transaction]; they sold 1962.92 to Mrs. Chauncey McCormick, n\u00e9e Marion Deering, in January, 1931; on loan to the museum from 1931 [receipt R. 4806 of April 24, 1931 in Registrar\u2019s office]; given to the museum in 1962.","edition":null,"publishing_verification_level":"Web Cataloged","internal_department_id":6,"fiscal_year":1962,"fiscal_year_deaccession":null,"is_public_domain":true,"is_zoomable":true,"max_zoom_window_size":-1,"copyright_notice":null,"has_multimedia_resources":false,"has_educational_resources":false,"has_advanced_imaging":false,"colorfulness":32.399,"color":{"h":43,"l":51,"s":63,"percentage":0.002026848272271862,"population":19},"latitude":null,"longitude":null,"latlon":null,"is_on_view":true,"on_loan_display":null,"gallery_title":"Gallery 236","gallery_id":2147480055,"nomisma_id":null,"artwork_type_title":"Metalwork","artwork_type_id":35,"department_title":"Applied Arts of Europe","department_id":"PC-9","artist_id":null,"artist_title":null,"alt_artist_ids":[],"artist_ids":[],"artist_titles":[],"category_ids":["PC-9"],"category_titles":["Applied Arts of Europe"],"term_titles":["silver","metalwork","european decorative arts","decorative arts"],"style_id":null,"style_title":null,"alt_style_ids":[],"style_ids":[],"style_titles":[],"classification_id":"TM-161","classification_title":"silver","alt_classification_ids":["TM-29","TM-1394","TM-1678"],"classification_ids":["TM-161","TM-29","TM-1394","TM-1678"],"classification_titles":["silver","metalwork","european decorative arts","decorative arts"],"subject_id":null,"alt_subject_ids":[],"subject_ids":[],"subject_titles":[],"material_id":null,"alt_material_ids":[],"material_ids":[],"material_titles":[],"technique_id":null,"alt_technique_ids":[],"technique_ids":[],"technique_titles":[],"theme_titles":[],"image_id":"0b2b7fb3-120b-8b8c-4f21-cf960c1b0157","alt_image_ids":[],"document_ids":[],"sound_ids":[],"video_ids":[],"text_ids":[],"section_ids":[],"section_titles":[],"site_ids":[],"suggest_autocomplete_all":[{"input":["1962.92"],"contexts":{"groupings":["accession"]}},{"input":["Reliquary Cross with the Arms of the Veltheim Family"],"weight":1765,"contexts":{"groupings":["title"]}}],"source_updated_at":"2026-07-28T08:37:02-05:00","updated_at":"2026-10-01T20:21:46-05:00","timestamp":"2026-10-11T15:42:23-05:00"},"info":{"license_text":"The `description` field in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC-By) and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu. 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