Monstrance
- 106
The Guelph Treasure, Städelsche Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt-am-Main, August 1-September 25, 1930; Goldschmidt and Reinhardt Galleries, New York, November 30-December 20, 1930; Cleveland Museum of Art, January 10-February 1, 1931; Detroit Institute of Art, February 10-25, 1931; Pennsylvania Museum of Art, March 16-23, 1931; Art Institute of Chicago, March 31-April 20, 1931, no. 64.
Songs of Glory: Medieval Art from 900-1500, Oklahoma Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, January 22-April 29, 1985, no. 64.
Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940, Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 1996, no. 71.
Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneberg, Hanover, Lower Saxony, by 1482 [1];
By descent to Ernest Augustus III, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneberg (1887-1953), Hanover, 1923-October 5, 1929;
Purchased from the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneberg by dealers J & S Goldschmidt, I. Rosenbaum and Z. M. Hackenbroch, Frankfurt-am Main, October 5, 1929-January 1931;
Purchased from J & S Goldschmidt, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1931.
NOTES:
[1] This monstrance was part of the Guelph Treasure, a group of medieval and early Renaissance ecclesiastical objects owned by the Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneberg. The Treasure was held at the Cathedral of St. Blaise in Brunswick where it was inventoried in 1482. This monstrance is described in this inventory as: “eyn schone grote monstrancie cum digito sancti Johannis baptiste” (a beautiful, large monstrance with the finger of St. John the Baptist), Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv in Wolfenbüttel (Register VII B Hs 166). In 1670, Duke Rudolf August of Brunswick-Lüneberg (1627-1704) gave the Guelph Treasure to his cousin, Duke Johann Friedrich of Hanover (1625-1679) as payment for Johann’s assistance in putting down a rebellion in Brunswick. It was deposited in the chapel of the Leineschloss at Hanover. It remained there until 1803 when, in fear of a Napoleonic invasion, the Treasure was moved to Great Britain, which had been ruled by the House of Hanover since the ascendancy of Georg Ludwig, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneberg and Prince-Elector of Hanover (1660-1727) in 1714 to the throne of Great Britain, where he became King George I. The Treasure was returned from Britain to Hanover in 1861, where King George V of Hanover (1819-1878) founded the Guelph Museum. In 1867, Hanover was annexed by Prussia and George V was deposed. The former ruling family (now also the Dukes of Cumberland) was allowed to retain the Guelph Treasure as their private property. It was moved several times in the following decades, including to Penzing Castle near Vienna and the Cumberland ducal seat in Gmunden, and was eventually deposited in a Swiss bank vault. For the history of the Guelph Treasure, see especially Patrick M. de Winter, “The Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 1 (March 1985): 113-137.
Gerhard Wolter Molanus, Lipsanographia sive Thesaurus Sanctarum Reliquiarum Electoralis Brunsvico Lüneburgicus (Hannover, 1697), 27.
W. A. Neumann and Jakob von Falke, Der Reliquenschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Vienna: A. Hölder, 1891), 281-83, (repro.).
Otto von Falke, Robert Schmidt and Georg Swarenski, eds., The Guelph Treasure: The Sacred Relics of Brunswick Cathedral formerly in the Possession of the Ducal House of Brunswick-Lüneberg (Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt A. G., 1930), 91, 198-99, plate 99, (repro.).
The Guelph Treasure (New York: Goldschmidt and Reinhardt Galleries, 1930), 8, 17, 63.
“Guelph Treasure on Exhibit Here for First Time in America,” New York Herald Tribune (November 30, 1930), 13, (repro.).
William M. Milliken, “The Guelph Treasure,” American Magazine of Art 22, no. 3 (March 1931), 168.
The Guelph Treasure (Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1931), 8, 17, 63.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 81, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 69, (repro.).
Songs of Glory: Medieval Art from 900-1500, exh. cat. (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 1985), 197-98, (repro.).
Patrick M. De Winter, “The Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 1 (March 1985), 136, 142.
Elizabeth Bradford Smith, Medieval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting, 1800-1940, exh. cat., University Park, PA: Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, 1996), 20, 242, (repro.).
Andrea Boockmann, “Das „Preciosenbok“ des Braunschweiger Stifts St. Blasius (1482-1485),“ in Joachim Ehlers and Dietrich Kötzsche, eds., Der Welfenschatz und sein Umkreis (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1998, 187.
