Relic Cross
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. 68.
Origins: Collecting to Create the Nelson-Atkins, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 14, 2021-March 6, 2022.
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 cross 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. 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.
W. A. Neumann and Jakob von Falke, Der Reliquenschatz des Hauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Vienna: A. Hölder, 1891).
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), 88, 203, plate 102, (repro.).
The Guelph Treasure (New York: Goldschmidt and Reinhardt Galleries, 1930), 64.
The Guelph Treasure (Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1931), 64.
Patrick M. De Winter, “The Sacral Treasure of the Guelphs,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 1 (March 1985), 136, 141.
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, 188.
